March 13, 2018

Republican Tax Cut Still Not Spurring Capital Investment

Big businesses appear to be using their tax cut for share buybacks and mergers. So maybe it’s small businesses who will lead the charge of economic growth by using their tax cut to increase capital investment? Apparently not:

This comes via Dean Baker, who comments:

The Trump administration told us that the corporate tax cuts would lead to a massive boom in investment which would increase the capital stock by one third above the baseline projection. But for some reason the nation’s businesses haven’t gotten the message….There is no evidence here of any uptick in investment whatsoever and certainly not of the explosive increase promised by the Trump administration. Maybe if Trump did some more tweeting on the issue it would help.

Patience, Dean. Those tax cuts will supercharge the economy any day now. Just you wait.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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