I hate to say we told you so but we did. Watching Wall Street in euphoric jubilee makes it that more hurtful that we were unsuccessful in stopping Trump and the Republican’s tax cut scam. After all, they are pocketing the hard work and wealth transfer of the average American citizen. Here is what’s happening now.
The American worker sees crumbs from the tax cut scam while the bankers Trump railed against are pocketing billions from its effects.
CommonDreams staff writer Jake Johnson wrote the following in his article “As Workers See Crumbs, Biggest Wall Street Banks Have Already Pocketed $2.5 Billion From Trump Tax Scam.”
“Without the tax savings resulting from the new lower corporate tax rate, Wells Fargo’s earnings would have declined from a year ago instead of increasing, and much of the year-over-year growth at Citigroup and Bank of America would be gone,” the Journal noted. “Losing the tax bump would have cut the earnings growth of JPMorgan to 28 percent from 35 percent; for Goldman, growth would have shrunk by at least a quarter.”
Joining the profit bonanza on Wednesday was Morgan Stanley, which posted record quarterly earnings and a 40 percent profit jump thanks in large part to lower taxes.
The Wall Street earnings reports rolled in just as President Donald Trump was using the occasion of Tax Day to proclaim that ordinary Americans are “winning” thanks to the plan he signed into law last December.
But the numbers show that any benefits American workers may be seeing from the $1.5 trillion in tax cuts are far outweighed by the soaring paychecks of investors and corporate fat cats.
“Tax cut riches have gone to execs and investors over workers by [a] nearly 3-to-1 margin,” CNBC found in an analysis published on Tuesday.
Chad Bolt, associate policy director at Indivisible, noted that Wall Street’s soaring profits alongside meager worker gains should hardly be surprising, given that the Trump-GOP tax plan “was always a scam on the American people.”
Yesterday, I wrote the following about Goldman Sachs’ windfall.
The titans of finance brainwashed Americans into believing they deserve the profits and wealth we impart to them for dubious claims of being the necessary part of our economy. Let’s do some quick and easy numbers that illustrate a system that does not reward real work and intellect but instead making money from moving paper and money around. Remember that is the business Goldman Sachs is in most of the time. They produce no product of real value or service that a public bank could do at a fraction of the cost.
This quarter Goldman Sachs pulled in $10.04 billion in revenues. They have 36,600 employees. So that is just over $274,000 per employee in income. Of that, they had $2.21 billion in earnings. That is over $60,000 per employee. Remember, this is after they pay the salaries, investment banker bonuses and expenses of the employees. So after the investment bankers and brokers get their million dollar bonus, who partakes the $2.21 billion spoils? You guessed it. The folks who could afford to buy their stocks. You can bet that most of the 36,600 employees are not high-level employees. That they are there means the company needs them. You would think more of the $60,000 per employee could go to them, the ones working. That is not how they designed our economic system.
The pilfer made possible by evil elected officials and sanctioned by the American Plutocracy is in full vogue. Only the election of real Progressives in November can stop the bleeding.