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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: 3, Touché) by Immerman on Friday June 22 2018, @02:12AM (3 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Friday June 22 2018, @02:12AM (#696540)

    I don't know that pwned is the right term - Congress suffered no defeat or even compromise, they no doubt mostly made out like bandits doing exactly what they signed on to the job to do.

    Owned is a far more appropriate term - leased at the very least.

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  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday June 22 2018, @04:09PM (2 children)

    by RS3 (6367) on Friday June 22 2018, @04:09PM (#696799)

    You guys are as 100% correct as anyone could be. It's a fully-entrenched system (congress and corporations). I have an elderly friend who is now 99 and still 100% sharp, and she and I have discussed this problem for 20 years. I told her 20 years ago I saw no fix for it, and it's only gotten worse and worse.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/how-corporations-turned-into-political-beasts-2015-4 [businessinsider.com]
    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/how-corporate-lobbyists-conquered-american-democracy/390822/ [theatlantic.com]
    https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/10/congress-corporate-sponsors/ [motherjones.com]

    The list goes on and on.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday June 22 2018, @05:04PM (1 child)

      by Immerman (3985) on Friday June 22 2018, @05:04PM (#696832)

      Yep, the entire purpose of a corporation is to unnaturally concentrate wealth and power. Their rise to political powerhouses was almost inevitable from at least the moment they were let off their initially very short leash. (Originally American corporations could only exist for very limited durations to achieve specific well-documented goals.)

      • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday June 22 2018, @11:55PM

        by RS3 (6367) on Friday June 22 2018, @11:55PM (#697040)

        Thanks, I had no idea that corporations were supposed to be short-lived. That's very depressing but also interesting. I know the Brooklyn Bridge project was run by a temporary corporation. I'll have to do some historical research...