Trump and the GOP keep on talking about “tax reform,” but what they’re really saying is that if you cut social programs like Medicaid and Medicare to the bone, and send the trillion+ savings to the big corporations and to billionaires like Trump, they’ll create jobs for the coal miners and the oil drillers and everybody else. They explain, helpfully, that when taxes are cut like that, and those programs aren’t “wasting” money any longer, the economy will soar; everyone will be rich! BULL***T!
Think about it: all those corporations that already are sitting on record profits, will they turn around and spend that extra money on jobs? Every CEO in America would have to be out of their minds! They’ll buy back their stock, instead, driving it higher.
All that extra money from the tax cut will go to people and corporations that already have more than they can spend, while everyone else ends up poorer: their tax “cuts” will amount to small change and their expenses will go up. What expenses? Those programs being cut, having to pay for them, completely, or do without: those expenses.
Why would any CEO expand production, hire more workers, raise wages, when the PEOPLE have LESS money to spend, so they can’t afford more goods and services; they can afford less.
So, really, this tax cut for the wealthy, on the backs of cuts to popular and necessary programs, will probably cause both a walloping deficit and a severe recession.
Rome fell in the fifth century (476 CE) as a result of the equivalent of the billionaires of today holding on to all the money, never paying their share of taxes. Rome was bankrupted, after suffering a century’s long depression: only the great landowners of the Senatorial class had money. No one else could buy anything: families sold themselves, or their children (to the Senators), in order to survive. It was called Serfdom.
No taxes (except on the poor) meant, finally, not being able to pay the mercenary army to defend Rome and the Roman Emperor: the Germanic barbarian Army. So, the latter took over. End of the Empire.
Believe it or not, King Odovacar’s ascension, and the erasure of the Empire was a financial deal with—you guessed it—the billionaires of the day, the Senators in the Roman Senate, agreed to his takeover, so their taxes wouldn’t go up. Pretty soon, all their wealth was ripped away by the Germanic conquerors.