Get America Working proposes a transition away from taxing valuable labor and work, which the tax structure encourage, toward environmental inefficiencies and waste, which taxes should discourage. This strategic realignment would dramatically shift the relative prices of labor vs. things as inputs to business. It would send a clear price signal toward what we value the most: people and sustainable economic growth. Making the shift would stimulate job creation, improve social security financing, and promote economic vitality and sustainability.
Our traditional mission is to create the policy conditions for fuller employment and help create over 40 million new full-time equivalent jobs. We propose to do that by building broad-based, bipartisan support for payroll tax shifting, which would rebalance how the economy employs people vs. using things, and stimulate labor demand.
Get America Working estimated that [tax shifting] could generate up to 45 million full-time equivalent jobs…. Here’s a way for Washington to open the door: Eliminate the payroll tax, and replace the revenue with non-labor taxes.
Eugene Ludwig
Former U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, founder of the Promontory family of companies, and founder and chair of the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity
[Payroll tax shifting is] the one reform which would generate much faster job growth and ease the tax burden on employees and employers alike [is to] eliminate the payroll tax and replace it with non-labor taxes.
The Late Bill Brock, Former U.S. Treasury Secretary and Senator
Writing in a joint column in The Hill with Al From, founder of the Democratic Leadership Council
The revenue from a carbon tax could be used to offset a portion of the Social Security payroll tax, providing a pro-growth measure that reduces the cost of labor to employers and increases the returns for employees…. A revenue-neutral carbon tax where the proceeds are used to reduce the payroll tax is pro-growth, pro-work and pro-family. It would also be a progressive tax cut for millions of Americans.
Jason Ficthner
Senior Fellow, Bipartisan Policy Center, Executive Director, Retirement Income Institute of the Alliance for Lifetime Income, former Senior Economist for the Social Security Administration and the Joint Economic Committee of Congress
Get America Working addresses the millions [of] part-timers and those discouraged and dropped from the official US unemployment count and the shrinking labor force participation rate hovering in the 60% range. This non-partisan group points out how the official…unemployment figure masks the truth, and that over 100 million working-age Americans are not working – some by choice but the overwhelming majority for lack of job opportunities.
The late Hazel Henderson
Internationally syndicated columnist and author, founder of Ethical Markets Media, writing in CSRWire
The payroll tax is, after all, a tax on work. Cutting it would encourage more people to join the labor force; it would also motivate those who are already working to increase the number of hours they work. Cut the tax, and the supply of labor will increase.
James C. Capretta
Milton Friedman Chair, American Enterprise Institute
A potential windfall of human and social capital already exists in the accumulated population of chronically under- and unemployed groups, including older people, younger people, individuals of color, people with disabilities, and immigrants. Get America Working! is at work transforming this vast potential into a much-needed reality. There could be no better time for their essential work!
Marc Freedman
Founder/CEO, Encore.org and author, How to Live Forever
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