What a Gush-Up, rather than a trickle-down, economics would look like

Not that any reasonable mind paying even cursory attention to the performance of the U.S. economy for working people since the Reagan years should need more evidence, but nonetheless it is worth pointing out that General Motors’ recent announcement of it 14,000 job cuts once again demonstrates the grand boondoggle of trickle-down economics.

Coined by comedian Will Rogers, who applied it pejoratively to Herbert Hoover’s stimulus plan in response to the Great Depression, the term, later taken up by critics of Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts, refers to economic policies which disproportionately benefit the wealthy initially but which hold out the promise — historically an illusory one — of benefiting all in the longer term.

Such was exactly the promise of Trump’s tax cuts. Reducing the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent and saving corporations some $13 billion in taxes, supposedly this windfall was to spur economic growth, create more jobs, and induce companies to raise wages. While Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin trumpeted that 90% of working adults would experience an increase in pay tied directly to the tax cuts, in fact only 4.3 percent of workers in Fortune 500 companies have received either a one-time bonus or an increase in wages, and 433 out the Fortune 500 companies indicated they had no plans…