BeatThePress:

The Washington Post reported on a speech by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in which she decried corporate America's short-term focus and called on companies to invest in their workers. She did not indicate any specific proposals for bringing this about. In an earlier speech she had suggested tax incentives to promote profit sharing.

It actually is not hard to give companies more incentive to invest in their workers, we can just make it harder for them to fire them. According to the OECD the United States has by far the weakest employment protection legislation, meaning that it is extremely easy to fire workers. The United States is the only country in which even long-term workers can be fired immediately for no reason and with no compensation.

Laws that imposed some cost for firing long-term workers would give companies more incentive to invest in workers and ensure that their productivity continues to rise. This is a very simple and well-established mechanism that is likely to be far more direct than any tax scheme that Ms. Clinton might put forward.

I like it.

The cognitive dissonance between "tax reform" and "let's use the tax code to promote things we like" is monstrous. There are a lot more ways to promote beneficial policies than simply messing with the tax code.

Cheers,
Scott.