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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: 5, Touché) by captain normal on Friday June 22 2018, @01:24AM (2 children)

    by captain normal (2205) on Friday June 22 2018, @01:24AM (#696514)

    I don't know about the term "neoliberalism". I would just call it what it is; neonineteenth century robber baron-ism.

    --
    When life isn't going right, go left.
    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @02:10AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22 2018, @02:10AM (#696539)

    Yup. The Gilded Age was brought under control via the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890.

    Within the lifetimes of many of us, the enforcement of that has been abandoned/disassembled.
    Reagan was a notable inflection point but Jimmy Carter's deregulation of trucking and telecommunications are things that folks too easily forget--but shouldn't.
    Politicians of both of The Big 2 parties have been working against Joe Average and for the corporatists for a long time.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by captain normal on Saturday June 23 2018, @12:17AM

      by captain normal (2205) on Saturday June 23 2018, @12:17AM (#697048)

      Well...I believe it was Mark Twain (Sam Clements) who first said, "We have the best government money can buy."

      --
      When life isn't going right, go left.