The 2017 Trump tax cuts were supposed to create jobs. That was the pitch. Cut the corporate rate and companies will invest, hire, build. Nine years later the receipts are in: $4.8 trillion in stock buybacks. Workers got a newsletter about “company values.” Shareholders got a second yacht.
S&P 500 companies hit a record $1 trillion in buybacks last year alone, nearly double what they spent when Trump took office. Schumer, Wyden, and Warren are trying to raise the buyback tax from 1% to 4%, and it’s rotting in committee like every other bill that inconveniences a CEO. The proposed tax would raise $240 billion over ten years. That’s a rounding error on what got stolen.
They took the money and hired nobody. Bought their own stock and called it growth. Nine years of proof that trickle-down economics is just a rich man pissing on your shoes and telling you it’s raining.