Even as job growth remains mediocre, with new jobs lower than expected and with more people not even trying to find work and dropping out of the labor market, both Wall Street and Big Business have booming profits.
Meanwhile there is a continuing trickle of reports of bipartisan backroom negotiations over changing corporate tax structure.
So, here is my modest proposal: Make an explicit linkage between effective corporate taxes and their hiring workers at a livable wage. Link and automatic adjusting lowering (or rise) of corporate taxes to lowering of real unemployment rate and rise in working and middle class income.
As a good capitalist, I really do believe in the incentive system. So, let's give wall street and real business and real employers the direct incentive to hire and employ people at livable wages.
As a wise man said, the best sign of real economic recover would be some f-ing jobs and rising income.
One problem with the bail-out (TARP, etc) was the failure to directly tie it (i.e. hold it hostage) to necessary and stronger finance reform and to actual jobs. If they want the money, they should have been directly tied to the desired results. The same of course applied to HAMP, the mortgage crisis on the frontlines, where the loaners were bailed out but not the people losing their homes.
Federal policy should be directly linked to the desired outcome, not indirectly. If the desired outcome is to enrich the rich and powerful, then we get the policies we have been getting.
But if the goal is to actually decrease unemployment and raise working and middle incomes, then let is directly incentivize wall street and employers to do so.
So... Corporate America... if and only if unemployment goes down and real wages and income go up, then your taxes will go down. And if unemployment does up and and wages and income stagnate then your taxes will go up. After all, under the latter circumstances, the revenues will be needed for unmployment benefits, Medicaid, and other social safety net. And that costs money. And if your hoarding profits are the problem, then your taxes will be part of the solution.
