

One Humble Idea to Get our Economy Moving Again - bsbechtel
http://brandonbechtel.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/how-we-might-avoid-jumping-off-the-coming-fiscal-cliff/

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thaumaturgy
I'm fairly socially liberal, and I would be in favor of a serious effort like
this, except that it has nearly zero chance of working.

The largest corporate tax contributors make an art out of avoiding paying any
Federal taxes at all, let alone 35% [1]. Building a tax code that would close
all of those loopholes without meeting tremendous political resistance is
probably impossible -- especially since those loopholes are used by
individuals with political influence.

And how would you decide who is and isn't eligible for social assistance under
such a program? Let's say that your program somehow moved the nearly $1.5
_trillion_ dollars currently used for some form or another of social welfare
directly into the pockets of a burgeoning middle class. Everybody's spending
again, people are saving for retirement and college, angels bugle from the
skies. However, the proposal only _incentivizes_ wage increases [2]; what do
you do for the poor shmucks that work for businesses that choose to not
participate?

To your credit, your idea is different from the usual fix-our-economy fare.
Unfortunately it's just about as likely to work as a nationwide flat tax or
simply taxing the rich more.

[1]: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/20/microsoft-taxes-
pro...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/20/microsoft-taxes-profits-
offshore_n_1901398.html),
[http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2011/03/ten_giant_us_compani...](http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2011/03/ten_giant_us_companies_avoidin.html)

[2]: Actually, it doesn't even do that. It just incentivizes making wages more
balanced, which leaves corporations at least two other major loopholes: simply
pay their top-level people less, or reward them in ways which would exempt
them from the program's calculations.

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tryitnow
This is amusingly simple minded. Does the author not realize that it will just
cause big pay cuts for the most highly compensated employees (not necessarily
a bad thing). Corporations will cut CEO pay in order to pay lower corporate
taxes. Why on earth would they increase pay across the board in order to
decrease the highest paid:lowest paid ratio?

This is basically an argument for cutting corporate taxes, which I don't
entirely disagree with, but if that's what he wants to do he should just argue
that on its own merits rather than coming up with a scheme that even brain
dead tax accountant could get around.

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waterside81
Good thought & intentions however any rules put in place that can lower a
firm's tax will be abused. If I'm the CEO under a regime where ratio of top to
bottom earners determines tax for my firm, I take a $1 salary, and then get
paid massively in options or some other income-but-not-really-income method.
That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are other ways to skirt
these sorts of rules.

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molsongolden
How will you define pay? Are we talking 300:1 W-2 wages? Should we(how will
we) account for benefits, stock options, deferred compensation agreements,
payments to corporations owned by employees, phantom stock agreements? All of
these would need to be accounted for otherwise there are going to be loopholes
left and right and they will be abused.

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blacksqr
The plan only needs one addition: everyone gets a pony.

