Alternative Visions - Trump’s ‘Smash and Grab’ Tax Cuts - 12.22.17

Dr. Rasmus explains and critiques the Trump-Republican $4 trillion plus tax cuts passed and signed this week, describing it as thieves ‘smashing’ their way into the US Treasury and ‘grabbing’ as much of government revenue as they can get away with.  The tax cuts are put in historical context, as a continuation of the ‘tax shell’ game since Reagan, and as an example of the escalating efforts by politicians, paid for and bought by big business, to subsidize capital incomes at an increasing rate in the 21st century.  Various details of the tax cuts are considered, mostly for corporations, businesses, and investors, with token concessions for the very poor, but with the middle and working classes paying the bill for both.  How the token concessions to the poor will be taken away by other measures as well.  The show focuses, however, on the false claims that tax cuts will create jobs and raise wages. Rasmus explains how this is false in theory and in fact. How the tax cuts will not only NOT increase investment, jobs, and wage growth but will actually result in the loss of jobs and no wage growth. (Next week: roundup of Trump’s economic policies in his first year in office, and what’s coming in 2018)