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Salt Lake Chamber – Socializing Costs and Privatizing
Profits
In a 2019 column,
Derek Miller, the president and CEO of the Salt Lake Chamber, expressed deep
concern about “the assault on free enterprise from the far right and the far
left, from the halls of government to the sidewalks of Main Street.” He then noted that while “Utah makes free
market principles work better than almost anywhere else….We already see
anti-growth, anti-job sentiments creeping in.”
He concluded by commending Governor Herbert for “calling for financial
literacy courses in high schools” in order to “combat fascination with
socialism.”
What Miller fails to grasp is that the “fascination with
socialism” is fueled, at least in part, by the U.S. and Salt Lake Chambers of
Commerce as they go about socializing business costs while privatizing profits. In fact, the Salt Lake Chamber, along with
the Utah Taxpayers Association and other corporate groups, has worked to
socialize costs while privatizing profits for decades.
The Salt Lake Chamber was recognized in 2006 by Americans
for Tax Reform as an “Enemy
of the Taxpayer.” Since then, it has
stepped up its efforts to socialize costs and privatize profits by exempting large
businesses from taxes while supporting tax
increases that fall most heavily on low and middle-income Utahns and on small
businesses. An example of this is the leadership role the Chamber took in pushing for a sales
tax on services and restoring the full state sales tax on food.
The Chamber relies heavily on front groups and
fellow-travelers to drive public opinion in favor of its efforts to socialize
costs—Utah
Transportation Coalition, Housing Gap Coalition, Utah
Tax Modernization, Prosperity
Project, Our
Schools Now, Kem
C. Gardner Public Policy Institute, Envision
Utah, etc.
And it uses its committee structure to push its agenda. For example, as reported by the Deseret
News, the Chamber offered a national rail business a spot on its “influential
and ‘exclusive International/Inland
Port Committee’ in exchange for $10,000.”
The Salt Lake Chamber created the Utah Jobs PAC. The PAC provides financial support to
candidates running for city, county and statewide offices who “recognize the
importance of economic and community prosperity and champion business success” or,
in other words, who will support the Chamber’s ongoing efforts to socialize
costs while privatizing profits.
During the 2019 legislative session, the Chamber supported
an affordable housing bill that encouraged local governments to socialize
developers’ costs by waiving construction related fees and covering the costs
with taxpayer funded subsidies. It also supported
mandatory water metering in order to free up water for developers even though it
would cost low and middle-income homeowners a whopping $286 million dollars to
install the meters.
And, like the U.S. Chamber, the Salt Lake Chamber supports unlimited
free trade and open-borders since these allow U.S. businesses to socialize
their costs by replacing American workers, who are forced onto taxpayer funded
public assistance, with low-cost, easily exploitable foreign labor.
Unfortunately, low and middle-income families are the
collateral damage of the Salt Lake Chamber’s unrestrained growth initiatives as
their quality
of life declines and their standard of living drops. At the same time, the Chamber’s crony
capitalist/socialist elites become even richer.
So, if the president and CEO of the Salt Lake Chamber really
wants to know what this “fascination with socialism” is all about, he has only to
look at his organization’s efforts to socialize costs while privatizing
profits. After all, if socialism is good
for the Chamber and its big business members, then why wouldn’t others think it
is good for them as well? All of the financial
literacy courses in the world are not going to change this perception.
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