The Ballyhooed Foxcomm Deal

The Foxcomm deal with the Wisconsin government has been much ballyhooed; however, it contains within it significant problems. Foxcomm will get $1.35 billion for building a factory complex that will employ 3,000 workers. "Incentives" for Foxcomm could hit $3 billion -- with $2.85 billion in taxpayer cash and another $150 million in various tax breaks -- if Foxcomm ends up employing 13,000 workers. The deal could work out to cost taxpayers $500,000 per job or as much as $1 million per job. Foxcomm has promised an average salary of $53,000 but that would apply to only the first 3,000 workers and would mix in highly paid managerial positions with assembly-line workers.

Another perk for Foxcomm is an exemption from regulations to protect Wisconsin's wetlands.

Between 1990 and 2015, a new Upjohn Institute study shows average "incentive" packages for businesses tripled in value. Upjohn researchers found that those who subsidized would likely have received the same results without the incentives.

Staying with the theme of enriching big business, Robert Borosage has thrown a lot of water on the push to drastically reduce corporate taxes. He points out that since corporate profits are at a record percentage of the GDP and revenue from corporate taxes a record low, this isn't exactly a compelling cause for corporate tax cuts. Corporations that already pay at the lower 20 percent rate Republicans are peddling, have cut, not created, jobs over the last nine years.

Borosage says that in all versions of the Trump tax plans, the richest 1 percent get one-half or more of the tax cuts. In the most recent plan, the top one-tenth of one percent get a tax break of over $1 million a year. When Borosage says all versions, he is talking about a Trump tax plan released in September 2015, a written version published in December 2015, and a change in tax rates done in the summer of 2016.

Borosage says that an estimated $2.5 trillion in corporate money, with $700 billion in taxes saved, is  parked overseas. Proposals to tax that money at 5 to 10 percent will not provide the trillions of dollars that President Trump promises. The last time the U.S. offered "repatriation" of overseas profits, U.S. companies used the tax giveaways to accelerate mergers, raise dividends, and buy back their own stock.

ADDENDUM:
*U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, claims that the American people view war as the last resort; however, it is the case that the U.S. is almost constantly at war with someone. In every decade since World War II, the U.S. has militarily attacked at least one nation that hasn't attacked it. Afghanistan is not an exception, because we attacked it for providing training facilities for Al Qaeda. The U.S. was in two major wars from the fall of 2001 to December 2011; also, there is no end date for military operations in Afghanistan. Anyone age 16 or under has never known a day when the United States was not at war.