The motive driving the tax cuts which increased the debt load was to bring home investment and create jobs. Is that happening? I have read where of the 8,000,000 jobs lost, only 2 million were off-shored, the major loss was triggered by automation. Some food for thought...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/sha...ocks-1.4902823
In fact, the name of the bill said it all. When the tax-cutting legislation was presented to Congress at the end of last year it was introduced as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Yet, despite the plunging U.S. unemployment rate, jobs continue to go abroad while investors get rich on speculation...
Calculations by the London Financial Times show that so far this year, five of the biggest U.S. technology companies, including Apple and Google parent Alphabet, spent a combined total of $115 billion buying back their own shares.
That's about double the amount those companies spent on share buybacks in the previous year, before Trump's tax cuts kicked in. And it represents only a fraction of the estimated $1 trillion US paid back to shareholders of tech and non-tech companies...
Rochon says short-termism compounds the problem. Rather than waiting for a long-term investment to pay off at five to seven per cent a year, shareholders and managers — who are paid bonuses tied to their stock price — want to see shares rise now. Share buybacks solve that dilemma...
"These companies are going to have a problem," he says. "We're going to see old technology, the need for reinvestment, and we're going to look back and say, 'We should have invested 20 years ago instead of buying back.'"...
And any of the buyback money that disappears as share prices fall might just as well have been left in the public purse to invest in things like infrastructure and health care and education for the poorest — things that really could make America great again...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42170100
Up to 800 million global workers will lose their jobs by 2030 and be replaced by robotic automation, a new report from a consultancy has found.
The study of 46 countries and 800 occupations by the McKinsey Global Institute found that up to one-fifth of the global work force will be affected.
It said one-third of the workforce in richer nations like Germany and the US may need to retrain for other jobs.