On what planet?

ROFL.  "Very popular".  Not with American workers.

Poll after poll shows that more voters than not are opposed to their efforts. In fact, the GOP bill is one of the least popular tax plans since Ronald Reagan’s day.

About a third of voters currently support the Republican tax reform package, according to an average of five surveys released1 this month. In a Quinnipiac University survey, just 25 percent of voters approved of the plan. Surveys from ABC News/Washington Post, CNN, Morning Consult and YouGov put approval of the plan slightly higher, but all are still at 36 percent or lower.

  FiveThirtyEight

"A phenomenon that nobody even thought of."  There could be only two reasons to make that statement true:  1) Everybody was born yesterday with no clue about cause and effect; or 2) Everybody is shocked that corporations would give away money, because, guess what...they don't.

"The rage."  All those Scrooges got a visit from the Christmas ghosts, I guess.

"An unexpected new source of "love"."  Cue Tiny Tim.

This strikes me as a dangerous approach for The Most Notable Loser.  When his base begins to question whose workers are getting bonuses, because they're sure not, they won't be very happy. What? You don't work for AT&T or Comcast? Loser.

On Wednesday afternoon, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson announced his employees would get a Christmas bonus of $1,000. Now that the tax bill lowering the corporate tax rate to 21 percent had passed Congress, Stephenson wrote, the world’s largest telecom would, as promised, increase its investment in the United States by $1 billion next year—starting with a nice holiday bonus for all the company’s 200,000 employees

By nightfall, the company had been joined by Comcast, which offered a $1,000 Christmas bonus to non-executive employees. Two banks, Wells Fargo and Fifth Third Bancorp, announced they would raise their base pay to $15 an hour.

[...]

Even as corporate earnings have ascended to their largest share of GDP since the postwar boom, and corporations get better and better at dodging the taxman, wages and salaries now occupy their lowest share of GDP since the second world war. Real wages have barely budged upward since 1980—and have fallen for the lowest-paid workers. Wall Street actively cheers against pay bumps: When American Airlines announced raises for pilots and flight attendants, the company’s stock fell 5 percent.

[...]

Kevin Hassett, the chair of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, predicted earlier this year that the average household would receive a $4,000 to $9,000 raise from reducing business taxes alone. In October, the president himself promised $4,000 raises to truckers in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The Communications Workers of America, a union whose members are employed at big telecoms like AT&T and Verizon, asked bosses to put that figure in writing. They did not.

[...]

In fact, AT&T’s assurance that it would invest $1 billion in the U.S. was a bit of an outlier.

It’s not that they won’t be making more money: They are. Delta CEO Ed Bastian told analysts the corporate rate drop will give the company an extra $800 million next year. Wells Fargo estimated that AT&T and Verizon could make more than a billion dollars each just on “bonus depreciation,” which allows the companies to make deductions for capital costs like cell towers up front.

So far, though, most companies have said they’ll use the impending cash glut on stock buybacks and rising dividends, both rewards for shareholders who have sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average up by 25 percent this year in preparation for this moment.

[...]

Here are some highlights of corporate responses to the tax bill, courtesy of Thomson-Reuters: Boeing added $4 billion to an existing $14 billion repurchase program. Honeywell expanded its share buyback to $8 billion. Anthem put $5 billion into share buybacks. Home Depot $15 billion. Bank of America $5 billion. MasterCard $4 billion. T-Mobile USA $1.5 billion. According to a report released by Senate Democrats, companies announced $70 billion in buybacks just in the 10 days following the Senate tax bill’s first passage on Dec. 2.

[...]

[A] Boeing statement on Wednesday that announced “employee-related and charitable investments to spur innovation and growth.” The company would commit to $300 million in investments, including corporate giving, workforce development, and infrastructure enhancements for employees. No mention of wages. Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said his company would get a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars, which he might use to modernize the company’s planes.

[...]

[A]t a conference in November, Trump’s chief economic advisor Gary Cohn asked a room full of CEOs who was planning to invest more if the tax bill passed. Almost no one raised a hand. “Why aren’t the other hands up?” Cohn asked.

  Slate

Now there's a first. Honesty among CEOs.

So if the trickle has begun, it’s not thanks to economics but to PR—and perhaps a little bit of human guilt that a bank or telecom company could, in 2017, pay workers less than $25,000 a year. (AT&T has a merger pending before Trump’s Department of Justice; it can’t hurt that the company was the first to vindicate, in a roundabout way, the president’s claims.)

Merry Christmas indeed.

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

UPDATE:

Those AT&T bonus checks will be covered by higher costs for AT&T service.  You knew there was a catch.



Merry Christmas from AT&T.

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

h/t Jean