The cynic in me says that this is AT&T paying $200 million to garner goodwill for their takeover of Time Warner. The announcement is a boon for the President and I do not doubt that pressure will be applied to the Department of Justice to go easy on its takeover bid. It's a small price to pay to ensure a smoother process.
A $1000 bonus is a wonderful x-mas gift. Why would a company attribute the gift to the government instead of simply saying "We're AT&T. We're awesome. Here's $1000" unless there was motivation to do so?
Unless you can answer that question you should be cynical.
Yes, giving $1000 to a low level employee isn't going to help. Giving $200 million to low level employees and saying, "It's because of this great tax bill that the President championed", is going to help. It soothes his ego and induces him to reward the soother. That's how I think Trump's psychology works.
I'm not talking about the CWA's reaction to this. I'm talking about Trump's reaction and what he might pressure the Attorney General to do. I think both of those men are highly corrupt and without scruples. To me it is clear that this bonus, the timing of the announcement, are clearly meant to give Trump an ego boost so that he does a quid pro quo with AT&T. I could be wrong.
Did you send back the $1,200 check that George Bush sent everyone during his administration, or are you too young to remember the impact that had on the country?
> Once tax reform is signed into law, AT&T* plans to invest an additional $1 billion in the United States in 2018 and pay a special $1,000 bonus to more than 200,000 AT&T U.S. employees — all union-represented, non-management and front-line managers. If the President signs the bill before Christmas, employees will receive the bonus over the holidays.
If you wonder why the tech industry seemingly has little political influence, despite having all the money, this is the reason. Money isn't the currency of politics, its jobs. AT&T and Alphabet spent about the same on lobbying last year (about $16 million). But AT&T can call up a red state or swing state Congressperson and say: "this issue is really important to us, and by the way, we've got 5,000 unionized workers in your district." Alphabet can't do that.
Thanks for this perspective. I've always wondered why the US tech giants, seemingly flush with more cash than most don't have more influence over policy.
There naive about politics which has caught out MS before over the anti trust issues and employment rights.
ATT as an ex PTT knows how the political game is played like all big telcos do, ever wonder why British telecom has development centres in Scotland Wales England and NI ?
Remember that US tech giants are giant companies, and therefor often benefit from the things that are put in place to benefit tech giants. Netflix may have stated publicly that they wanted net neutrality, but they can afford "access fees" and fast lanes. A startup trying to oust netflix by being more nimble or some other innovation cannot
>but they can afford "access fees" and fast lanes.
Yes. They just pass it on to their users. When Comcast started charging then to remove the bottleneck a few years ago, it was followed by a price increase. Netflix is not even waiting this time. Streaming prices go up again in early January.
To be fair, Netflix has increased prices about once a year for the past few years, and all price increases were announced 6+ months ahead of time. This price increase doesn't have anything to do with net neutrality, it has to do with funding their increasingly debt-fueled content production.
I think this analysis is right, but it ignores the blue side of the bargain -- unless you mean the Dems care less about unionised workers than the Repubs. Are SV companies able to influence the Dems by some other means, or is it that the blue-team influences them.
In this particular case they only cared about not giving Trump a win. This will move the economy forward which is something as a party the cannot afford.
My problem is they always put party before their own voters. They did it during the election and they are doing it now. I know that many are trying to portray the cuts as mostly going to the rich but looking at percentages it isn't. Even more so they are clawing back deductions that only favored high income earners, like deducting state and city taxes. Deductions the middle and lower class never got to take advantage of, plus DOUBLING the standard deduction which favors those under 100k immensely
Is this after ignoring the deliberate corruption in making the individual tax cuts temporary vs permanent tax cuts for businesses plus the individual mandate repeal resulting in skyrocketing premiums?
Didn't Obama propose bringing Corp taxes down to 28% (vs 35 now and 22% after passage?). So it isn't only Reps who recognized our corp taxes were out if sync with other nations corp tax rates.
Yes, BUT that was meant to be combined with the closing of multiple loopholes that would prevent companies from paying far less than what they're supposed to. In comparison the Republican bill leaves them open and even has a few of its own.
That's why Obama had such a tough time actually getting something done. Well, that and another obvious factor.
The fact that, all in all, he really wasn't all that great of a President and only got elected because W destroyed the Republican party (and McCain was a terrible candidate), and got re-elected because, well, that's what most incumbent Presidents do?
It's probably a good thing that Obama didn't get much done, because look at the result of the one thing he did get done (Obamacare), which primarily got done thanks to dishonest marketing on his and the D's part (you get to keep your doctor, your rates won't go up).
I'm not here to argue about the whether or not Obama was a good president, but your second point is incorrect. The ACA was formulated in an almost entirely bipartisan way, taking influence from many Republican plans. It was a bandage on the bleeding wound of Healthcare and one that was desperately needed.
I would say it was particularly effective, considering my family personally benefited from the removal of pre-existing condition denial. That said, it was obvious more needed to be done and gutting the ACA just means ripping open the wound once more and hoping we don't bleed out.
“The ACA was formulated in an almost entirely bipartisan way,“
While the idea for health exchanges initiated with repub policy people, the implementation is really different. So I don’t think it’s accurate to say the ACA was bipartisan. That’s why not a single republican voted for it, https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/111-2010/h165.
I suppose you could say that this bill is bipartisan because a democrat came up with the idea of lowering corporate tax rates. While true at face, the implementation is super different. Thus the zero democrat votes.
Interestingly, the ACA kind of set precedent for shoving stuff through with only a single party. If the ACA hadn’t been so super partisan, it would have been a lot harder to pass this bill.
There's an important distinction to be made between what happened with the ACA and what happened with the current tax bill. It was bipartisan because republicans at all stages were given the opportunity to engage, plus a lot of the basic foundations of the ACA were praised by conservative economists and it was directly based off of Romney's healthcare plan. At no point were republicans shut out or their opportunity to amend the bill taken away. Many republicans even supported the individual mandate before the ACA came along!
With the republican tax bill, democrats were outright denied any opportunities to work with republicans. They were shut out of the entire process, all of their amendments were denied and there was no opportunity for bipartisan legislation because the GOP viewed it as 'my way or the highway'. Similarly, republicans simply backed away from any and all debate or attempt to amend the ACA because they refused to work with democrats.
This is the important distinction between what happened with the ACA and with the recent tax bill. Many republicans immediately turned face against what they had previously supported. Which is also a reflection of the modern-day GOP and reflected in how disastrous their attempt at governing has been.
I don't think that's corruption, I think that's just politics. It will be easy to get agreement to extend the individual cuts before they expire. It would be much harder to get agreement to extend the corporate cuts.
If you want to cut both then you basically have to do it this way.
There is also the fact that the renewal vote happens on an election cycle. If the republicans hold the house, the tax cuts will be renewed. If the democrats take control, they will be forced to expire the cuts since they are planning to campaign heavily on the tax bills as bad for the public. This means that if the GOP loses control, the following year taxes will go up on most voters and help reinforce the GOP narrative of the Democrats as the party of taxation.
What about the additional $1.4T being added to the deficit to pay for them? Is that moving the economy forward? I'm all for a lower tax burden, but like politicians of both parties they're much happier handing out the benefits than paying for them.
Not to stir up controversy, governments have to figure out a different way to make money than taxing people. It is about time somebody figured this out. In a world run by fiat currencies, what does deficit even mean? Just print more money using leverage. Who’s gonna check?
Are you proposing having honest accounting, and assuming that nobody will look? Or are you proposing having dishonest accounting, and assuming that nobody will be able to look deep enough to prove it?
People actually do seriously read the federal budget statements...
Modern Monetary Theory is based on collecting taxes. I am talking about a new theory that is not based on taxes at all but instead, it is based on Government making money by selling govt. land, investing social security money in high growth funds, etc.
They're clawing back deductions that helped high income earners because they also helped fund local schools & infrastructure that benefits everyone. They had no problem letting rich people give away 5M more tax-free in estate transfers, for instance.
But they're not, so you're suggesting it or for no reason. In fact, the GOP is still trying to undo everything Obama did just because Obama touched it.
I agree with your broader point, but Google is not helpless here, even though AT&T employs about three times as many people. Google employs 74,000 people in CA, NY, MI, PA, GA, TX, CO, MA, WA, VA, and DC. Five of those are red or swing states.
The 74,000 figure isn't very meaningful, because most of it is in California.
Show me how many they employ in eg TX, VA, PA, GA. I'm willing to bet it's not more than a couple thousand. If it were 15k-20k across six or seven red states, that would matter politically.
Google's VA presence is in Loudon and Fairfax counties. Those are Democrat-leaning counties driving Virginia's status as a swing state. There are 88 companies with 500+ employees in Fairfax, and 220 companies with 100+ employees in Loudon. Google doesn't make either list.
It's also why all the mega tech companies are looking to diversify their employee concentrations. Amazon is desperate to start expanding outside of Seattle. Google and Facebook have set up several other US campuses. Companies like Oracle and Microsoft already have several locations around the US. I would expect those efforts to go into overdrive in the next decade.
Why would Alphabet lobby against a corporate tax cut? I don't think they did. This has nothing to do with the right wing cause-celebre of painting Google as an evil liberal company.
I believe the commenter is merely stating that if a workforce is located in a voting district there is more political sway than if a bulk of the workforce, although technologically savvy and effectual, does not live in districts where congresspeople are listening. The "power of your constituents" (and where they reside)
I often wonder what HN means by technology and engineering. It seems to mean websites and the backend to support it. Sure it’s “complicated” and multi layered but so is “finnegan’s wake”
For me technology means micro-fabrication bridges, substations and OSes. AT&T has delivered more “tech” than any other company ever!
Google’s innovations? Repackaging existing solutions and funding, yet to be launched, Moon shots.
EDIT it goes without saying that AT&T is a shadow of its former self.
The GOP just rammed through a huge tax cut/deficit ballooning bill because their financial overlords threatened to shut off the money spigot if they didn't deliver something of benefit to them.
Key votes were won not by "jobs" but by offering cash, either by expanding/reducing the cut to certain programs and financial kickbacks (Corker kickback).
The jobs promised often never arrive or stay if they do, but the checks always clear. This is the case as seen in examples as varied as the 2004 American Jobs Creation Act (which did no such thing) or "small government fiscal conservative" Curt Schilling bilking tens of millions of dollars out of Rhode Island taxpayers to prop up his failing video game company (38 studios) before it bottomed out.
Lobbying is not about "winning" but about access and connections. An entertaining explanation of this is offered up in "Turkmeniscam" by Ken Silverstein.
AT&T is a tech company, one that predates Alphabet by a century or so and is looking to operate across more of the US (this is where connections matter). Alphabet may not have a reason to get Martha Blackburn in their pocket, but you can bet AT&T does (and did).
Although corporate insurance for companies the size of AT&T is generally self funded, rather than insured, so the state of the insurance market doesn’t always reflect their premiums.
As more healthy people opt out of health insurance due to their no longer being a penalty, it's likely overall insurance rates will increase faster. They'll apparently continue to increase as they have for over a decade regardless, we just get to speed up or slow down the increase.
Possibly. Or rates will come down now that people aren't forced into buying them and insurance companies have to compete more. Also consider the supply/demand chart. What happens when demand goes down? So does prices.
In Utah there are quite a few clinics like Medallus that are offering very low cost pay as you go services. You can save easily over 10k a year with that. They have memberships too for like 100 a month that are more like insurance. When I look at my medical premium every month around 1500, plus deductibles and copays it's freaking ridiculous.
That just means the supply of healthy people in the market is going down, leaving behind a pool of heavy insurance users which will make premiums rise for those left in the pool.
If demand for insurance among healthy people drops, but demand among people with expensive healthcare needs stays constant, then the average price to provide insurance increases.
Rates have already gone up based the uncertainty of whether insurance companies will get reimbursed for discounts to low income customers. [1] If I’d kept my 2017 insurance plan, the rate would have up from $800 to $1544 a month for 2 adults.
I don't disagree with you guys, but traditional insurance is not the only variable in the equation. As that gets more expensive, other models and options will emerge, provided they are not made illegal by government regulation attempting to "fix" the problem, while simultaneously outlawing startups and novel solutions.
And ultimately I think insurance will go back down to sane levels when it becomes more like insurance is supposed to be (this is assuming that is permitted by government to happen, which is unlikely. I actually think we're gonna get single-payer within the next few years. Even Trump has supported that in the not-too-distant past (see [1] and secondarily [2])). Right now we call it insurance but it's basically a health plan. IMHO we need to stop screwing with it and let the market do its thing.
That said obviously we have the elephant in the room regarding people who can't afford care. It's inhumane to ignore those people. We need a solution there. I have ideas but this is a poor forum for articulating those.
That's almost guaranteed to be incorrect, and is extremely cynical.
The workers receiving those $1000 bonus checks, are not going to see a hit from the state & local deduction changes. Unless you think those people are making $250,000 per year and living in homes that cost $1,500,000 (they're not; and if they were, not only would the $1k not matter, they can easily afford the very slightly higher taxes).
Those workers are also covered under corporate health insurance. The only valid argument about rising healthcare costs in that regard, is that it detracts from their potential salaries over time (debatable whether that benefit would be redirected to salaries or to AT&T's net income figure, were healthcare costs lower).
Can someone explain the reasoning here when taxes don't change till next year?
Edit: I think my question was not clear -- this bonus will be given in 2017 -- AT&T is not getting any tax breaks this year, so why give a special bonus this calendar year? "If the President signs the bill before Christmas, employees will receive the bonus over the holidays." So during the 2017 tax year.
They really cannot go back and change something for the previous year because of a whole host of issues. The simplest is people / businesses have already been paying this years taxes under this years rules quarterly. Its already going to be a mess for software developers to rush out changes to their payroll customers for a tax plan that goes into effect some 12 days after its passage.
You mean why they are putting it off for a whole week and a half!?
I don't think anyone would get their taxes done on time if it applied retroactively to 2017, and having a different tax code for December 21-31 seems like a bad idea also. I think applying the change on January 1st is ambitious if anything.
The fact that the tax cuts are permanent and this is a one time bonus certainly makes it seem like a publicity stunt, possibly related to currying favor for the merger with Time Warner.
That said, if you take their stated reason at face value, the tax cuts aren't directly providing the cash for the bonuses, so they can do it now based on projected savings later.
Probably because AT&T has no problem fronting the cash that they'll make next year, but this lets them get a publicity bounce because it's very topical right now.
Corporate tax rates get slashed almost in half and employees get a few hundred bucks after taxes. Is this that trickle down economics I keep hearing about? I believe it is. Someone got fucked. And it wasn't AT&T.
Alternatively you can leave the US corporate income tax rate where it is, which is the second highest effective rate in the OECD, and uncompetitive with dozens of other major economies. You can then watch a lot more massive corporations take their headquarters, R&D, white collar jobs, investment, etc. outside of the US.
Particularly small & mid-size US manufacturing is at a severe disadvantage with the high US effective corporate income tax rate. US manufacturing companies pay twice the corporate income tax rate as their peers in China. That means less capital available for investing into expansion, productivity, innovation, et al.
Pretending the US doesn't have to compete with the rest of the world, is an ideal recipe for economic disaster. The US should have slashed its corporate income tax rate decades ago. And it should raise the income taxes on the top 1/4 to pay for it (they get a benefit back in rising stock prices, as they're the primary stock owners in the US). You want to lure foreign capital investment and foreign corporations to US shores, you don't do that with high corporate tax rates.
This is ignoring the fact that most companies do not actually pay the effective rate. When you take deductions and so forth into account the rate is not that far out from the average. You can't just look at one statistic in a vacuum and not look at everything related to it.
I've always seen "effective tax rate" to mean after the deductions have been applied. Looking at OECD data, I don't see them publishing effective tax rates--only the statutory rates (the base rate). But you are correct in that the statutory rate appears very high, but the effective rate is in line other OECD countries.
> which is the second highest effective rate in the OECD
Yeah that statistic was shocking to me; it was significantly higher than most other nations. But the next the bullet point is that US corporations actually pay significantly less than other countries because of deductions and loopholes.
If US corporations actually paid the new lower corporate tax rate they'd spend more on taxes than they do now.
OP said effective rate, not statutory rate. Effective rate is after deductions, and the U.S. is near the top on that chart too: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does-the.... The second chart has the U.S. at #3 out of OECD countries (Argentina is not an OECD country), behind Japan and about tied with the U.K. The effective rate in the U.S. is 18.6%. Germany is at 15.5%, France is at 11.2%, and Canada is at 8.5%.
increasing corporate taxes incentivices companies to increase wages or capital expenditures. This is why wages were highest and R&D was highest when the taxes were highest.
Since publicly traded US companies often claim to be focused most on raising shareholder value, this _apparent_ generosity must be part of some long play (which ATT believes will ultimately pay for itself in stock price, tax deductions, or something).
It's probably small, but I bet there's some measurable savings in terms of employee churn. Even if you delay some of the turnover for a year because of happy employees, that's a lot of HR expense saved. I wish there was a way to find out.
It's actually good for the bottom line to pay employees more, up to a point. But companies like ATT aren't know (in the last 25 years) to have that kind of wisdom.
Per https://www.att.com/gen/general?pid=22150 AT&T was already required to pay this out to at least 20,000 employees because of negotiations with the Communications Workers of America union.
A rather shortsighted way to look at things. How do you know this isn't just the tip of the iceberg? How do you know that they won't use that savings to further invest in the company which in turn could create thousands of new jobs? (EDIT: I just re-read the article, and it says in addition to the bonus, they'll be investing an additional $1B in the US in 2018, and that "Every $1 billion in capital invested in the telecom industry creates about 7,000 jobs for American workers, research shows.")
Also, what's with the negative outlook? I'll bet all 200K of those employees are pretty happy about that $1K bonus (on top of saving another $2K/yr in taxes, totaling an extra $3K+ in their pockets, over 10 years = $30K+).
The tax bill just passed and companies are already proving the naysayers wrong, and it seems like people are just trying to find every excuse as to why it's supposedly not actually a good thing that people are going to be able to keep thousands of bucks more every year. Talk about bah humbug!
That's not how things work. With the almost 0% interest rate do you really think that if AT&T found a worthwhile capital investment they wouldn't do it regardless of the tax plan?
$1,000 bonus for 250k employees is $250,000,000 first of all... Secondly, they announced a $1B increase in capital expenditures for next year so that's $1.25B. That's now 54.3% which is a great "trickle down" effect.
Oh and just FYI, the average American family, married couple with 2 kids making the median American income of $60k after this tax bill will now pay $0 in taxes. Instead they will receive $70 refund. Before they'd be paying $1700 a year. So anyone that fits that demographic making less than $60k a year will get a tax refund instead of paying any federal income tax. The Bush cuts were garbage, this is a middle class tax cut.
It's a great trickle down effect, if you assume that they are honest about the net change from what they would have done otherwise, not concealing other changes, and assume it will be repeated forever as long as the cuts are in place.
I suspect that each and every one of those assumptions is false, though.
Yes they've never given an equal bonus to every employee before and this was due to the tax cut. The capital expenditure certainly is because it makes it much more favorable to invest in capital with the complete write off. My dentist is buying some new fancy $200k machine apparently next year if the bill becomes law, so anecdotal, tiny sample size but that's something at least.
That said, I mean this is certainly a goodwill approach for the merger not to get shot down by the Trump Admin. 250M gift to employees and praising the man who needs to be constantly validated is a small price to get the merger rolling. I sense some downwards pressure from the president to allow it. I can pretty certainly say that's a major reason why this huge PR ploy is there, but the tax cuts certainly make it plausible.
Nonetheless, capital expenditure is great. $1000 is great for the 250k and for the economy. Better than increasing dividends though by my guess most of the money saved will go into buybacks and dividends. Not the 92+% from the bush repatriation (complete morons who wrote that), but a big chunk. That's not necessarily bad, should help stabilize the market and boost many portfolios, but more M&A isn't necessarily good for the consumer.
I'll wait and see how it plays out, but I'm very optimistic this will be great for the economy and the American people especially long term. The global min tax negates all tax havens like Bermuda, PR, Ireland, and no more trillions stored offshore. That part of the law makes up for the bad aspects in my opinion. Long term, that's extremely important for America.
Crazy thing to me is how cheap the middle class tax cuts are. Something like 30B a year. I feel like further investing in programs for such a small amount could really help the middle class who were hurt by globalism get the improvements many lost. Renewable energy jobs in the rust belt in 10 years time should make up a sizeable portion of what was lost since it's basically the wind energy capital of the world. A few billion in transmission lines and have it be the energy breadbasket area with solid paying middle class engineering jobs while increasing energy independence. Too bad we have a president who doesn't believe in climate change and High ranking democrats who'd rather create programs to benifit themselves. Nonetheless, good men from both parties are trying to get some stuff done.
Comcast just announced pretty much the same thing.
Comcast Celebrates Tax Reform, Net Neutrality Votes With $1K Employee Bonuses, Plans $50B In Capex By 2023 | http://deadline.com/?p=1202230881
Citing “the passage of tax reform and the FCC’s action on broadband” (aka the Dec. 14 vote to repeal net neutrality), Comcast chief Brian Roberts announced $1,000 bonuses would go to more than 1,000 front-line and non-executive employees. Roberts also announced that the Company expects to spend “well in excess” of $50B over the next five years investing in infrastructure to radically improve and extend broadband plant and capacity, and its television, film and theme park offerings.
110 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 178 ms ] threadUnless you can answer that question you should be cynical.
1k isn't shit for a family anymore. 1 bill and its gone
If you wonder why the tech industry seemingly has little political influence, despite having all the money, this is the reason. Money isn't the currency of politics, its jobs. AT&T and Alphabet spent about the same on lobbying last year (about $16 million). But AT&T can call up a red state or swing state Congressperson and say: "this issue is really important to us, and by the way, we've got 5,000 unionized workers in your district." Alphabet can't do that.
ATT as an ex PTT knows how the political game is played like all big telcos do, ever wonder why British telecom has development centres in Scotland Wales England and NI ?
Yes. They just pass it on to their users. When Comcast started charging then to remove the bottleneck a few years ago, it was followed by a price increase. Netflix is not even waiting this time. Streaming prices go up again in early January.
My problem is they always put party before their own voters. They did it during the election and they are doing it now. I know that many are trying to portray the cuts as mostly going to the rich but looking at percentages it isn't. Even more so they are clawing back deductions that only favored high income earners, like deducting state and city taxes. Deductions the middle and lower class never got to take advantage of, plus DOUBLING the standard deduction which favors those under 100k immensely
That's why Obama had such a tough time actually getting something done. Well, that and another obvious factor.
The fact that, all in all, he really wasn't all that great of a President and only got elected because W destroyed the Republican party (and McCain was a terrible candidate), and got re-elected because, well, that's what most incumbent Presidents do?
It's probably a good thing that Obama didn't get much done, because look at the result of the one thing he did get done (Obamacare), which primarily got done thanks to dishonest marketing on his and the D's part (you get to keep your doctor, your rates won't go up).
I would say it was particularly effective, considering my family personally benefited from the removal of pre-existing condition denial. That said, it was obvious more needed to be done and gutting the ACA just means ripping open the wound once more and hoping we don't bleed out.
While the idea for health exchanges initiated with repub policy people, the implementation is really different. So I don’t think it’s accurate to say the ACA was bipartisan. That’s why not a single republican voted for it, https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/111-2010/h165.
I suppose you could say that this bill is bipartisan because a democrat came up with the idea of lowering corporate tax rates. While true at face, the implementation is super different. Thus the zero democrat votes.
Interestingly, the ACA kind of set precedent for shoving stuff through with only a single party. If the ACA hadn’t been so super partisan, it would have been a lot harder to pass this bill.
With the republican tax bill, democrats were outright denied any opportunities to work with republicans. They were shut out of the entire process, all of their amendments were denied and there was no opportunity for bipartisan legislation because the GOP viewed it as 'my way or the highway'. Similarly, republicans simply backed away from any and all debate or attempt to amend the ACA because they refused to work with democrats.
This is the important distinction between what happened with the ACA and with the recent tax bill. Many republicans immediately turned face against what they had previously supported. Which is also a reflection of the modern-day GOP and reflected in how disastrous their attempt at governing has been.
ACA was kinda a big deal.
Of all the criticisms one could make, you parroted least reality-based.
If you want to cut both then you basically have to do it this way.
Hopefully we get a repeal of the corporate cuts, with even an increase to compensate for the years it was cut.
1) Their inherent complexity leads to a lot of wasted work and other distortions away from an efficient allocation of resources.
2) Corporate taxes charge the same rate to rich shareholders as poor shareholders: not progressive.
Cutting them is good.
People actually do seriously read the federal budget statements...
Governments create demand for money by collecting taxes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory
That's why the economy (the measure of the velocity of money) grows when taxes are raised.
No, that was the GOP's strategy against Obama over the last 8 years... I don't know how you mixed that up.
Show me how many they employ in eg TX, VA, PA, GA. I'm willing to bet it's not more than a couple thousand. If it were 15k-20k across six or seven red states, that would matter politically.
BTW if google did recognise unions they could also do this :-)
I often wonder what HN means by technology and engineering. It seems to mean websites and the backend to support it. Sure it’s “complicated” and multi layered but so is “finnegan’s wake”
For me technology means micro-fabrication bridges, substations and OSes. AT&T has delivered more “tech” than any other company ever!
Google’s innovations? Repackaging existing solutions and funding, yet to be launched, Moon shots.
EDIT it goes without saying that AT&T is a shadow of its former self.
The GOP just rammed through a huge tax cut/deficit ballooning bill because their financial overlords threatened to shut off the money spigot if they didn't deliver something of benefit to them.
Key votes were won not by "jobs" but by offering cash, either by expanding/reducing the cut to certain programs and financial kickbacks (Corker kickback).
The jobs promised often never arrive or stay if they do, but the checks always clear. This is the case as seen in examples as varied as the 2004 American Jobs Creation Act (which did no such thing) or "small government fiscal conservative" Curt Schilling bilking tens of millions of dollars out of Rhode Island taxpayers to prop up his failing video game company (38 studios) before it bottomed out.
Lobbying is not about "winning" but about access and connections. An entertaining explanation of this is offered up in "Turkmeniscam" by Ken Silverstein.
AT&T is a tech company, one that predates Alphabet by a century or so and is looking to operate across more of the US (this is where connections matter). Alphabet may not have a reason to get Martha Blackburn in their pocket, but you can bet AT&T does (and did).
When I worked there (long time ago), that wasn’t the case, but seems you are correct now anyway.
http://att.jobs/media/151345/Benefits-Overview-Management_01...
In Utah there are quite a few clinics like Medallus that are offering very low cost pay as you go services. You can save easily over 10k a year with that. They have memberships too for like 100 a month that are more like insurance. When I look at my medical premium every month around 1500, plus deductibles and copays it's freaking ridiculous.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/12/obamacare-bombshell-trump-ki...
And ultimately I think insurance will go back down to sane levels when it becomes more like insurance is supposed to be (this is assuming that is permitted by government to happen, which is unlikely. I actually think we're gonna get single-payer within the next few years. Even Trump has supported that in the not-too-distant past (see [1] and secondarily [2])). Right now we call it insurance but it's basically a health plan. IMHO we need to stop screwing with it and let the market do its thing.
That said obviously we have the elephant in the room regarding people who can't afford care. It's inhumane to ignore those people. We need a solution there. I have ideas but this is a poor forum for articulating those.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2015/09/28/donald...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/05/tr...
The workers receiving those $1000 bonus checks, are not going to see a hit from the state & local deduction changes. Unless you think those people are making $250,000 per year and living in homes that cost $1,500,000 (they're not; and if they were, not only would the $1k not matter, they can easily afford the very slightly higher taxes).
Those workers are also covered under corporate health insurance. The only valid argument about rising healthcare costs in that regard, is that it detracts from their potential salaries over time (debatable whether that benefit would be redirected to salaries or to AT&T's net income figure, were healthcare costs lower).
Edit: I think my question was not clear -- this bonus will be given in 2017 -- AT&T is not getting any tax breaks this year, so why give a special bonus this calendar year? "If the President signs the bill before Christmas, employees will receive the bonus over the holidays." So during the 2017 tax year.
I don't think anyone would get their taxes done on time if it applied retroactively to 2017, and having a different tax code for December 21-31 seems like a bad idea also. I think applying the change on January 1st is ambitious if anything.
That said, if you take their stated reason at face value, the tax cuts aren't directly providing the cash for the bonuses, so they can do it now based on projected savings later.
Particularly small & mid-size US manufacturing is at a severe disadvantage with the high US effective corporate income tax rate. US manufacturing companies pay twice the corporate income tax rate as their peers in China. That means less capital available for investing into expansion, productivity, innovation, et al.
Pretending the US doesn't have to compete with the rest of the world, is an ideal recipe for economic disaster. The US should have slashed its corporate income tax rate decades ago. And it should raise the income taxes on the top 1/4 to pay for it (they get a benefit back in rising stock prices, as they're the primary stock owners in the US). You want to lure foreign capital investment and foreign corporations to US shores, you don't do that with high corporate tax rates.
Yeah that statistic was shocking to me; it was significantly higher than most other nations. But the next the bullet point is that US corporations actually pay significantly less than other countries because of deductions and loopholes.
If US corporations actually paid the new lower corporate tax rate they'd spend more on taxes than they do now.
And that 1 Billion investment will probably be on equipment to throttle/slow/degrade those who cant pay the Net Neutrality Removal Premium.
EDIT: Also, those 20K you mentioned are essentially getting both. It's a totally separate bonus.
Also, what's with the negative outlook? I'll bet all 200K of those employees are pretty happy about that $1K bonus (on top of saving another $2K/yr in taxes, totaling an extra $3K+ in their pockets, over 10 years = $30K+).
The tax bill just passed and companies are already proving the naysayers wrong, and it seems like people are just trying to find every excuse as to why it's supposedly not actually a good thing that people are going to be able to keep thousands of bucks more every year. Talk about bah humbug!
Oh and just FYI, the average American family, married couple with 2 kids making the median American income of $60k after this tax bill will now pay $0 in taxes. Instead they will receive $70 refund. Before they'd be paying $1700 a year. So anyone that fits that demographic making less than $60k a year will get a tax refund instead of paying any federal income tax. The Bush cuts were garbage, this is a middle class tax cut.
I suspect that each and every one of those assumptions is false, though.
That said, I mean this is certainly a goodwill approach for the merger not to get shot down by the Trump Admin. 250M gift to employees and praising the man who needs to be constantly validated is a small price to get the merger rolling. I sense some downwards pressure from the president to allow it. I can pretty certainly say that's a major reason why this huge PR ploy is there, but the tax cuts certainly make it plausible.
Nonetheless, capital expenditure is great. $1000 is great for the 250k and for the economy. Better than increasing dividends though by my guess most of the money saved will go into buybacks and dividends. Not the 92+% from the bush repatriation (complete morons who wrote that), but a big chunk. That's not necessarily bad, should help stabilize the market and boost many portfolios, but more M&A isn't necessarily good for the consumer.
I'll wait and see how it plays out, but I'm very optimistic this will be great for the economy and the American people especially long term. The global min tax negates all tax havens like Bermuda, PR, Ireland, and no more trillions stored offshore. That part of the law makes up for the bad aspects in my opinion. Long term, that's extremely important for America.
Crazy thing to me is how cheap the middle class tax cuts are. Something like 30B a year. I feel like further investing in programs for such a small amount could really help the middle class who were hurt by globalism get the improvements many lost. Renewable energy jobs in the rust belt in 10 years time should make up a sizeable portion of what was lost since it's basically the wind energy capital of the world. A few billion in transmission lines and have it be the energy breadbasket area with solid paying middle class engineering jobs while increasing energy independence. Too bad we have a president who doesn't believe in climate change and High ranking democrats who'd rather create programs to benifit themselves. Nonetheless, good men from both parties are trying to get some stuff done.
Comcast Celebrates Tax Reform, Net Neutrality Votes With $1K Employee Bonuses, Plans $50B In Capex By 2023 | http://deadline.com/?p=1202230881
Citing “the passage of tax reform and the FCC’s action on broadband” (aka the Dec. 14 vote to repeal net neutrality), Comcast chief Brian Roberts announced $1,000 bonuses would go to more than 1,000 front-line and non-executive employees. Roberts also announced that the Company expects to spend “well in excess” of $50B over the next five years investing in infrastructure to radically improve and extend broadband plant and capacity, and its television, film and theme park offerings.
instead of fiber to the curb AT&T employees can almost afford an iphone x