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As rblatz also points out, this argument just doesn't hold water. The only thing stopping companies from investing in the US right now is lack of demand / lack

As rblatz also points out, this argument just doesn't hold water. The only thing stopping companies from investing in the US right now is lack of demand / lack of disposable income. States are handing out massive tax incentives to try and get companies to actually create jobs, investments in R&D and capital expenditures can largely be tax deducted anyway, and yet large companies are still overwhelmingly choosing to downsize, offshore, and hoard cash on their balance sheets instead. If they could easily make more money by investing, they would, tax rates be damned. 66% of a new dollar earned is infinitely more than not earning that dollar at all. On top of that, what do we get in exchange for foregoing all corporate tax income that we currently receive? I have yet to see a compelling argument showing how this won't just be another trickle-down economics ploy that actually accelerates wealth inequality. Yes, I know the proposal is to kill corporate taxes and also increase capital gains taxes, but how is that better than just leveling the playing field so that all US corporations are taxed equally? I'm genuinely curious if there's a strong economic argument here beyond "everyone else does it this way".

adventured 11y ago
> The only thing stopping companies from investing in the US right now is lack of demand / lack of disposable income That's clearly not a problem. The US has one of the highest median household disposable income levels, thanks in part to low (compared to most of the developed world) middle class income taxes. It's over 50% higher than Sweden, Finland, Japan and Britain. It's also about 25% higher than Norway. And those figures are calculated before the dollar hit its recent highs in 2015. Americans have no lack of disposable income.
- mzs 11y ago
  Unfortunately US is consistently ranked something like 32 or 33 out of 36 for inequality across population for countries in the OECD index. Basically Mexico, Chile, and Brazil are outliers by an order of magnitude and US trades spots among Turkey and Russia year to year, then every other country does better. It's also notable that of your examples all are better with Norway, Sweden, and Finland particularly good. Furthermore the OECD household net-adjusted disposable income does not subtract expenditures it probably should, for example not all of the medical costs. I have been averaging $13000 for one child alone over the last two years in expenditures that the formula does not consider. The year before that there was even more for my wife. In a household of five it adds up and there seems to be one outlier needing more medical care than the rest.
- mdorazio 11y ago
  Sorry for the late reply. Are you referring to this? http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/income/ http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/income/ If so, I wasn't able to find median info on disposable income there for the US, which I think is a very important distinction from average. If not, can you please share another source since I'm very curious to see how it shakes out across the developed world. Also, I think it's also important to note that my original post was perhaps incomplete referring to disposable income generally. What's more important is growth in disposable income year over year, and related, growth in actual expenditures. For the US, OECD puts disposable income growth at just 0.8% year over year in the US since 2008. A population might have tons of disposable income, but if all of it is already being spent, then that doesn't help companies very much with demand - zero growth equals a zero sum game. Compare the US growth rate with that of China, which is 10x more [1] and also where many big companies have focused their investments in recent years. [1] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/disposable-personal-income http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/disposable-personal-in...

adventured 11y ago

> The only thing stopping companies from investing in the US right now is lack of demand / lack of disposable income That's clearly not a problem. The US has one of the highest median household disposable income levels, thanks in part to low (compared to most of the developed world) middle class income taxes. It's over 50% higher than Sweden, Finland, Japan and Britain. It's also about 25% higher than Norway. And those figures are calculated before the dollar hit its recent highs in 2015. Americans have no lack of disposable income.

mzs 11y ago
Unfortunately US is consistently ranked something like 32 or 33 out of 36 for inequality across population for countries in the OECD index. Basically Mexico, Chile, and Brazil are outliers by an order of magnitude and US trades spots among Turkey and Russia year to year, then every other country does better. It's also notable that of your examples all are better with Norway, Sweden, and Finland particularly good. Furthermore the OECD household net-adjusted disposable income does not subtract expenditures it probably should, for example not all of the medical costs. I have been averaging $13000 for one child alone over the last two years in expenditures that the formula does not consider. The year before that there was even more for my wife. In a household of five it adds up and there seems to be one outlier needing more medical care than the rest.
mdorazio 11y ago
Sorry for the late reply. Are you referring to this? http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/income/ http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/income/ If so, I wasn't able to find median info on disposable income there for the US, which I think is a very important distinction from average. If not, can you please share another source since I'm very curious to see how it shakes out across the developed world. Also, I think it's also important to note that my original post was perhaps incomplete referring to disposable income generally. What's more important is growth in disposable income year over year, and related, growth in actual expenditures. For the US, OECD puts disposable income growth at just 0.8% year over year in the US since 2008. A population might have tons of disposable income, but if all of it is already being spent, then that doesn't help companies very much with demand - zero growth equals a zero sum game. Compare the US growth rate with that of China, which is 10x more [1] and also where many big companies have focused their investments in recent years. [1] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/disposable-personal-income http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/disposable-personal-in...