Rewarding Work: How to Restore Participating and Self-Support to Free Enterprise (Harvard University Press, 197), economist Edmund Phelps offers this plan to help the working poor: apply tax credits for "qualified employers" or hire disadvantaged people for "eligible jobs." Evaluate this plan in terms of market incentives, one of the ten principles of economics, to work and current welfare programs. Is the Phelps' plan an improvement over current government policies? Discuss.

Lowering a company's tax bill will generally always be effective in causing them to invest more money in expanding which usually means more hiring. However, it is not a panacea, as the recent economic incentives have proven. As of late, firms have received a number of tax cuts but there has also been the passing of the Dodd Frank financial reform bill as well as ObamaCare, both of which (ObamaCare in particular) is clearly making employers cool to hire...
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