(12-04-2017 11:23 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(12-04-2017 07:32 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  On a policy note, how does everyone feel about the Senate passing the tax bill? Likely to increase the deficit which had been shrinking, but may get some repatriation of corporate holdings (but which will unlikely go to average employees). Is full of special interest provisions, but will help simplify tax filings by increasing standard deductions. Lots of bad in my eyes, but some good there.

Thoughts?

What, making predictions? shouldn't we wait until all the results are in?

Clearly an imperfect bill, as would any bill be that has an automatic 46 votes against it from the obstructionist party before it is written, thus requiring horse-trading.

Your assumption that tax savings are supposed to go to average employees (what the heck is an average employee?) is flawed. Some may go to current employees, but most will go to corporate growth.

As a former business owner, I can tell you that most business owners and top managers want the company to grow, get larger, stronger, more widespread. They will use available capital to make this happen.

They will want to buy new equipment, as trucks and forklifts, or open new warehouses, or hire more sales staff, or open new branches with new employees in cities they were not in before. Lots of ways to reinvest available (key word: available) capital to foster growth. Giving across the board 15% raises to current employees is unlikely to happen in any but the smallest. Joe's Pie Shop may give raises to all four employees, or it may open a branch across town with four new employees.

What won't happen is that they will put it in a coffee can and bury it in the back yard. The money will flow back into the economy in some way, and all of them are productive.

Even the worst that Democrats envision is good for the economy. Suppose Joe, instead of raising employees or opening a branch, decides to buy a yacht. Bad, selfish Joe. But wait! Don't yacht builders have employees? Don't they pay taxes? Doesn't higher sales of yachts help everybody at the yacht builder's? And he needs to rent a space at the marina, and then he needs somebody to keep up the maintenance, and...

There is no stone that does not cause a ripple.

So I think the most important provision is the lowering of corporate taxes.

All the stuff about middle class and simplication is just window dressing. I would be in favor of lowering corporate rates and leaving everything else alone, but politically that doesn't fly.

Democrat opposition to a corporate tax cut is like saying we need to starve the cows so we can get more milk to the "everyday' people.

so I am in favor of the tax cut, whether or not it benefits me personally. I am guessing it does not, probably. But it benefits the country.

But just my prediction. I guess we need to wait ten years to see.

If that is your response, then you didn't read my post about making predictions.

And are your really quibbling over the term average employees? How hard is it to deduce what was meant by that? It is meant to encompass hourly wage earners, salaried employees who are not in management position, you know, an average employee at a company.

And I think that tax savings should go to your average workers, the executives, and the shareholders. Median wages have stagnated for decades, which is why I brought up the average worker (perhaps I could used the term median).

The economy is not a closed loop, so your right that money going to anyone will have some positive effect on the economy. But just as Henry Ford understood when he paid his workers a good wage so they could buy his cars, it's easier to boost the economy by increasing spending power of the masses, than by increasing the capital power (?) of the wealthy. I go back and forth on agreeing with cutting the corporate tax rate because of this.

Hopefully the decrease in corporate taxes does spur the type of growth you're hoping for - I just don't believe in trickle down economics and wish that the tax bill had helped find a way to address that likely outcome from reducing the corporate tax rate.