Thursday, October 08, 2009

Bipartisan Support Growing for a New Jobs Tax Credit

I'm still baffled why this wasn't put into the stimulus bill. It might have actually kept unemployment at the level that Obama actually promised instead of at 9.8%.

One version of the approach, to be unveiled next week by the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented research organization, would give employers a two-year tax credit if they increased the size of their work force or added significant hours of work (for example, making a part-time worker full time). Employers would receive a credit worth twice the first-year payroll tax for each new hire, amounting to several thousand dollars, depending on the new worker’s salary.

There are some unfounded fears in that article like some companies will wait to hire people until after the bill passes and other nonsense. So it should be fast-tracked in a bipartisan fashion and signed into law. Some economists think that it might create 700,000 to 2.1 million jobs right off the bat.

If the failed stimulus was just this new jobs tax credit and some infrastructure spending then there would be no talk of a double dip recession or a jobless recovery. Hell, if they can think of a way to make this thing deficit neutral they can keep it going indefinitely.

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