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posted by janrinok on Thursday June 21 2018, @09:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the all-governments-tell-lies dept.

AlterNet reports

When Republicans in Congress passed a big, fat tax break bill in December, they insisted it meant American workers would be singing "Happy Days Are Here Again" all the way to the bank. The payoff from the tax cut would be raises totaling $4,000 to $9,000, the President's Council of Economic Advisers assured workers. But something bad happened to workers on their way to the repository. They never got that money.

In fact, their real wages declined because of higher inflation. At the same time, the amount workers had to pay in interest on loans for cars and credit cards increased. And, to top it off, Republicans threatened to make workers pay for the tax break with cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. So now, workers across America are wondering, "Where's that raise?". It's nowhere to be found.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this week that wages for production and nonsupervisory workers decreased by 0.1 percent from May 2017 to May 2018 when inflation is factored in. The compensation for all workers together, including supervisors, rose an underwhelming 0.1 percent from April 2018 to May 2018.

That's not what congressional Republicans promised workers. They said corporations, which got the biggest, fattest tax cuts of all, would use that extra money to increase wages. Some workers got one-time bonuses and an even smaller number received raises. But not many. The group Americans for Tax Fairness estimates it's 4.3 percent of all U.S. workers.

The New York Times story about this record breaker describes the phenomena this way: "Companies buy back their shares when they believe they have nothing better to do with their money than to return capital to shareholders." So despite promises from the GOP and the President's Council of Economic Advisers, corporations believed further enriching their own executives and shareholders was a much better way to use the money than increasing workers' wages--wages that have been stagnant for decades.


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  • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @11:02PM (12 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @11:02PM (#696448)

    Well it's super awesome that no Democrap ever lied, right? https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/how-liberal-democrats-use-lies-to-get-what-they-want [washingtonexaminer.com]

    Maybe Trump is a delusional optimist, and I'm okay with that.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @11:06PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @11:06PM (#696453)

    Whatabout? WHATABOUT????

    This isn't a partisan issue. Stop trying to hide the elephant in the room. We have a lying scumbag in office, public statements from him detailing his own depravity, and here you are trying to evade the very simple fact with stupid whataboutisms.

    Whatabout getting a spine?

    • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday June 22 2018, @07:52AM (2 children)

      by deimtee (3272) on Friday June 22 2018, @07:52AM (#696626) Journal

      So your choices were an orange lying scumbag, and an evil lying scumbag, and you're pissed because people chose orange over evil?

      --
      If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @12:59PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @12:59PM (#696720)

        I was ready to vote for Bernie. Who screwed that up?

        • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @10:43AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @10:43AM (#697502)

          That would be Hillary's machine.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @12:44PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @12:44PM (#696709)

      Yeah but but but Lincoln jailed journalists! Slavery used to be legal! I don't see anybody legalizing slavery! (why would they want to be responsible for your welfare as a capital investment when you make a much more handy expendable resource) How dare you complain!

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @11:06PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @11:06PM (#696454)

    No Democrat or any other Republican has been caught lying more frequently than President Trump. And unlike any of those other politicians, the President has an actual cult of personality that backs whatever he wants.

    The status quo is for him to not just bend the truth, but to outright make up facts and figures rather than having one of his staffers come up with an unreasonable estimate.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @02:52AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @02:52AM (#696564)

      So you'd prefer to have a good liar in office rather than a bad one? I'll take the bad one every time. You can find the truth far more easily when given bad lies compared to being given misleading data. Misleading is far, far worse.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @11:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @11:06PM (#696456)

    Bu . . . bu . . . bu . . . Teh Democrats!1111!1

    Deflection: For when you have no idea how to defend your own guy and you really want to take everyone's attention off him. Quick! Look over here!

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @11:09PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21 2018, @11:09PM (#696458)

    He's a greedy selfish lying pig. How you can't see that just blows my mind.

    • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @02:56AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @02:56AM (#696567)

      No one is arguing that he isn't. The problem is you guys are acting like everyone else is perfect. They aren't, so stop pretending they are. Saying a liar should be booted out of office is being an asshole because you can catch everyone else in politics lying as well but you aren't calling for them to be booted.

      In other words, stop being a hypocrite.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @03:11AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @03:11AM (#696574)

        No one is acting like everyone else is perfect. In fact, every time someone brings up Obama the standard reply is "he's a scumbag too, but that is a tangential point so stop trying to evade the real point."

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @07:06PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @07:06PM (#696894)

        The problem is you guys are acting like everyone else is perfect.

        Which guys? Who? I want you to be specific. Give us some names. Otherwise I will have to conclude that you are just another whatabout dittohead.