I don't think you've sufficiently proven the argument which the rest of your statements hinge on: "People are always going to make choices in their economic self-interest". It's an attractive (if somewhat cynical) point, but it's no more reasonable than any other generalisation. Not very.
What? His argument doesn't require that statement to hold true. His statement only requires a very small percentage of people who're in the solar industry to make choices in their own economic self-interest.
Tax reform means my organically growing startup gets to keep 33% more of our profit to reinvest back into the company, which has meaningfully impacted our annual budget and growth trajectory.
VC funded startups get the advantage of growing ahead of profit, and booking tax losses which they can carry forward.
Bootstrapping means growth driven by profit, which necessitates paying income taxes on the ever growing cash balance which flows from growing revenues & expenses (e.g. always having 3 months operating expenses in the bank)
> Tax reform means my organically growing startup gets to keep 33% more of our profit to reinvest back into the company, which has meaningfully impacted our annual budget and growth trajectory.
There's no doubt that we get better tax solutions in the short term. Long term, it makes government services we rely upon to sustain our business untenable. This is the problem with an "economic self-interest" argument: scale matters.
There's also the point that in the grand scheme of things, our companies don't matter and their short term windfalls shouldn't come at the cost of funding for education and social services that make it possible to sustain a healthy economy in the future. I certainly don't think my nascent company is more important than funding public education for the next generation in my country.
Ok. But the "working class" people who voted Trump in don't get to see any of those gains. They at best got a one time bonus, which is still taxed at higher rates, and in exchange, they get cuts to many of the services they rely on.
The gains to the working class is seen in the lowest unemployment numbers ever, a rising workforce participation rate, and starting to see the first wage growth for the working class in decades.
That’s because that extra 33% in our bank balance means more marketing spending, more inventory, more open reqs for hiring sale, marketing, support, and engineering, etc. etc.
E.g. This WSJ post which is also on the front page: “U.S. Workers Get Biggest Pay Increase in Nearly a Decade”
> E.g. This post which is also on the front page: “U.S. Workers Get Biggest Pay Increase in Nearly a Decade”
You mean this one [0] that was flagged off the front page afte the discussion thread pointed out it was using figures not adjusted for inflation, where the inflation-adjusted figured show a decline of 0.1% percent in wages?
"The gains to the working class is seen in the lowest unemployment numbers ever"
Which isn't being accompanied by wage gains, and were going up long before the tax cuts happened.
"That’s because that extra 33% in our bank balance means more marketing spending, more inventory, more open reqs for hiring sale, marketing, support, and engineering, etc. etc."
Which is great, except the vast majority of companies are using that 33% for stock buybacks.
"That’s certainly a popular talking point, but I think frankly it’s impossible;"
Think what you want, but you're not entitled to your own facts. And the facts show that, most publicly traded companies used the money for buybacks, and that wages did not grow very much in the last quarter, which one would expect if these tax cuts were going to go to wages. Which they didn't.
You may wish to look into behavioral economics [1], a system of psychology + decision making that looks deeply at how individuals often do go against their economic (and other) self-interests.
