Yeah… no. Whilst the nominal highest marginal corporate tax rate might be higher than any countries the actual amount of tax paid by US corporations is somewhere around half that number. All those exceptions, rebates, deductions, blah blah blah, dontcha know?
And remember that the taxes paid by the people that own much of those corporations is generally rather lower than the supposed tax rate because of, you guessed it, all those exceptions, rebates, deductions, blah blah blah, dontcha know? Oh, and outright curruption too of course. Mustn’t forget the way those lying bastards steal everything.
A friend of mine worked for a short period of time at a “penny stock broker,” of the kind shown in the movie “Boiler Room.” Their unofficial motto was “We make money the old fashioned way: We CHURN it.”
It baffles me just how many people think that having a bunch of cash lying around will motivate companies to hire workers. Why would they? There is absolutely zero economic logic to that thinking, and trained economists and businesspeople should be the very first to recognize that.
You know what gets companies to hire people? Demand for the products and/or services they provide. Where does that demand come from? The average consumer (in most cases, anyway – luxury products like Rolls Royces and Gucci handbags are obvious exceptions). What does the average consumer need to create this demand? Disposable income. So if you’re going to cut taxes to create jobs, who should be the biggest beneficiaries of those tax cuts? The people who are going to spend the money on job-creating goods and services.
In other words, if you put a bunch of extra money in the hands of Ford at a time when nobody is buying cars and expect Ford to use the money to build new plants, you’re a fool. That, in a nutshell, is why supply-side economics fails.
Yep!! Big corps have been stashing their cash overseas (to avoid/lessen taxes). If they haven’t been willing to dip into those monster war chests now for investing , why would they consider investing even greater profits (which would go back into those very war chest?)
That’s why we’re not just doing corporate tax cuts, we’re also doing tax reform. That way the corporations can’t… what?.. oh… I’m told we’ll get to the reform part really really soon. I’ll get back to you shortly.
Whenever gas prices get really low, there are endless “news” stories about how the lower cost puts money in the pocket of the average person. They interview people at the pump to find out what they’re doing with the extra cash and talk about how that discretionary spending will stimulate the local economy.
For some reason, tax money is the opposite. Following that model, we should want very high gas prices so more money goes to the corporations. They could then trickle down money and be job creators so the rest of us can then afford the high cost of gas.
Right. With interest rates still at historic lows and venture capitalists desperate to find growing companies to investment, lack of cash to support growth is not a problem that most corporations have. The ones that do are struggling businesses who probably aren’t paying much income tax anyway and aren’t in a position to “invest” much in any case. The amount of cash that the biggest companies have stockpiled is astonishing and without historical precedent. They literally have so much money they can’t figure out what to do with it.
So even if there were a case where cutting corporate taxes would stimulate investment, this environment is exactly wrong for it.
As it is, this is just a way to make it cheaper for companies to pay out profits to shareholders through dividends or share buybacks. That isn’t necessarily a bad (or good) idea, but doesn’t stimulate investment or hiring.
It is funny when people actually believe in neoliberal ideology instead of seeing it simply as a useful tool to implement policies that are favorable for the rich.
In my more cynical moments, I am convinced that the ultra wealthy know exactly how fucked the world is and are pushing a denialist agenda as a front for concentrating as much power and resources before their bets on artificially induced Malthusian negative population checks kick in.
Wait, that’s what I’ve been saying for a year. So… I can even less? That’s even worse grammar. That old Futurama quote about how I don’t want to live here anymore is probably the only remaining response.
Some of them, definitely. Peter Thiel immediately springs to mind, but there are plenty of other UHNWIs doing the same. Lucky for them, there are enough Libertarian dupes to give them political cover.
