Caveat:
I am not an economist, or an accountant. I'm just a slob that had an idea while trying to keep himself awake on a long drive.

My simple plan to save the American economy:

For too long American business has been driven by reducing the American workforce, either by outsourcing or downsizing. We need to turn that around so they're driven by growing the American workforce.

First we need to create a new term, defined as 1 American employed for for a minimum of 1500 hours per year on an employee basis (no contractors) at a wage at least at the average pay rate and including health benefits and some minimum other benefits TBD. As a placeholder until someone comes up with something more clever, I'll use the term "mannum".

My proposal is to give businesses a tax credit equal to the percentage increase in their mannum rate compared to the previous year.

So if their mannum increase is 1% over last year, they get a 1% tax credit.

Before I'm branded a conservative for finding yet another way to cut taxes for business, remember that each percentage represents new tax-paying workers. American workers that are happy to pay taxes, since it means they are now employed.

Obviously some things would need to get worked out, like for new companies, or companies that have a mannum of over 100%. We'd probably need to come up with some way to avoid gaming, but honestly a bit of gaming would probably be a good thing.

But the important thing is the concept: offering businesses a concrete and valuable reward for hiring Americans with benefits and a fair wage.