So much for trickle-down economics.
The Republican tax cuts dropped the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. We were told that this would result in more jobs and higher wages. Employees at GM would disagree.
GM recently announced it will lay off 14,000 workers. They are no longer needed because they have skills related to internal combustion cars, not electric, as GM envisions the future. Instead of retraining its workforce, GM finds it more economical to lay them off and use the increased money from tax cuts to pay for their severance.
Not that I’m picking on GM in particular. All corporations do this. If they needed more employees to expand, they would be doing it, regardless of any new tax cuts.
This new tax bill will leave the country more than $1 trillion deeper in debt over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. George H.W. Bush once famously called this type of policy “voodoo economics.” I can’t think of a better term.
Robert Jennings, Draper
