Business Taxes and Wages

Raise taxes. Now lower them. Now raise them again. This argument has existed for decades and always boils down to the same thing: if we lower taxes businesses are obligated to deliver the earnings to their shareholders, but if we raise taxes businesses become uncompetitive. I'd like to propose a solution to that problem.

First, I'll eliminate some loopholes that are only valuable to specific companies within a given industry. If it doesn't work for every company in that industry, it promotes unfair competition.

Second, and more importantly, I'd like to introduce a system that incentivizes employers to pay their employees more. The simple version looks like this: for every 85 cents you pay your employees, you get 1 dollar in tax write-offs. Essentially, you get to keep 15 cents to deliver to your shareholders. The catch is that you have to split it among all of your employees. If you're running a retail store, everybody might get a few extra dollars per hour. If you run a successful hedge fund, you might have to pay the janitor $200,000 a year. I hope you have super clean bathrooms!

Obviously, the math is more complicated than this, but the general principle remains: companies win when they pay their employees better. From a practical perspective, this positively redistributes wealth in a manner that enables continued growth. It also increases the relative value of labor.