{"id":531,"date":"2018-01-12T07:29:08","date_gmt":"2018-01-12T13:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/?p=531"},"modified":"2018-01-13T08:00:34","modified_gmt":"2018-01-13T14:00:34","slug":"dont-be-deceived-by-the-alleged-generosity-of-the-bonuses-generated-by-the-tax-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/12\/dont-be-deceived-by-the-alleged-generosity-of-the-bonuses-generated-by-the-tax-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t be deceived by the alleged generosity of the bonuses generated by the “tax cuts!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The recent wave of businesses announcing bonuses for their employees “because of the upcoming Trump tax cuts” have many people singing the praises of “free market” or “supply side” economics.<\/p>\n

Don’t be deceived.<\/p>\n

The plain truth is that those are just other names for “trickle down” economics.\u00a0 And “trickle down” just doesn’t work for the middle class.\u00a0 It only works for corporations and the wealthy.\u00a0 Listen, we’ve tried it 3x with the Reagan tax cuts, the Clinton tax cuts and the Bush tax cuts.<\/p>\n

For those of us in the 99%, do you recall getting rich with those cuts?<\/p>\n

So, it “ain’t” going to happen again either!\u00a0 Only the wealthy and the companies will benefit.<\/p>\n

Now, let’s address the issue of these bonuses that all these companies have announced.\u00a0 For most of the companies, the bonuses announced have been $1000 bonuses for every employee.\u00a0 Don’t get me wrong, many of us do appreciate the $1000 bonus.\u00a0 And we should.\u00a0 But let’s put it in the right context.<\/p>\n

First of all, we were supposed to benefit from this by a factor of 4, according to the White House.\u00a0 (see here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Second, a one-time bonus of $1000 is nowhere near the same as a pay raise of $4000.\u00a0 The one-time bonus does nothing to raise your base pay.\u00a0 If nothing changes your annual raise (if you even get one) will still be based off of the amount you made prior to receiving the bonus.\u00a0 Whereas, with the $4000 pay raise, that would be elevated your base for the rest of your career.<\/p>\n

Thirdly, a lot of the companies doing this are simply trying to curry favor with the President since so many of them had come under fire from him before.\u00a0 By doing these token raises they are hoping for some benefit to come back to them (not you) later!\u00a0 For example, AT&T announced that they would be giving $1000 bonuses but what they are hoping for is a more favorable ruling from the Justice Department to allow them to buy Time Warner.\u00a0 The deal was blocked earlier last year by the DOJ.\u00a0 As another example consider Wells Fargo who, as many of you recall, was reeling from scandals last year in all the fake accounts.<\/p>\n

Fourthly, look at the big picture of each of these companies.\u00a0 Walmart went ahead and announced that they were giving out some benefit to their employees and then promptly (and quietly) decided to shut down 63 Sam’s Clubs around the country costing thousands of jobs.\u00a0 Net net, the money they are paying out in their bonus does not come close to equaling the people they are putting out on the street!<\/p>\n

Finally, if you think the typical $1000 bonus is generous let’s look at some rough, simple math.\u00a0 The old tax rate was 35% and the new tax rate is 20%.\u00a0 So, the companies are saving 15% in taxes.\u00a0 If we look at AT&T, their operating income in 2016 was about $20 billion.\u00a0 So 15% of that would be $3 billion of tax savings.\u00a0 If they give half of that savings to the employees that would be $1.5 billion divided by 250,000 employees which translates to $6000 per employee.<\/p>\n

$6000 is what you should be getting.\u00a0 Instead, you are getting $1000.\u00a0 Does that sound fair?<\/p>\n

So, they are only giving a fraction of their windfall to you and keeping the rest for themselves!<\/p>\n

In conclusion, most of these announcements are PR stunts.\u00a0 Don’t be fooled!\u00a0 The only way that this works better is if the corporations will raise the wages of their employees to ensure a living wage and share a significant portion of the savings with the people who are helping them succeed (~50%-80%+ sounds more fair to me!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The recent wave of businesses announcing bonuses for their employees “because of the upcoming Trump tax cuts” have many people singing the praises of “free market” or “supply side” economics. Don’t be deceived. The plain truth is that those are just other names for “trickle down” economics.\u00a0 And “trickle down” just doesn’t work for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kHU7-8z","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thelight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/deceive-1299043_640.png?fit=640%2C320","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":533,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions\/533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}