Sunday, January 7, 2018

Corporations aren’t just using the tax cut to buy back stock, but it’s a very good thing if they do

We told you on the radio Thursday that Elizabeth Warren gets more wrong by the day. She insisted before the tax cut vote in December that the corporate rate cut would not benefit ordinary people at all, because the corporations would just use the saved money for stock buybacks and executive bonuses.
First of all, that was factually untrue. The latest roundup of companies using their tax savings for employee bonuses, wage increases and other similar investments includes AFLAC, BB&T, Comcast, Gate City Bank, Navient, Southwest Airlines and U.S. Bancorp. The list gets longer just about every day. Companies will use the tax savings in whatever way serves their strategic objectives, and the companies listed here join many others in believing it makes sense to invest in employees, facilities, product development and other things that will benefit people broadly.

Elizabeth Warren gets more wrong by the day

But let’s get back to the initial proposition from Sen. Warren, that it would not benefit the economy if corporations use the tax savings for stock buybacks.
That is not true, and anyone who believes it is needs some basic instruction in economics.
Liberals like Elizabeth Warren would have you believe that when companies buy back stocks from investors, all the money used to buy back those stocks just gets stashed in a big room somewhere, and that aristocratic robber barons just sit there and admire their growing piles of hundred-dollar bills and gold coins.

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