(American Prospect) -- If you think the Trump/Ryan tax cuts haven’t been a huge success, you don’t know trickle-down economics.
In Kansas City, Missouri, 800 Harley-Davidson employees are losing their jobs as the iconic motorcycle manufacturer uses its tax savings to shift production to Thailand. Kimberly-Clark, the maker of household brands like Kleenex, Scott, and Huggies, told investors it would use its tax savings to help pay for a restructuring plan that would close ten manufacturing plants, eliminating as many as 5,500 jobs. And on the very same day that Walmart made headlines by doling out $1,000 one-time bonuses to a whopping 7 percent of its largely poverty-wage workforce, the retail giant announced it would use tax savings to offset the expense of closing 63 Sam’s Club stores, costing nearly 10,000 workers their jobs.
Altogether, corporate America has announced more than 140,000 job cuts since the 2017 Republican Tax Act passed—nearly 87,000 shed by Fortune 500 companies alone—while sharing just 9 percent of its $76 billion tax windfall in the form of wage hikes and one-time bonuses. But to quibble over jobs and wages would be to entirely miss the point. Wealthy shareholders like me? We’re doing great, thanks to an astonishing $480 billion (and counting!) in stock buybacks announced since the Tax Act’s passage—more than 68 times the return to workers. By that metric, the tax cuts are working exactly as intended.
Advertisement - story continues below