windwalker wrote:"Reducing the corporate tax rate is great for them and for smaller businesses. Most American taxpayers do not own businesses, large or small. They are employed."
Reducing the tax rates on those who employ them benefit them by allowing the employer's to stay in business, able to employ more people.
This is a very flawed logic that is waved by the Republican party. A business owner's goal isn't to hire as many people as he/she can, it's to take home as as much money as they can. As a business owner I don't think to myself "I made $xxx in profits last quarter, I'll hire more people... don't know what I'm going to do with them, but they can stand around and do nothing for all I care - look at the money I have to share with them!". They also don't think "I made a shitload of money last year, I'm going to give everyone in the company a raise that is commensurate to the increase in profits we had". No, they throw you a meatless bone and think "I'll have a staff barbecue picnic. It'll cost me $2000 for my 100 employees" which means a $20 bonus for everyone.
The hiring of employees is based on need... I need someone to help me take some of the load because the amount of work I have exceeds some of my personal throughput. By hiring someone though, I'm taking money out of my own coffers that may have been used towards my teenager's new car and shunting it towards a new employee's family instead.
An example would be a lemonade stand at the state fair. You are manning the booth yourself. People (customers) walking through the fair grounds everywhere, and occasionally one comes up and buys a cup of lemonade. Trump says "I'm giving you a huge tax break as a business" - do you hire more people to stand next to you? No, it's only when the lineup gets to be long enough that you begin to get unhappy customers or customers that step out of the lineup to go elsewhere do you determine that it is in your best financial interest to hire a new helper.
What I'm saying is that financial buffers do not create jobs... customers do. You want to stimulate the economy? Put money in the hands of customers. A middle class family doesn't think "I got a huge tax bonus now I can squirrel money into my overseas tax haven away from prying tax men then use some of that hidden funds to purchase another yacht AND use that purchase as a business expense so that I qualify for another tax break while I continue to pay as little salary as I can for all my employees"... they think "I can now buy a motorbike" or "take my family to Disney this summer". Trickle down economics (I believe that was introduced by our ever so conveniently forgetful president Reagan?) has never benefited the 'economy', it was just a way of selling it to those that would never see a benefit from it. From what I understand, it used to be that companies were taxed a certain amount like everyone else, but any income that exceeded a certain amount would then have the excess amount taxed at a higher rate... that's where the 70% tax rate existed. So companies would often use the money that would have been taxed at a much higher rate towards philanthropic endeavors to avoid the higher rate. THAT is what made America great...
So now they talk about re-introducing that tax plan - taxing large corporations at a higher amount if their profits exceed a certain amount... and the Republicans pull out the boogeyman flag and wave it in our faces saying "Bernie wants to tax you at 70% of your income...! Run... run away from Bernie!" (or Ocasio-Cortez, etc...) when in fact most American families would never come anywhere close to even a whiff of the potential of needing to pay 70% tax rate on the amount of income that was in excess of a certain limit (the money beneath that limit being taxed at a normal rate no matter what the total income was).
Taking the money that we paid in our taxes and gifting it to the already rich does not benefit us. Taking the money we've already paid in our taxes and using it to rebuild our schools, parks, roads, and even refund to the middle class who pay the highest percentage in taxes (rather than refund to the rich) is what those taxes were intended to be used for. Unfortunately in our rigged economy and rigged election system we've got the rich in the position of making the rules and they're ruling in their own personal interests.
Remember when the Panama papers came out, exposing all these people that were hiding all their money overseas and how quickly it fell out of the headlines?