Rx for Job Recovery

Payroll tax shifting phases out job-killing payroll taxes and replaces the revenue with non-labor taxes on waste, pollution, and inefficient use of materials, energy, or land. It is budget-neutral and won’t raise deficits or net taxes one dime. Yet it could generate 40-45 million full-time equivalent jobs – jobs Americans need now more than ever.

This would dramatically and sustainably increase growth.  It would cut the massive dependency costs to government, the economy and all of us that arise from mass joblessness.  It would eliminate a root cause of social ills ranging crime and fear to public health problems and spiking healthcare costs.

It’s both politically achievable and fiscally responsible. “Replacing the payroll levy would serve both progressive and conservative interests,” former US Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig wrote recently in The Washington Post. “Fiscal hawks in both parties should insist that payroll tax cuts be offset by something that doesn’t penalize labor.”  “There is no other policy for stimulating jobs and growth that pays for itself in real time, without increasing deficits or net taxes,” Bill Drayton wrote recently in Law360.

On this site you’ll find more detailed information on how payroll tax shifting can put tens of millions of Americans back to work, stimulate economic growth and recovery from the pandemic, strengthen Social Security and Medicare financing, and greatly advance environmental and climate protection.