Wages Have Decreased & Workers Are Not ‘Better Off Now’

Yesterday, Paul Ryan claimed Americans are “Better Off Now” as a result of the Trump tax law, but that’s just another lie. The only people who are better off after the passage of the Trump tax law are CEOs, the wealthiest Americans, and even some Republican congressmen – but workers are not better off. Here are the latest examples:

 

Despite Republican promises, real wages have not increased over the last year, and real wages for production workers have actually decreased.

 

Bureau of Labor Statistics: “Real average hourly earnings were unchanged, seasonally adjusted, from June 2017 to June 2018.”

 

Los Angeles Times: “Real average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers actually decreased by 0.2% over the past year, the BLS said..”

 

A Republican congressman bought himself a yacht on the same day he voted to give himself a $2.1 million tax cut from the Trump tax law.

 

Florida Politics: “According to the disclosure, Buchanan spent between $1 million and $5 million purchasing an Ocean Alexander yacht on Nov. 16, 2017, the same day he joined 226 other Republicans and no Democrats in voting for the first draft of the ‘Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.’”

 

CEOs have used windfalls from the Trump tax law to benefit themselves and their wealthy shareholders, in all-time record numbers, not workers.

 

CNN Money: “Flooded with cash from the Republican tax cut, US public companies announced a whopping $436.6 billion worth of stock buybacks, according to research firm TrimTabs. Not only is that most ever, it nearly doubles the previous record of $242.1 billion, which was set during the first three months of the year.”

 

CBS News: “Worker wages drop while companies spend billions to boost stocks.”

 

A new economic analysis says the Trump tax law will fall well short of the economic growth Republicans promised.

 

Reuters: “The economic boost from U.S. President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut will probably fall well short of most analysts’ ‘overly optimistic’ expectations, two economists wrote Monday in the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank’s latest Economic Letter.”