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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.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Monday June 25 2018, @01:28PM (2 children)
My annual expenses for each child grossly outweigh a $2,000 per child tax credit, so I think at best we're making parenthood a hair less brutally expensive. That's not much of an encouragement.
Of course, we could solve two problems at once by dumping the child tax credits in the tax code and allowing more legal immigration. Then you get population growth without adding to the world population. But this is the US, and it appears that 40+ % of the voters only want immigrants from central, northern, and western Europe.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 25 2018, @02:13PM (1 child)
Kids are as expensive as you let them be, and I doubt that many people factor in the child tax credit when they decide to use protection or not... but still, I'd rather remove all direct "parenthood benefits" paid to anyone who can claim dependents and instead reduce the costs of doing a good job raising your children directly, starting with reducing the cost of a good education and healthcare. Take that $36,000 per head and put it straight into free university for kids with acceptable GPAs, and other meaningful life-skills programs for kids without acceptable GPAs. Oh, right, I'm behind the times: $30K per head ($7500 per year) was the cost of a BS degree when I entered university in 1984, by 1988 that same university had hiked tuition to $60K.
Haters of different skin colors are still legion, we need another couple of generations of social adjustment to reduce that to non-significant levels, and at present I think we're doing a little backsliding on the issue.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Monday June 25 2018, @03:36PM
Agreed on all points. Except I went to college in the 90s. :)