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All the comments seem to be sketpical or negative. I think it's funny if you go back right before tax reform passed and look at all the comments on articles here on HN almost all were blasting tax reform. Saying it won't work, it does not help the economy, does not create jobs, and repatriation only leads to stock buybacks and executive bonuses.

So far we've seen company after company giving substantial bonuses to all employees, announcing expansions, repatriating large amounts of capital from overseas back to America.

Funny the nerative always seems to stay negative even though facts say otherwise.

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To be fair the bonuses I've heard about have been laughable so far and accompanied by large lay offs in two cases (Walmart and Comcast).

$1,000 is not laughable to most people.

3 car payments on 2 rent payments in a lot of the country. Its like the folks poo-pooing the Youtube folks earning a couple hundred off their channels. That little bit helps quite a lot.

If you're talking about Walmart, they announced a one-time bonus of up to $1,000. Walmart estimates that it will cost about $400 million [1], and they employ 2.3 million people [2], so the average bonus is under $200. Meanwhile Walmart will save about $1.8 billion a year in taxes, every year, thanks to the tax cut.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-11/wal-mart-...

[2] https://www.google.be/search?q=number+of+employees+walmart

Also is that $1,000 if you're a 20 year employee? So for 20 years of service you get a $50 gift card worth of bonus once a year? No thanks, I'll take a permanent living wage increase instead.

Walmart said it's raising it's minimum wage in addition to bonuses. And there are 163 other companies giving bonuses. But sure, it would be nice for the employees if Walmart gave more of that savings to them.

$1000 is better PR than any advertising they could have spent, but it's not even a crumb in terms of what the company is saving.

$1000 bonus is $500 after taxes. Which means, it is $40/month or $20/paycheck. It is laughable. Most employees will get $200 bonuses, which roughly will equate to $4/paycheck.

> $20/paycheck. It is laughable

And we tech people wonder why so much of the country scoffs at our echo chamber. Maybe you've never been on the lower rung of income, but an extra $40/month can be a big deal to a lot of people. Typical median household income in 2017 was $59k, so a 2% increase is meaningful.

But don't let me get in the way of your political narrative.

Where are you getting a 50% tax rate from?

Of course not, but that doesn't mean you should take a well-timed and carefully worded press release at face value.

Let's see what actually lands in whose bank accounts before we raise the praise flags.

> I've heard about have been laughable so far

Having been poor, then living on $750/month in US for many years, a $1000 bonus is not life changing but also not laughable.

The companies certainly didn't have to give those and could have pocketed all of it.

> large lay offs in two cases (Walmart and Comcast).

Are those because of the tax incentives?

> Are those because of the tax incentives?

Decreasing taxes on retained profits increases the incentive to cut any activity that is a short term loss rather than trying to turn it around.

Because business expenses are deductible from corporate “income” taxes, they are functionally retained profits taxes.

So, yes, the tax cuts incentivized the layoffs.

Would it work to argue that increasing taxes also is an incentive for layoffs? Higher taxes, means lower profit margins, means some product lines become unsustainable so departments are closed and people are laid off.

So lower taxes means people are laid off, higher taxes means they are laid off. What tax structure would give them an incentive _not_ to lay people off?

They are basically closing off 60 Sam's Clubs. When is the last time you went to Sam's Club? Do you know anyone who goes there regularly? I don't. I had membership many years ago. Many will be converted to e-distribution centers. Guessing this has little to do with taxes and more to do with new year reorg to compete with Amazon. Otherwise, what would you do? What kind of incentives would you give to Walmart to save those Sam's Club workers?

> Having been poor, then living on $750/month in US for many years, a $1000 bonus is not life changing but also not laughable.

But for rich and poor alike, a layoff is definitely life-changing....

> But for rich and poor alike, a layoff is definitely life-changing....

Agree there, no doubt, most people would rather have a job than a $1000 bonus. But what does that mean in this context? Should Walmart keep those 60 Sam's Club stores open at a loss to avoid laying people off? Should the government subsidize them? Maybe it should break apart Amazon because a lot of those location will become e-distribution centers.

What would you have done. How would you have saved those Sam's Clubs workers? I am curious, not being sarcastic or tricky? I'd suggest breaking Amazon into regional companies like they did with AT&T. Or maybe breaking AWS away from Amazon-retail business.

> a $1000 bonus

That's up to a $1000 bonus. That's if you've been working there for 20 years.

For me the laughable part is that it's a small part of the benefits corporates will reap and some of the companies are also doing layoffs, as has been commented on by others.

You only get the full $1000 if you worked for Walmart full time for 20 years. It’s not like you would still get much if you were a typical Walmart employee.

Walmart is not the only company which gave bonuses. AT&T did the same. Apple gave employees $2500. Overall that is a quite a bit of people who got something they probably would not have gotten otherwise. Yeah, it would be nice to have free healthcare, basic income other things. But to someone making minimum age $1000 is a nice holiday gift. Why not be happy for them?

I'm pretty sure no one who was making minimum wage got a $1000 bonus (including at Walmart, who would be making min wage after being there for 20 years? Sounds like a store manager or district sup to me). So I'm not happy for them because they don't exist.

AT&T claimed that it paid the bonus to 200k employees https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/20/tax-reform-reaction-att-is-g...

They have a total of about 250k employees worldwide: https://www.att.com/Common/about_us/pdf/att_btn.pdf.

Pretty sure there 80% of their workforce are not district supervisors and store managers.

Comcast said it paid the bonus to 100k employees "that are eligible and not in executive roles".

> So I'm not happy for them because they don't exist.

Good news, I think I found them!

I’m pretty sure AT&T and Comcast don’t employ many min wage workers, especially not like Walmart does, if any at all.

> Comcast said it paid the bonus to 100k employees "that are eligible and not in executive roles".

But neither did they say they were making min wage. And then ...

> Good news, I think I found them!

You aren’t making a valid inference here, it honestly feels like something Trump would claim.

> I’m pretty sure AT&T and Comcast don’t employ many min wage workers, especially not like Walmart does, if any at all.

AT&T has a lot of door-to-door people: technicians, sales "consultants". Also people in call centers. Those are a lot closer to minimum wage than what you are implying - that only managers and big wigs got those bonuses.

> You aren’t making a valid inference here

The claim was you couldn't be happy for them because basically only managers got those. I did some legwork and found that it's probably not true. You were looking for a reason to cheer and be happy for them, so I found one.

> it honestly feels like something Trump would claim.

I usually prefer a conversational style with exclamation points and allegories. But I think you're not in the mood for that. Sorry, I should be more formal perhaps.

Also not sure why we are talking about Trump?. But since you brought him up (invoked the Devil's name!). Do you think he is responsible for these tax cuts and the bonuses or it is mostly a charade?

> a $1000 bonus

For 20+ year employees.

At 10 years the bonus was, IIRC, $190. IMHO, "laughable".

Walmart is not the only company which did this. Other companies raised their minimum wages and also gave $1000 or $2500 bonuses (Apple did that too I think). Why not be happy for them they got something for the holidays.

Sure we are all software developers expecting 6 figure salaries, RSUs, options and $50k bonuses every year, $1000 is nothing, I get it. Though someone working at an AT&T store in Columbus, OH or Kansas would be quite happy to get $1000. it's disappointing and I'd wish they all had large salaries and thought $1000 is insulting just like we do.

In general we would rather have free healthcare, and other things we like to talk about here, but those probably are not going to happen in this country at his point in time. But why not be happy for these people at least or say that it is nice for Apple to pay some taxes and invest in US as opposed to stashing it away for another 20 years.

A $1000 bonus, after taxes, is not a $1000 bonus. While an extra ~$700 might be a nice windfall for someone making minimum wage, it's hardly a life-changing event that will have an durable impact in their life.

What companies are doing is exactly what they were expected to do: make some "feel good" moves for a bit to validate the tax plan as a "resounding success" until the midterm elections, then do whatever they want. I've seen these incredible displays of "corporate goodwill" after tax breaks like this to know they are always temporary and self-serving (I grew up in a country where these "booms" happened like clockwork every 8 or so years.)

> $1000 bonus is not life changing but also not laughable.

> The companies certainly didn't have to give those and could have pocketed all of it.

Now imagine if the tax give-away would have gone completely to workers.

That would be life changing.

Bank of America, AT&T, Comcast, Walmart, Jetblue, Southwest are just a few who announced $1,000 bonuses. Not laughable to middle class Americans. Aren't middle class who liberals fight for?

Source: http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/11/news/economy/tax-law-raises-...

https://thinkprogress.org/walmart-fires-thousands-after-bonu...

This is #fakenews. Walmart did not fire employees, Sam's club a separately owned subsidiary did, mainly because the Sam's club business is not doing well and had to make hard decisions. It is widely accepted that Walmart had no idea Sam's club was going to do the round of layoffs when they announced their wage increase and bonuses. Also, thinkprogress really should not be cited as a source of quality unbiased news.

> It is widely accepted that Walmart had no idea Sam's club was going to do the round of layoffs when they announced their wage increase and bonuses.

Any source for that assertion?

Sam’s club is owned and operated by Walmart, at least according to wiki. That Walmart’s retail operation carries the same name as the corporation isn’t unusual. So this is fake news like the rest of what Trump calls fake news is (meaning, it’s actually true).

> This is #fakenews.

Please don't; it breaks the HN guideline against name-calling in arguments. Your comment would be fine without the first, and perhaps also the last, sentence.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If anybody posted an article from Fox News here on HN, how quickly would that be flagged and commented on? Dang as a moderator you really should be be unbiased right?

Pretty sure there has been the occasional solid submission from Fox urls here over the years. I'm on my phone so can't easily check.

Crappy articles and solid articles don't map to entire sites very easily. Even highly politicized sites or low grade tabloids sometimes produce the kind of pieces we want here. We moderate HN for article quality, not website or publication quality.

Relative to the tax savings those companies will enjoy and the fact it's a one time payment instead of salary increase? IIRC Comcast will end up paying about $150 million in bonuses which will only be a fraction of the first year tax savings for them.

If that's what this big hoopla ultimately amounts to then it will be highly disappointing. The fact that we are celebrating $1000 bonuses from corporations that have been enjoying record profits (for the most part) recently is disheartening. Something is better than nothing I guess.

It's very telling that most of the announcements of benefits to workers purportedly attributable to the tax cuts are in the form of one-time bonuses. The corporate tax cuts are ongoing; the bonuses to workers are one-time. These are nothing more than PR moves. Moreover, the headlines are misleading in some cases; for example, Walmart's touted "$1,000 bonus" was actually $200-$1,000 depending on years of service. Only workers with 20+ years of service are getting $1,000.

There have been a few announcements of actual wage increases that corporate PR departments have tried to attribute to the tax cuts, but in every one I've looked at, it was clear the wage increase was just the result of normal market forces and dressed up to pretend it was the result of tax cuts. For example, a few banks (including Wells Fargo) announced a minimum wage increase to $15/hour, but Bank of America announced that same change at the end of 2016, before any tax cuts.

> These are nothing more than PR moves.

They’re certainly good for PR, and perhaps that’s the primary intention, but employees are benefitting from it.

Sure, but throwing large amounts of tax breaks at corporations in the hopes that a few scraps will trickle down to workers as PR efforts is inefficient. There are much more efficient ways of achieving even better outcomes for workers.

Right, but imagine if instead, they gave them a raise instead of a one time bonus? That is how you actually benefit workers.

Raises are likely to be more useful to employees than bonuses, particularly over the long term. These bonuses don’t preclude the possibility of more bonuses down the road, however. It’s unclear at this point exactly how things are going to shake out along those lines.

Walmart employs about 2.3 million people. At $1000 per employee that's $2,300,000,000 going back into the economy.

Now, if Walmart gave everyone who worked there a $1 raise. With about 1.5 million full-time employees working around 1700 hours per year (US average 2016) that would mean about $2,550,000,000. So that bonus is almost equivalent to a temporary raise in terms of benefits.

That is just for full-time employees. A blanket $1 raise would probably come out to about $4,000,000,000 each year that Walmart may not have if the tax cuts are removed by the next administration, which they very well could be.

Walmart has said that the bonuses will cost $400M, so that's not $2.3B going into the economy. Only some employees are eligible for a $1,000 bonus: some will receive between $200 and $1,000, and employees who earned less than $11/hour prior to the raises are not eligible for a bonus.

> It's very telling that most of the announcements of benefits to workers purportedly attributable to the tax cuts are in the form of one-time bonuses.

It's sad that it's one time. It was probably the quickest way to reward people around the holidays. For many it's a few car payments and maybe a month worth of rent. Yeah it is peanuts for anyone living in on the coasts or writing software or both.

> Only workers with 20+ years of service are getting $1,000.

Walmart wasn't the only company which did it. Sure it was a PR stunt just as much, and it would be nicer to have other things like universal healthcare, but at this point that's a nice fantasy and this is something that made people's live better.

You seem to have glossed over the poster's main point, which is that many the companies announcing those bonuses, in fact many of the ones you've listed are also laying off thousands of worker at the same time.

The criticism of these companies then is that they have just received massive financial windfalls via the GOP's tax cut programs and have portrayed normal corporate activities as signs of corporate largesse due to the tax-cut they've received. Should we tie the layoffs announced by these firms to their tax-cuts as well?

Walmart, for example, has struggled for years to attract employees due to the low wages they offer, wages so low that a good percentage of their labor pool is subsidized by taxpayers. When you combine that situation with the massive lay-offs and closures of Sam's Clubs the raising of wages seems to be less a generous overture driven by the tax-cut than perhaps a recognition that they must offer higher wages or continue to stagnate and fail.

I've also read that the bonus offered by AT&T is on the low-end of the bonuses offered every holiday to their employees. That's anecdotal though.

If we are defending $1,000 one-time bonuses, why not just pass a law requiring these companies to pay $1,000 to their workers?

This is a bit of a reductio ad absurdum, but the point here is, what cost are we willing to pay as a society in exchange for the $1,000 one-time bonuses? This hypothetical law would be a terrible precedent for businesses, but would it be worse for the people receiving these bonuses than the actual tax plan?

And in order to answer whether it would or wouldn't, we need to look at the merits of the actual tax plan's substance, not the fact that it has (supposedly) caused people to get $1,000 bonuses.

What about Walmart also increasing their hourly pay? [0]

[0] - https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/11/walmart-to-boost-starting-wa...

https://thinkprogress.org/walmart-fires-thousands-after-bonu...

That's intentionally context dropping by Think Progress.

Walmart's Sam's Club business is not doing well in competition with Costco. It hasn't been doing very well for years now. You'll notice the Think Progress article avoids any discussion of the context of the Sam's Club business from which the workers were fired.

Here's the hint: Sam's Club closed 63 locations. Do you think they did that to save money on the workers? They didn't just fire workers at the locations, they closed 63 locations.

Just shows how supply side economics doesn't save jobs.

Which coincides with state and local minimum wage increases; see http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/29/news/economy/2018-minimum-wa.... More increases are coming; several states are phasing in increases over multiple years. They're just getting ahead of the minimum wage increases and trying to get good PR out of it ("no, we didn't do this because we were forced to, we did it because we love our workers. cut our taxes more!").

That probably has more to do with low unemployment.

Imagine if personal income taxes were drastically lowered instead? then, walmart could keep the same pay, but ALL its customers (not just its employees) now have more take home pay to spend at walmart.

Personal income taxes were lowered by a pretty decent amount

And that's exactly the reason why America thinks that the people who live on the coasts are out of touch elitists.

$1000 is a gigantic bonus for people.

You're conflating a few different things here.

The main objection to tax reform was that incredibly rich individuals are going to pay a lot less tax, and the middle classes will (once the temporary cuts expire) end up paying more. All of these complaints about the individual tax rates have very little to do with the impact of these corporate tax changes.

And let's face it: it's far too early to say that these tax changes have been either a success or a failure. The way the reforms were passed - another source of legitimate complaint - sidestepped all the usual assessments and calculations in order to pass something, anything as quickly as possible. So we're flying in the dark here. Yes, these short term bonuses are a positive sign. But who knows what the impact of lower tax revenue will be on other services (e.g.) Walmart employees depend on. Will they still be happy with a $200 bonus if they find out their Medicare coverage gets cut?

> Funny the nerative always seems to stay negative even though facts say otherwise.

You're relying on a handful of anecdotes, of which at least several don't look so good upon close inspection, to infer a larger economic benefit. Sounds like it's just narrative vs. narrative.

Tax reform isn't the force driving Apple to do this.

Apple is doing these things because they believe it will eventually help their bottom line. That's how corporations work and make decisions.

Granted, tax reform may have been a contributing factor in opening the door to this type of reinvestment in the US, but it is way too early to declare these actions by Apple as a victory for tax reform.

The thing is that those values would have needed to be repatriated at some point anyways (with the added benefits for everyone). So if the repatriation tax would never have been lowered, at some point cooperations would have had to deal with it and pay. But as everyone knew that at some point in history the GOP would come in power and lower the tax, there was no incentive the repatriate with the higher burden as it was monetarily advantageous to wait. So in the end, those benefits would have happened at some point in any case, just only like this with lowered public benefit.

HN seems to be very anti Trump and looking to satisfy confirmation bias or to promote the narrative that the Trump admin can't get anything right.

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