New Tax Law Benefiting Shareholders More Than Workers So Far
So far, companies have thrown a lot more money at their shareholders than at their workers. According to several estimates, firms have announced roughly $200 billion worth of stock buybacks this year, inflating the value of company shares by reducing their supply.
“Stock buybacks are windfalls that drive up the value of investment portfolios for CEOs and high-flyers,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a Senate floor speech this week. “And they’re coming in at a rate 30 times greater than worker bonuses — 30 to one! They’re on pace to double the amount from the first quarter of last year.”
But stock ownership is highly concentrated among the wealthiest Americans. The richest 10 percent of stock owners owned 84 percent of all stock in 2016, according a widely cited recent paper on household wealth and the Great Recession .
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Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who wavered in her support of the tax bill partly because it was overly generous to corporations and the wealthy, told HuffPost in November that the purpose of the tax bill was to encourage job creation.
O... M... G...!!!
A Republican tax law is primarily favorable to business (and therefore to shareholders).
Gosh!
Astonishing!
Amazing!
Of course they have, that was the entire point of the tax overhaul.