| Give businesses a "tax cut" that allows them the choice to fund their workers pensions on the basis of hours worked, or sent those tax dollars to government. |
OK, so it is a no brainer, every company will fund their workers pensions. However, the point of allowing choice between funding workers or funding politicians to buy votes with special interest money is very important.
How would this work? Assume that we are talking about a 50% tax cut for businesses. (Talk big and compromise down to 30%, if you must.) If Mary's Widgets owes $20,000 in taxes and has 5 full time employees, Mary's Widgets could take $10,000 and put $2,000 in the pensions of its employees -- or Mary could pay that $10,000 to government for politicians to use to buy special interest votes... John the janitor who works 2000 hours would get the same amount for his pension as Mary who also worked 2000 hours. There is also nothing to say that Mary's could also continue to operate a 401k or other type of pension program.
Also, the system should be set up so that if John the janitor doesn't have a pension or doesn't want to make any pension decisions, then Mary could choose to put John's $2000 into a public pension fund that John could transfer into his own IRA later if he wished. John could also move money into this public pension if he so desired.
With more and more workers with decent pensions, the need for Social Security will virtually disappear. There would be more and more movement to allow the Social Security taxes to be put into this pension effort. The Tax Cut would fix Social Security, fund individual pensions and get government out of controling the social marketplace of pensions.
The end result is a significant tax cut for businesses that allow the businesses to fund their workers pensions. Further more there is a system set up to provide pension expertise for those with limited knowledge of investment. Finally, and most importantly, there is also a built in check and balance to prevent tax and spender politicians from raising the taxes on business to get even more funding for worker pensions through this mechanism as the health of worker pensions is based upon those businesses maintaining a profit that they can share with their workers and their owners/shareholders.
Of course, this would leave government workers out of the loop, since their employer doesn't make profits or pay taxes. First, gubberment employees already have better pensions than the average working Bubba in the private sector. Secondly, the option could be provided to bureaucrats that if they don't use up their full budget and still provide adequate services, the remaining amount could be split between a pension contribution and returning money to the taxpayer. In other words, if government employees figure out how to be more effecient at providing quality services, they will be rewarded for their efforts -- while at the same time promoting a smaller government.
Anyone hear the GOP talking about this sort of tax cut? No? Oh well... What did you expect...?