The Great Payroll Heist: Ending the High Housing Chokehold on Payrolls and Paychecks

United States businesses face never-ending high payroll costs. Employees run after more pay, creating turnover churn. Unions demand pay increases. But even with a raise, it’s all gone at the end of the month. Everyone is fighting over the same hard-earned sales revenue. All that money, gone with the wind. By month’s end, businesses are cleaned out by payroll and their employees end up barely over broke.Think about where the lion’s share of that payroll money disappears to.It’s gobbled up by a monopoly of high housing costs. This monopoly leaves business owners and employees with no choice whatsoever, but to pay up.The problem is that U.S. elected officials and leaders have avoided the decision to commit to a housing inventory for the middle class and for working families of America. Upscale real estate takes over, in region after region. It’s coming your way, if it hasn’t already. It’s put up, shut up, double up, make do, and get back to work.The economic and social stakes are high. Expensive rent and high home prices take too much of the income of average earners. This is a leading root cause of rising economic distress. It makes it harder to avoid financial instability for half the nation, well into the middle class, certainly not anymore just for the poorest of the poor. This financial instability brings business instability and social strife.It does not have to be this way. Three methods can work: (1) property tax caps for average earners and seniors; (2) commitments for starter homes and apartments, based on free-market principles; and (3) agreements for future generations. These methods have been proven to work over decades of real-world use. As more and more hard-working, striving businesses struggle to meet higher and higher payroll costs, these decisions await.