Forum Post: How To Get Our Economy Out Of This Catch-22 Trap

Part 1 of 2

Corperations, who are sitting on $2 trillion of idle money, won't hire more workers until they get more customers; but they won't get more customers until they hire more workers -- Catch 22. What to do?

1) Idle money held by millionairs and billionairs - bad stimulus. So we tax the money away and spend it on good stimulus. 2) Year 1: Direct Payments To Everybody: $50 tax-free every week. And $120 billion in Aid To States. 3) Year 2: $524 billion in Infrastructure Spending. And $90 billion in Aid To States. 4) Year 3: $600 billion in Infrastructure Spending. And $60 billion in Aid To States. 5) Year 4: $674 billion in Infrastructure Spending. And $30 billion in Aid To States. 6) 12 million jobs above population increases in 4 years instead of 10 years. And 350,000 jobs per month instead of 200,000. 7) On Day 1, a guarenteed government job -- $300 per week -- for any American who will show up for work and work. 8) The government's total debt would be smaller by $464 billion after 10 years. And our Debt-To-GDP Ratio would improve. 9) $1.0 trillion in student loan debt would be repaid in 10 years.

First, a term called Permanent Jobs Per Trillion. That's how many jobs get created by every $1.0 trillion of stimulus spending. Here are the Permanent Jobs Per Trillion for our different stimulus types: Unemployment Insurance (2,900,000), Food Stamps (3,000,000), Aid To States (2,400,000), Infrastructure Spending (2,800,000), Corporate Tax Cuts (500,000), Bush 43 Tax Cuts (500,000), Capital Gains Tax Cuts (700,000), Direct Payments To Everybody (1,800,000), Payroll Holiday Tax Cuts (2,200,000).

Second, a term called Return Revenue Percentage. That's how much money the government gets back in tax revenue for every $1.00 of stimulus spending. Here are the Return Revenue Percentages for all of our different stimulus types: Unemployment Insurance (41%), Aid To States (34%), Food Stamps (43%), Infrastructure Spending (40%), Corporate Tax Cuts (7%), Bush 43 Tax Cuts (7%), Capital Gains Tax Cuts (9%), Direct Payments To Everybody (25%), Payroll Holiday Tax Cut (32%).

Now that we have THE ONLY 2 TOOLS WE NEED to do competent back-of-the-envelope stimulus calculations, lets get revenue:

According to the Economic Policy Institute, over the next 10 years we can obtain $3.1 Trillion in extra revenue by: href="http://www.epi.org/publication/ib316-joint-select-committee-good-options-progressive/" Enacting a millionair surcharge ($383 billion); taxing capital gains as ordinary income ($168 billion), further limiting the tax benefit of itemized deductions ($888 billion); enacting a progressive estate tax ($73 billion); enacting a financial speculation tax ($821 billion); enacting a cap-and- trade program and a climate dividend ($472 billion); enacting sweetened beverage tax ($184 billion); and ending the deferral of foriegn corporate income ($114 billion).

According to Robert Reich, we can obtain $70 billion per year by taxing all personal wealth in excess of $7 million by 2%. href="http://robertreich.org/post/11591880881" So we'll make the tax 3% per year, which will obtain $105 billion per year and $1.050 trillion after 10 years.

This is just about the top 1%, which has $8.4 million and above. They also have investment portfolios that grow their wealth at a rate faster than 3% per year -- they will still keep getting wealthier. And check out their low low tax rates. href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/check-out-their-low-low-taxes" And corperations used to pay between 3.5% and 4.5% of GDP in taxes. But today, they only pay between 1.5% and 2.5% of GDP in taxes.

So how many jobs do we lose? We'll over-count the job losses by treat- ing our taxes as Capital Gains Taxes. And $4.15 trillion X 700,000 JPT = 2,905,000. Or 291,000 jobs lost per year. We won't count revenue losses: That was done for us.

Now lets take a look at the jobs part of our stimulus: