Last Call For The Trump Tax Scam, Con't

The GOP tax cut bill was supposed to put more money in American workers' paychecks and lead to a bright economic future.  Of course, anyone with a half-a-brain would have told you that was complete nonsense and that corporations already making record profits would use that windfall to make themselves richer rather than give a dime to the workers who made it possible, and now the numbers are in that prove not only that corporate America looted all that money at taxpayer expense, but that worker wages in 2018 have actually gone down for most Americans.

Six months after the Tax Cut and Jobs Act became law, there's still little evidence that the average job holder is feeling the benefit.

Worker pay in the second quarter dropped nearly one percent below its first-quarter level, according to the PayScale Index, one measure of worker pay. When accounting for inflation, the drop is even steeper. Year-over-year, rising prices have eaten up still-modest pay gains for many workers, with the result that real wages fell 1.4 percent from the prior year, according to PayScale. The drop was broad, with 80 percent of industries and two-thirds of metro areas affected.

"Now, economic confidence has been good, we're in a strong economy, GDP is growing, but the question has been, where's the paycheck?" said Katie Bardaro, vice president of data analytics at PayScale.

The answer is, largely, in the companies' coffers. Businesses are spending nearly $700 billion on repurchasing their own stock so far this year, according to research from TrimTabs. Corporations set a record in Q2, announcing $433 billion worth of buybacks — nearly doubling the previous record, which was set in Q1.

In just the first six months of the year, companies took the generous gift that Republican lawmakers gave them at our expense and have spent more than $700 billion on stock buybacks and workers didn't get a penny.  In fact, thanks to higher prices at the pump and the grocery store -- and now thanks to much higher prices coming due to Trump's trade wars with China, the EU, Mexico and Canada -- things are going to get a lot worse for the average American in the second half of the year.

Prices are going to go up, and wages are going down.  But that's what our corporate masters wanted from the GOP, and that's exactly what they got: record profits and by the end of the year it'll be well over a trillion bucks taken out of taxpayer pockets to make corporations even richer.

Of course, that was the whole point of the bill...