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Originally Posted by ResAlien
Tax breaks for corporations and let the job creators pass those savings along to their employees and the public  |
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Originally Posted by New Era
Corporations shouldn't have to pay taxes. People should pay taxes to corporations. We need to go back to the start of the 20th century where corporations can pay their employees in company script and only let them spend it in their stores. Hell, make corporations the government and then we all work for their script and pay directly to them! We're just about there right now!
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Originally Posted by Mull
Based on my... less than limited knowledge on economics, I think I would like to see a proposal discussed that reduces corporate tax rates (or maintain current low levels) and higher minimum wages and employee burdens (i.e. paid time off, employer CPP matching beyond 1:1, etc).
Force the tax savings from the employer to the employee. Reduces the desire to move taxes offshore. However, has a potential unfair negative impact on pre-revenue companies and companies not profitable.
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I get that none of these are the burn it all down deregulation tactics of some right wing ideologs, but did we actually see a back to back to back endorsement of trickle down economics theory?
Not to dig too deep into my own ideologies, but I think a lot about economics for a layman. We should be using productivity gains to generally provide more to the average person with fewer inputs, in a world where the primary means for the average person to participate in the economy is to sell their labour. Rather than using productivity gains to convert create more and more gains in productive output, that isn't necessary for human well being. I think it understandably sounds idealistic, but you look at things like farms were we successfully eliminated 96% of labour and still increased output, why can't we do this for other things? And I do understand this creates problems where we have to consider who will do the really crappy work that has not been automated, but I don't really mind to economic impacts of constraining labour supply on crappy jobs to the point that we need to pay it better or find a better way to do that crappy work. The long term implication of this vision renders income tax an unideal revenue stream for government, so that necessarily requires that we find better ways to tax corporations.
For all of these reasons I believe the biggest problem that plagues western democracies is an inability to adequately tax corporate earnings and capital gains. I really see this as a competition problem more than as a problem for the companies, because with a level playing field those companies will create pricing structures that make sense for the tax regime. It is the unlevel taxation structures across different economies that creates the problems. So I think the ideal unconstrained market solution to this problem is to set a robust corporate/capital tax structure that allows government and social infrastructure to thrive, infrastructure which these companies rely on. Then construct trade barriers that adjust the costs of goods based on the corporate taxes and wages in the place of origin. The US is probably the only economy in the world with the weight to undertake this type of action. It's unfortunate Trump was simply the manifestation of people defining themselves in opposition the rhetorical ideals of their perceived adversaries lacking any articulated vision how to resolve his grievances, because he went about half way without understanding what the goal actually needed to be.
I think the biggest problem that arise from this idea is countries that try to skirt the idea, much in the way textile manufacturers tried to sneak into NAFTA by having clothing "assembled in Mexico", after having all of the component pieces manufactured in cheaper jurisdictions. Probably the second largest problem that arises, is that currency rates render the numbers I would like to see driving the trade barriers highly volatile, creating market uncertainty in my ideal unconstrained market, that very volatility becoming a constraint on the market. But I think with careful regulation, both of these problems can be managed.
In either case, I think the best possible open/free market would be the exact opposite of what the 3 of you are talking about. I can respect people coming to a different conclusion, if their ideology dictates that never ending economic growth is the goal of an economy. But I respectfully disagree with that ideal.