I'm fairly socially liberal, and I would be in favor of a serious effort like this, except that it has nearly zero chance of working. The largest corporate tax

I'm fairly socially liberal, and I would be in favor of a serious effort like this, except that it has nearly zero chance of working. The largest corporate tax contributors make an art out of avoiding paying any Federal taxes at all, let alone 35% [1]. Building a tax code that would close all of those loopholes without meeting tremendous political resistance is probably impossible -- especially since those loopholes are used by individuals with political influence. And how would you decide who is and isn't eligible for social assistance under such a program? Let's say that your program somehow moved the nearly $1.5 trillion dollars currently used for some form or another of social welfare directly into the pockets of a burgeoning middle class. Everybody's spending again, people are saving for retirement and college, angels bugle from the skies. However, the proposal only incentivizes wage increases [2]; what do you do for the poor shmucks that work for businesses that choose to not participate? To your credit, your idea is different from the usual fix-our-economy fare. Unfortunately it's just about as likely to work as a nationwide flat tax or simply taxing the rich more. [1]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/20/microsoft-taxes-profits-offshore_n_1901398.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/20/microsoft-taxes-pro..., http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2011/03/ten_giant_us_companies_avoidin.html http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2011/03/ten_giant_us_compani... [2]: Actually, it doesn't even do that. It just incentivizes making wages more balanced, which leaves corporations at least two other major loopholes: simply pay their top-level people less, or reward them in ways which would exempt them from the program's calculations.