Trickle down fantasy

A Bank of America-Merrill Lynch survey this summer asked over 300 executives at major U.S. corporations what they would do after a “tax holiday” that would allow them to bring back money held overseas at a low tax rate. The No. 1 response? Pay down debt. The second most popular response was stock buybacks, where companies purchase some of their own shares to drive up the price. The third was mergers. Actual investments in new factories and more research were low on the list of plans for how to spend extra money.

  WaPo

Yeah, where's the "raise employee wages" part?

The results of the Bank of America poll show a very similar pattern of corporate behavior to what happened after the 2004 tax repatriation holiday when U.S. companies spent the majority of their money coming back home from overseas on stock buybacks. It was a payday for Wall Street investors that generated little benefit to the middle class and wider economy.

Precisely. It's not like we don't already know what really happens when corporations get big tax breaks. (We already knew that in 2004 because we'd had eight years of Reaganomics not too long ago.)

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.