sethnintendo said:
Anyone dare to respond to how the hell Trump's economic plan would benefit anyone but the rich and multinational corporations? When has cutting the taxes on the rich benefited the poor? When has trickle down economics actually worked to increase the wages of average citizens? How many people are affected by the estate tax?
Is he going to get rid of all the loopholes after lowering the business tax rate from 35 to 15? I highly doubt it. Many multinationals corporations already pay near zero to lower than 15% tax rate. This would benefit small business owners that don't have tax shelters all over the world. Perhaps we should cut all the damn subsidies and loopholes that big corporations lobbied millions of dollars for before cutting the tax rate to 15.
How is reducing the tax rate on foreign income to 5% (to bring the money back to USA going to help the USA economy? We already did this in a 2004 bill which many of the multinationals like Citigroup, Pfizer, Ford and others brought back tons of money. What did they do? They had massive layoffs that followed and used that money to buy back stock to drive their stock prices up further.
I dare anyone to respond. These old con economic policies haven't worked in the past and they won't work in the future. The only thing I agree with Trump is that we need more infrastructure spending which we need more money from the multinationals that use our roads, highways, airports etc with little to no tax.
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Your question is not even the question. Lowering taxes would benefit to the economy, that's a fact I believe nobody discusses about. It lowers the break even point for businesses, increases profits for companies, and it translates into more investment, employment, and business opportunities.
The real questions, and that's a whole different level : can you generate growth and cut spending enough to pay back what you loose in term of taxes, can you generate growth enough to have a significant impact on the economy, and how much government spending cut will negatively impact the economy. This is very difficult to assess, especially because it can't be just reduced to just tax cuts, it's a kind of new deal : spending cuts, trade barriers, public investment in infrastructure, etc. It is very dynamic and complex. Simple example, if you create one job, this person can spend more, pays more taxes, cost less (food stamps, etc.), and also contribute to the economy, and that creates a more favorable environment for more jobs.
About real examples, wether if it ever worked or not, it worked for Reagan. "GDP growth of -0.3% in 1980 to 4.1% in 1988", "unemployment averaging 7.5% [...] dropped to 5.4%" (wikipedia). But again, it's not really about is it working or not, it is about "is it sustainable ?", "is it enough to generate a significant and a growth on par with the cost ?", "is it worth to make more debt ?".
To be fair most economists I heard are quite pessimistics about Trump plan. But every single analysis I've read is criticizing the economic plan itself... but never ever give a fair comparison relative to the situation we will really get to if we continue the current politic. I mean in 8 years more debt was produced than in 230 years, the economy is not in a good shape, and the current and forseable future for democrat is status quo with China in term of trade. For me that last point alone is very significant, because that is perhaps the very single point Jill Stein, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and most people agree on : unfair trade with China is a major problem. And Clinton did nothing about it.
