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Amy's avatar

There are definitely different schools of thought on it.

Here is an older article about the jobs created.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerenblankfeld/2016/10/18/american-billionaires-behind-the-most-jobs/

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Ashley Archuleta's avatar

Oh, I don’t doubt jobs were created - I just don’t think they’re quality jobs. Massive companies like Amazon often pay less in wages or have unreasonable demands, meanwhile pushing out the natural job creation that occurs in a more robust entrepreneurial market that doesn’t have to compete with massive companies.

Also, as someone who works for a Warren Buffet company, he is absolutely not responsible for the “job creation” they are ascribing to him. Buffett buys companies that are already doing well and lets them cook with very little intervention. We give billionaires far more credit than they deserve (and I really like Buffett!)

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Jen Hoffman's avatar

That Forbes article is not at all about what they do with decreased taxes. Can we agree the that the question at hand is do they use tax cuts to create MORE (quality, to Ashley’s point) jobs? If so, we can look at the data from Trump’s first tax cuts (and many others). We can see that those did not result in jobs. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act-failed-to-deliver-promised-benefits/

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Rachel's avatar

I wonder—if billionaires can create jobs if they have less taxes to pay, couldn’t ordinary Americans create jobs if they had similar tax breaks? Especially those that own small businesses.

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Ashley Archuleta's avatar

I personally don't see how individual tax rates have any effect whatsoever on jobs. Corporate tax rates having an effect on jobs makes at least SOME sense and I think tax breaks for small businesses is a great way to boost growth for small employers. But I don't think small business corporate tax breaks should be equated to individual tax breaks for the wealthy.

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Rachel's avatar

Agreed. I was actually comparing individual tax rates for billionaires and for ordinary Americans.

If the thought behind trickle-down economics is that billionaires who have to pay less in individual taxes will use that money to create more jobs, I was wondering why we don't apply that same logic to ordinary Americans. Many of us have small businesses and could in theory also create jobs with our individual tax savings, you know?

Mostly I am just challenging the logic of trickle-down economics. :-)

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Amy's avatar

Good point.

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