Final word on Trump tax cut
Trump promised his huge corporate tax cut would turn into investment, which would turn into jobs, which would turn into bonuses.
That's not how things turned out.
The underlying logic for the TCJA was that allowing companies to keep a greater share of profits, would stimulate investments in long term growth. Instead, the dominant company response to the TCJA was stock buybacks. For the first three quarters of 2018, buybacks were $583.4 billion (up up 52.6% from 2017).
Over the past five years, U.S. companies have spent $2.7 trillion on stock buybacks and paid out $3.3 trillion in dividends. While much of it came from profits, companies have taken on $2.5 trillion of additional debt.
So how much of Trump's tax cuts turned into investment?
But the real test of their effectiveness is whether lower rates encourage companies to invest more in things like factories, equipment and innovation. Such investment would both boost growth immediately and increase the economy’s productive capacity in the longer term.So what’s happening? The relevant measure -- private fixed nonresidential investment -- accelerated a bit in the first half of 2018, but has since slowed significantly. In the first three months of 2019, it was up an annualized 2.7 percent, well short of the 5.3 percent average for the current expansion.
So no real effect on investment.
But what about the trickle-down effect for workers?
Last year, our analysis showed that bonuses rose by $0.02 between December 2017 and September 2018 (all calculations in this analysis are inflation-adjusted). The new data show that bonuses actually fell $0.22 between December 2017 and December 2018 and the average bonus for 2018 was just $0.01 higher than in 2017.
A single penny certainly sounds like being trickled upon to me.
Comments
I think we are at a stage of capitalist history
in which the system is preserved by governments printing money and giving it to those who can count it a "profit." What's left of human and non-human nature can't be exploited too much further without some serious diminishing returns.
"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama
Sam’s Club
The first thing I remember happening after the cut was Walmart closed a bunch of Sam’s Club stores. Like almost the next day, if I recall. Out here in Trump country, where Walmart has run off everyone else, people were starting to say “hey, wait a minute...”
Of course that was a lifetime ago in politics and the American attention span.
Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.
IIRC Sam's Club had a new division CEO
Who thinks the warehouse concept is passe. So 1980's I suppos3e he wants to be Amazon because he has talked about ordering on line than driving to a Sam's depot where your order will be loaded into your vehicle. I say that if I have to drive there and back, I want to pick out my own groceries.
Like the CEO of AT&T who thinks being a public utility is boring. He wants to be Netflix instead. He bought Time Warner for an absurd premium. Now he is trying to destroy the three branches' independence, forcing them into the same mold ("concept"). Finally, he is talking about spinning off DirectTV which he bought at an absurd premium for a loss, to lower the debt he acquired from buying Time-Warner at a premium. Oh, finally, he wants to do away with the Time and Warner brands. making everything AT&T. As if that inspires confidence in consumers!
EDIT: HBO is the third leg. It was largely independently creative, but Stephebnson wants a uniform "Brand image" including themes and creative vision. AKA "killing the goose that lays the golden eggs". Why can't he see this? Ego. Like all the other 1% he's a legend in his own mind.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
during the deregulation explosion of the 80s and 90s, the
executives of Wisconsin Power & Light decided that being a staid, reliable, safe-as-can-be blue-chip stock where widows and old folks could park their money was boring. so they invested a boatload in some south american projects. and lost it all.
then they came begging to the utilities board for rate increases to cover their losses.
which they received.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Another bailout. We keep rewarding bad and/or unduly
risky behavior by businesses and punishing desirable behavior (like saving money) by individuals, which individuals then get to pay for the risky behavior of businesses.
Former Prime Minister Brown was on the Daily Show while Stewart was still hosting. He said that the UK had also bailed out its counterpart of Wall Street, but took an ownership interest in return.
We just lied about making a profit on our bailouts. It's simpler than getting all those silly stock certificates and/or bonds. And, best of all, not even a whiff of nationalization. /s
Right, what do they call it...
Socialized risk and privatized profit?
also, too ...
do you remember that for several years, TV advertising was saturated with feel-good pieces about SBC (southern bell). They spent gazillions and gazillions of dollars building that brand. ("We own the fibre blah blah.").
Then they bought AT&T, an act that was the final undoing of the great Bell breakup that the courts ordered in the early 80s as part of the deregulation frenzy.
And then they dumped the SBC brand, because obviously ATT was bigger, better, older, and more prestigious.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Minor correction: SBC = SouthWESTERN Bell (not “Southern”)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T
yeah, sorry, i've gotten that wrong in the past.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
So have I, a couple times — that’s how I know! n/t
suddenly realized that, of course, "southern belle" exists
independently as a phrase, which might explain the cognitive hiccup.
shortly after rebirthing as ATT, the former SBC gobbled up Bell South, at which point it comprised, among other things, 4 of the original 7 baby bells (Pac Tel, Ameritech, Bell South, and Southwestern Bell).
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Like ExxonMobil re-joined 2 big pieces of the Standard Oil Trust
namely Standard Oil of New Jersey and Standard Oil of New York.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil#Breakup
The Beast wounded unto death, but reborn. N/T
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Heh, I aan finally say something
about The Borg, as some of us call it, since I was just laid off from there at the end of March. And I am not kidding when I say my boss actually mentioned how the company must get a good ROI for all those investments, shame about those layoffs...
While it sucks to be laid off it isn't the same company I knew and I will not miss it. I don't pay much attention to the company financials at the high level but sure in hell figures they lost money on acquisitions. Who cares about the company when there's a bonus to be made. While I have no sympathy for corporations and have no wish to go back to one, it is sickening to watch some treat even a corporation they claim to love, love, love as nothing more than a short term personal cash cow and damn the consequences. Only the sociopathic get ahead in that world, from what I see, and I am glad to be out of it.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
I remember when I was fired from Continental Can.
I felt like a great weight had come off my shoulders. Department head told me literally, "You're a family man and that's good, but it's not what we want here. We want people 100% dedicated to the company." They announced it as a RIF. There was a young man in the office whose wife was nine months pregnant with her first baby. They sent him (from Chicago) to Seattle for a two month new plant opening. People would ask me, "You are senior to him. Why isn't he layed off?" I just answered (truthfully), "If he wants the job that bad he's welcome to it! I don't." At my next job, I told disgruntled engineers, "We need a union." You would have thought I said, "We need a virgin sacrifice!" Indeed, that may have gone down better. Stupid professionals think they are better than blue collar employees. They identify with management even though they are used and abused. Next company after that was a startup formed by a big company programmer and a salesman fed up with stupid management. They formed a great company, my best employer ever. Then after ten years they sold it to a vulture capitalist who sold it to another conglomerate who fired all citizen engineers (including two gentlemen from China and one from India who became naturalized) and replaced us all with cheap H1-B's. They didn't last long. Clients learned that our reputation for technical excellence and client dedication was no more. The Texan conglomerate closed us down totally, although I was already gone. My final job was as a union mechanic for the USPS, a job that suffered from hardening of the management arteries, but offered great benefits, decent pay (soon more pay than my former engineering colleagues were making as 1099 employees with zero benefits) and a social purpose. After taking the oath of office, the personnel lady said, "Welcome to the Postal family", which wasn't just a slogan. we were a family, with all the strengths and weaknesses that implies. When I told my mail carrier, she got out of the truck and hugged me. I was family.
And idiots say socialism is bad. They prefer UPS/FEDEX slavery to the dignity of USPS union labor. Because Venezuela or North Korea or some other non sequitur.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
A century of propaganda will do that.
Of course, in order for us to be anything close to Venezuela or North Korea, we'd have to be under decades of siege from another imperialist power much like we've done to them. Trying to explain this to people is like banging my head against the wall.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Meanwhile, who has fedex been hiring to deliver mail?
The USPS. Fedex calls it smart mail or something like that. So, Fedex prices for USPS service and the consumer pays more. Ain't privatization great?
Amazon too.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
On the other hand...
The U.S. has 1 million more job openings than unemployed workers
Real ones?
Or fake ones to show the INS that they need to import more indentured labor because there aren't enough applicants. Of course, citizens, who might sue, or quit, or join a union, are not wanted, just off the boat H1-B's who can be used and abused under threat of return to their rotten homelands.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Lots of people are stuck with a horrible tax bill
this year because of it. People who normally got $1-5 thousand back are now owing it instead. Watched a video this morning on how more people got in the streets to protest Sessions being fired then for the tax bill. Go figure that out. Sessions was who decided that children needed to be separated from their parents and other crackdowns yet because Trump fired him ... SMDH.
Now that Rosestein has quit I'm wondering what the Russia Gaters will do.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Well that depends on witholding.
I, myself, came out about neutral. In 2017 I had $25,720 in itemized deductions. In 2018 I had a $26,000 standard deduction. Increased tax on SS due to inflation wiped out the pittance change in tax rate. The limitation on deductions hit particularly hard here as $10,00-$15,000 annual property taxes on modest homes are the norm. Illinois doesn't tax retirement income including IRA withdrawals so I was OK on state tax. Paid tax on 85% of my SS though. Damn Reagan and Clinton. Damn Obama for not correcting for inflation and indexing.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Lucky you. Virginia taxes EVERYTHING
and those barracudas took quite a bite out of my finances. Didn't even break even on Federal vs State return (I have trouble understanding why that is).
One thing for sure, I am NEVER doing my state taxes online again, and if they don't like it they can shove it.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Did my state taxes on line
Of course, I already knew that I had zero taxable income. But IL demands that you file a return if you file a Federal return.
Took Alabama as my free state from Turbotax to see how it works out. AL doesn't tax SS, state pensions or federal pensions, but does tax IRA withdrawals (IL doesn't). Result $640 in state tax if I lived there.
Hmm!
AL $400 property tax + $640 income tax
IL $6,000 property tax + $0 income tax, Hmmm? Which should I choose.
IL funds schools from property tax and has a flat rate income tax with no zero bracket amount.
AL like VA funds schools from income tax and has a graduated tax with personal exemptions. As I recall VA took all Federal deductions but didn't have a graduated rate. I lived there in the '70s (Nixon-Carter times). Sounds like IL is much more regressive about taxes than the South.
EDIT: Property tax in VA was $300, I know it was a different decade, but for reference, my IL property taxes the year that I moved were $1100
And that current $6,000 is cheap. Most suburbanites pay $10,000 to $15,000
The little bungalow built in 1929 that I grew up in just sold for ~$227,000 and has an $8,000 property tax, probably three times what it cost in 1929, $2,000 more than my father paid for it in 1948. Who benefits from inflation? People with lots of property and lots of stock, i.e. the 1%
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
"That's not how things turned out."
It rarely is. And if there is an uptick now and again, it may be just coincidence.
I keep bringing up Democrats, not because I like or support Trump, but because I'm a "plague on both your houses" type. Here's the difference: When people voted for Trump, they did not do so under any illusion that he was going to increase taxes for the wealthy. Au contraire.
However, Obama ran on repealing the so-called Bush tax cuts and increasing taxes on income in excess of $250,000 a year. Those promises got high approval ratings in polls, both before and after his election, as well as at THE polls on election day 2008. (Same for his promise of affordable health "care" and a strong public option, btw.)
Instead, in 2010, shortly before the Republicans took Congress over, starting January, 2011, Obama made Bush's temporary tax cuts for the wealthy permanent and increased taxes some on some of the lowest earners. That was in fact, one of the few things he accomplished, other than Obamacare and the Sequester.
Although brainwashed people continued to call them "the Bush tax cuts," that is a lie or a delusion. The Bush tax cuts expired under their own terms. The tax cuts that went forward were the Obama tax cuts.
So, Bush, Obama and Trump all cut taxes for the rich, but only one of those three campaigned on the opposite of what he did with respect to taxes. And that was the only one of the three with a (D) after his name. We know the Democratic Party isn't democratic. So, maybe the (D) stands for Deceptive? The Deceptive Party?
Both our oldest political parties serve the wealthy. Republicans make no secret of that, pretending only insofar as they claim it will help everyone. (Although...JFK did also say that "a rising tide lifts all boats." Maybe he meant all yachts?) Democrats, however, pretend to be the opposition to those policies when they only deprive us of a genuine opposition party. The Deprivation Party?
Yachts. I'll have to remember that. n/t
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Barry also froze federal wages for two years during the
Great Recession which actually was great for the banks and rich folks. So after people got knocked on their asses Barry decided not to help them out, but to keep them down. Then he tried for his grand bargain with the republicans but they passed on them.
I'm still wondering what legislation he passed that actually helped people? Anyone come up with one thing and no the hideously flawed ACA doesn't count.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
(Hermione Granger raises hand and blurts answer without waiting)
“The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009?”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilly_Ledbetter_Fair_Pay_Act_of_2009
Ms. Ledbetter once remarked about the lameness of the law
that bears her name.
Says a lot.
A decade later, she is still an activist for equal pay for women.
Also says a lot.
BTW, Obama had nothing to do with getting Ledbetter passed, other than he may have voted for it. It was passed under Bush, but Bush wouldn't sign it. So, they had it ready for Obama to sign before the cameras on Inauguration Day 2009. A signature is all he really had to do with it. Obviously, a President's signature on a bill ain't nothing, but he was not the moving force behind that bill.
extension of cobra.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Yes, but the Sequester then became effective.
The Sequester was supposed to be so unacceptable to both sides serving on the Grand Bargain Committee that they would come to an agreement about a Grand Bargain. (Yeah, right. They were going to cut "entitlements" and maybe "defense," just when the Republicans and Democrats on the Grand Bargain Committee were running for re-election.)
The poison pill that Republicans were not supposed to be able to swallow was defense cuts. The poison pill that Democrats were not supposed to be able to swallow was cuts to "entitlements," as Clinton and Obama called them (which the God of New Democrats, the Democratic Leadership Council, had recommended anyway and which Obama had promised to cut anyway).
Raise your hand it you think that the defense budget ever actually got cut.
What bothered me most? The Grand Bargain Committee created by the guy they kept falsely referring to as the Constitutional law professor was very likely unconstitutional, setting another horrible precedent during that administration.
Remember, the drill was that this joint committee of house and senate members was supposed to come up with a plan. When the plan went to Congress, neither House of Congress was allowed to modify it, just accept or reject it. And, if the Committee could not agree, the Sequester would automatically go into effect. That's not how the Constitution says laws (or budget cuts) get passed.
Then again, Obama was an equal rights law lecturer, not a Constitutional professor. After Obama became President and the professor thing became an issue, U Chi said he could have been a professor if he wanted. Yeah, right.
Well, with the subsidy the ACA was good for my daughter.
As in "better than nothing" which was begging for treatment at the free clinic. But not as good as Medicare for All. Or plain Medicare. When my sister moved in and was considering supplements, I asked them if they participated in the BCBS Part C plan. The answer was "Oh My! Yes!". Seemed grateful that they could actually bill anything.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Correct me if I'm wrong the ONLY defense of not letting
GWB's tax cuts just expire was an argument that it could mean the loss of unemployment benefits for a six month period if, as Dims warned Repubs wouldn't cooperate on extending them. Think of the workers and their families!
No words about just defending against those losses and furthermore the GOP was not going to cut off those benefits for workers just before an election, and that was well understood.
Obama went on to codify all of the tax cuts with the exception of approximately twenty percent of them, but for six months he protected the pittance unemployed workers received.
Nothing done for them afterwards but after that vote where Bernie Sanders had spoken out so passionately against the bill,and which had later became a book called "The Speech" for some strange reason I got a call from a woman advocating for the Republican Party.
I have no idea how I ended up on their call list to begin with and within a few minutes she felt it was some mistake but because I'd brought up so many things Bernie had said in his 'speech' she became very responsive to talking about it because it obviously rang a bell for her so much she asked me again for the name of the book.
Before she hung up she said she appreciated this conversation, was definitely going to buy the book, but was truly surprised to know there was so much we all had in common.
All in all, it was an accident I was on that call list but before we both hung up she thanked me and that is when she was not only going to look up that speech on YouTube she wanted to read that book.
This was from a self described "staunch Republican" , but Bernie had that effect around here ,and it is worth noting that Bernie won the State of Washington, but in the election with Hillary, areas around me where Bernie had won hands down went to tRump in the national election.
.
Were Obama's lips moving when he said that?
This was near the end of 2010. Democrats still had strong majorities in both Houses. They could have passed the extension themselves and gotten credit for it--probably under Reconciliation, if they actually wanted to. Just like they probably could have passed a GOOD health insurance plan by reconciliation if they actually wanted to.
BTW, I will insist until I die that the Bush tax cuts did expire. But, then, we got the Obama cuts, which were not only permanent where the Bush cuts were temporary, but the permanent Obama tax cuts were not even substantively identical to the temporary Bush tax cuts.
I remember that excuse.
It reminded me of the biblical story of Esau selling his birthright for a single meal.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
No, I don't think
JFK meant "all yachts". He proposed an across-the-board tax cut, lowering the rate for the lowest earners from 20% to 14%. The Right in recent decades, starting with the Reagan trickle-downers, has twisted his proposal and invoked his name to make their tax cuts primarily for the yacht owners as something JFK would have endorsed.
Speaking of helping the poor and less well off, JFK also proposed and very nearly passed (came w/n one vote) a Medicare bill in 1962, but he didn't enjoy a progressive majority in Congress, the AMA and their front man actor Ronald Reagan went on the offensive against it ("socialism"), the person (actually a Johnson loyalist) Kennedy relied on at that time to count votes known for being quite accurate suddenly lost his ability to count votes, and the bill died.
A pox on both their houses for sure, but not an equivalency, and there was a time, not too long ago, when Dems stood for the common man and Dem presidents tried to use the powers of that office to help those most in need of help. In recent years however, the party has become corporatized, bought off, and they have lost touch with their constituencies and have lost their will to fight. The Great Compromiser Henry Clay was a piker compared to Obama.