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$1,000 pays my rent once. Now what about the other 11 months of the year where a non-bonus income means I’m just barely scraping by? I’m not getting a bonus, or a raise, from the small-business owner who’s supposedly being helped out the most by this tax cut. I’m not even getting another $1,000 on my tax return next year.
I’d also love to see the actual size of those raises being promised. I got a raise every 6 months when I worked at a movie theater. It was 5 cents an hour, and I was capped at $8.10/hour going up from a baseline of $6.50. But whenever AMC put out the “now hiring” signs, “regular raises” was a top bullet point.
You know what the top marginal tax rate was during the oft-cited super-prosperous post-war 1950s?
90%.
Now it’s 37%, and despite workers being more productive than at any other point in human history, wages have stagnated for the last 30 years. Cutting rich people’s taxes hasn’t done fuck shit for the working class. Why would it start to now?
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Because many corporations started hoarding that money since the 1970s with stagflation and the oil shocks…
They don’t give a shit about us. They just don’t. If they did, workers would be paid a living wage.
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@MalevolentPixy posted this in thread about the tax cut, so wanted to post it here too, since the discussion has turned to the tax cut… I’m not the only one to see it as propaganda…
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Y’know what works way better to support America than self-aggrandizing token amounts of philanthropy? Paying fucking taxes and giving employees a living wage.
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Also, not to belabor the point here, but the benefits from these tax cuts are overwhelmingly going to people who don’t need them. Including foreign investors.
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Oh, the tax loophole of philanthropic giving… as true in the gilded age as it is in the NEW gilded age!
Anyone who doesn’t see this is willfully blind. The rest of us are getting crumbs, with a large number of us actually getting a tax hike, because of some of the eliminations… and these will go away. I find it ironic that party that is so mistrustful of government and has spent the last decade or so complaining about the debt is the one crowing about how of course they’ll extend the tax cuts in 5 years! Are we really supposed to trust these assholes to do it? They’ll be screaming about the debt then, too.
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The other thing most often forgotten was when Reagan cut taxes in 1986 the top marginal rate was 70% and the economy was truly in the toilet. His tax cuts did have some positive impact and it could be reasonably argued that 70% really was too high and needed to be lower in order to stimulate the economy. Still, his tax cuts only brought the top rate down to 50%.
Mostly however, his dramatic increase in military buildup was the primary driving stimulus effect - not tax cuts.
Republicans have had 30 years to prove supply-side economics work and it’s very clear that the whole concept is bullshit.
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Yeah, I got a lovely letter from Cathy McMorris Rogers about how we should trust the GOP and not the mean mainstream media about what’s really going to happen to welfare programs as a result of this tax cut:
It willfully ignores the dozens of on-the-record comments from Republican reps and senators who have outright stated that the welfare state is next in 2018 (because now there’s a massive hole in the federal budget and deficits only matter when we’re talking about giving money to poor people), and asks us to trust the GOP when they promise to exclude Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security – three programs they’ve actively loathed since their inception – from automatic spending cuts on a regular, ongoing basis.
How’s that September 30th deadline for the re-authorization of CHIP going, again? Oh right. Also, this woman voted for the repeal of the ACA, which would have literally decimated Medicaid enrollment in Washington, so her claims that she’s all about preserving Medicaid for the most vulnerable people in Washington are horse shit.
I will say though, it’s good that the Tax Foundation started producing favorable numbers for her again, because a few months ago her form response switched from citing them to citing the freaking Chamber of Commerce.
For extra fun, this is what the Tax Foundation’s hypothetical American households look like:
There are two households with incomes below the average annual income in the US, and only one more where that’s true if both people are earning income. One is a single man living alone pouring $2,600 of his already-meager $30,000 annual income into what is very probably a market-driven 401k, and the other is a married retired couple who are likely living off of Social Security. In both cases, the change in annual tax liability is less than $400. The people making $1,000,000 get almost as much as the first guy makes in a year (amazing what these new rules on pass-through income will do, isn’t it?).
Cathy can take her “People’s House” and stick it where the sun don’t shine.
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Not really, if one understands business and finance. Most capital-L Libertarians and Objectivists and the GOP base don’t, so I’ll explain further.
Banks give out bonuses after* profitable years no matter what. I doubt that the new tax law (which the CEO in the original was discussing and which hasn’t taken effect) has anything substantive to do with this particular bonus.
Companies are indeed rushing to claim that they’re giving out bonuses against next year’s unknown results not because it’s sound finance but because it’s good PR in support of a tax break they really want to see passed. The press releases are basically aimed at the naive boobs who still believe that trickle-down works after 30 years of failure to deliver.
Those same suckers like to believe that capital spending and R&D and largesse to employees and philanthropic giving are the primary concerns of the corporations they worship, when in fact anyone with real-world experience understands that the first priority is increasing shareholder value each quarter, followed closely by increasing executive compensation and on tax avoidance.
Corporations are constantly trying to keep labour costs down because it’s usually the biggest line item under the expenditures column. Capital investments are rarely made, and when they are they’re amortised over years if not decades. Large incumbent corporations in the U.S. spend money on in-house R&D very grudgingly, especially if they can spend less by lobbying the government for sweetheart deals that cement their semi-monopoly position in the market (see the recent FCC decision). A lot of what they characterise as R&D is in reality acquisitions of smaller and more nimble potential competitors, and when they do it they’re using money that’s been hoarded in treasury (sometimes in overseas tax shelters) for years.
[* emphasis because giving out bonuses for future performance would be insanity unless the company’s executives have a time machine]
Independent and government auditing and analyst bodies have reviewed the tax bill and the reputable ones have all come to the same conclusion: it benefits large incumbent corporation, UHNWIs, and specific sectors (including, surprise, real estate developers) but basically shafts everyone else (including the bulk of the conservative sucker base). To demand that someone who understands this should also decide to pay more than his fair share of taxes to remedy the situation makes no financial or political sense.
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I think YOU are fake news.
In fact, “sources” say you don’t even exist.
Why should we listen to a non existent fake news source, like whoever you claim to be, MISTER FAKE NEWS?
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If everyone pulls their money from the company. That speaks more than words.
I don’t mind to pay more taxes if those taxes go to improve social services and education, to invest on infrastructure, and to pay down debt, but I am not going to send more money to the current Washington establishment so they can use it funnel even more money to military contractors, corporate welfare, and tax cuts for the rich.
The fact that this law has been passed despite of the opposition of 80% of the citizenry tell us that democracy is not working very well in America.
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About that…
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First, I agree with you. Now that that’s out of the way…
Why should the government spend less when the GOP just demonstrated that deficits don’t matter as long as the money goes to people and the economy improves to cover the deficits? How are they going to argue in the future when the Dems take Congress (and eventually the White House) and want to increase welfare spending because that money goes to the people, who will spend it, increasing the economy to cover any deficits? The GOP is screwed either way on this bill. Their only hope is to keep control of Congress, and that looks doubtful. And beyond all that, they just forfeited the moral high ground to complain about the National Debt.
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