I am looking for some way to balance the budget and bring down unemployment while appeasing the free market deity our leaders must appease, lest their houses be destroyed and the country turned into a pillar of dung. I have an idea that might be useful, and if not, could at least become a leftward goal to apply to the Overton window.
During the debt ceiling hostage crisis, we heard a lot about triggers. Namely, if one condition is not met, then ____ will happen.
And....
And it made me wonder what else we could put triggers on.
We have to find a way to guarantee:
living wages
affordable healthcare
low unemployment
yet we must also (because our politicians are bribed to think this) keep taxes low for
corporations and the so-called "job creator" class
The problem is, we have the last condition, but not the first three. The rich need accountability, so I started thinking about ways to work the system to get it. So I propose a trigger for corporations doing business in America. They can keep taxes low but only if we have 98% full-time employment with living wages and affordable, full-coverage insurance. If employment or coverage goes down, then taxes on the top 10% and corporations go up.
This provides an incentive for businesses to hire American workers and keep their businesses here. And that will be the cost of doing business in America. If corporations want American customers, they better hire American workers, pay them a living wage, and give them acceptable health coverage. Those are the conditions under which they should be allowed to do business here. We must remove ourselves from the race to the bottom.
The downside is that everything will be more expensive. The upside is that everyone will have a job. But if corporations cannot squeeze "savings" out of skimping on health care and employee wages, then the free market can actually work. If they set the price too high because the people up top want to keep making a million dollars a week, then no one will buy their products. If they take a slight pay cut and earn only 800k per week, then they will sell more product.
Another way to do this is to give tax credits to businesses who maintain full employment, pay good wages, keep jobs in America, and provide good health insurance.
I will freely admit to knowing less about this than anyone who posts here, but please tell me why this will not work and should not be considered again or help me develop the idea.