Sorry, I don't see how that rebuts my statement. Also, that's a gross oversimplification of what actually happened. My point is that if the windfall from dollar repatriation goes into real estate and we get another bubble, how does that help middle Americans? We can't assume that everyone will go out and put their repatriated dollars into economically productive places.

Also, I've said this before and no one has given me a good answer yet. Corporations already have record amounts of cash on hand [1], but they're largely not doing anything with it. What reason do we have to believe that getting cash back on shore would change this behavior at all? After all, taxes are on profits - companies could effectively repatriate their money tax free today by spending it on hiring more people, building factories, etc.

[1] https://www.spglobal.com/our-insights/US-Corporate-Cash-Reac...

“Mounting evidence suggests that the notion that the 2007 crash happened because people with shoddy credit borrowed to buy houses they couldn’t afford is just plain wrong. The latest comes in a new NBER working paper arguing that it was wealthy or middle-class house-flipping speculators who blew up the bubble”

https://qz.com/1064061/house-flippers-triggered-the-us-housi...