I certainly give Large Corporate America props for being honest…for once.
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Every peon should own shares in Coca Cola, Pfizer and Cisco in their 401k/IRA. I do, and given my business/college debt my net worth < $0. Literally a homeless person with $1.50 on them is worth more than me, those dividends would “trickle down” to me.
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That ain’t the “trickle down” these tax cuts (or any GOP tax cuts) are being sold on - they’re being sold on the (purported) macroeconomic effects of improving economic growth and being the “tide that lifts all ships” through expanded supply side of the economy (new expansions of businesses, more hiring, etc.).
A few more bucks in your IRA isn’t the sales pitch.
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His comment was that corporations returning cash to shareholders won’t help the peons. Yes it will.
In Coca Cola’s case, how are they going to increase market share anymore here? They are slowly losing sales here because consumers are realizing guzzling acidic sugar and artificial sweeteners all day may not be the best thing for you. So they can either invest the cash overseas where they can get sales growth or return cash to shareholders.
Are you proposing that we continue taxing our corporations and individuals more than the other G20 nations? We have to compete with them. Less regulation and taxes does make a nation more attractive for business. But why is wanting a level playing field (at a minimum) a bad thing?
Marginal de minimus help, at best.
Ok - what does this have to do with the tax cuts being in the best interests of the country or not?
No, a corporate tax cut is fine in the name of international competitiveness. I’m for that, and I have said that in other threads. But the tax cuts aren’t revenue neutral (made with common sense offsets), they won’t pay for themselves, and they won’t unleash an economic boom.
It isn’t, in a vacuum - but not at the expense of exploding the deficit for very little upside.
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With all due respect, bullshit. Should republicans be expanding the national debt? No. But the democrats have never seen a spending program they didn’t like. When Obama took the debt from $10.6 Trillion to $19.9 Trillion the dems didn’t care.
Now that the Reps want a tax cut. “Oh no the debt! This plan must be revenue nuetral.”
Even more whataboutism. You’re on a roll this morning good sir.
In other news, most of the shock is probably revolving around people still not understanding fiscal conservatism is dead. So now we’ve got Dems that can’t math, and arbitrarily suck on some social issues while not sucking on others, and Repubs that can’t math, and arbitrarily suck on (probably more) social issues while not sucking on others.
All this winningggggg
It’s not whataboutism. Did you learn a new word? The Dems were mum on the debt while they fucking doubled it in 8 years. Now they care. That’s hipocracy.
Nah I’m just cracking jokes because I stumbled across you doing it twice in a row with no value add with it.
Agreed.
In what way does that invalidate you doing the whataboutism thing?
I’m not sure what you mean by “this way”. They aren’t currently being addressed. A GOP member saying they will need to is not news, it’s fact. Somebody is going to have to do it. If tax cuts pass, it’ll need to happen. If tax cuts don’t pass it’ll need to happen.
I think you’re cherry picking with this one. A few Blue-Chip stocks like Coca-Cola pay dividends because their growth opportunities are limited, its not that surprising they would give money to shareholders (peons).
Fortunately, the economy has a lot of other companies that still have growth opportunities.
I’m with you about the tax cut needing to be revenue neutral, but with this President I knew that was never going to happen.
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True - and I blister Democrats on this topic as well for enabling this nonsense (and listening to frauds like Krugman who insisted during the Obama years that deficit spending was nothing to worry about). So, I don’t see your point.
Reckless deficit spending is ok, or it’s not, regardless of party. Pick a side.
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No, I’m not - Google the topic of stock buybacks since the Great Recession and you’ll see it isn’t so limited.
And if so, they would have been taken advantage of by now - there’s no barrier to capital. Companies are sitting in record amounts of cash and can borrow at low rates. They aren’t sitting on a bunch of capital projects for want of money. There’s no truth to that.
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It’s not whataboutism. It is me not caring about the national debt impact of normalizing our taxes with those we compete with. Also it’s me not caring about democrat calls for “revenue neutral”.
As everyone on this site has pointed out we live in an age that is past concern for the debt from either party.
Nobody has a leg to stand on complaining about the debt impacts of legislation. Neither party will cut their sacred cows of defense/entitlement spending. They won’t even consider it.
Even if that were true, it doesn’t change the fact that using Blue-Chip stocks and how they will use the tax cuts as an example doesn’t hold water. They aren’t growth companies, so they don’t need to grow. Nothing surprising, but that still gets used as “evidence” of how it works generally.
I don’t really disagree with your overall point.
My side at this point is not to care about the debt. We owe most of it to ourselves and neither party will actually cut spending. So we can all argue about being debt hawks but nothing will change until we miss a bond payment or can’t issue more debt/print more money (a la Greece). On that day:
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Well, sure it holds water, it has to - it’s the whole (expressed) motive of why the tax cuts are good policy. And as if 2016, corporate profits were at an all time high (which isn’t limited to a few Blue Chips). Point being, with all this capital available, there’s no rational reason to think an injection of some additional capital will be a game changer in terms of business expansion.
To be fair, a lot of these public companies are going to be completely pigeon holed into just pushing everything into dividends/buybacks. As what you said above is not only true, but widely known, companies that don’t push this extra money from lower taxes to dividends are going to see a plummeting stock price
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Ok, suit yourself. Those of us who give a damn about the future of the country and about keeping the promise to our children that we’ll hand off a better world than we had don’t have that luxury.
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I’m not sure why you are so stuck on this. Blue-Chips don’t represent everybody and their behavior is not an indication of how everybody will behave. The tax cuts don’t specifically target Blue-Chips, it’s a bad example.
That’s fine, you keep making this point as if somebody is disagreeing with you.