Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Tax Break Failed to Add Jobs

Here's a giant surprise for you. A tax break lobbied for by drug makers and touted by the Bush administration as a way to create jobs, failed to actually create jobs:

Drug makers were the biggest beneficiaries of the amnesty program, repatriating about $100 billion in foreign profits and paying only minimal taxes. But the companies did not create many jobs in return. Instead, since 2005 the American drug industry has laid off tens of thousands of workers in this country.

If you guessed that most of that money turned into corporate profits, you might be onto something.

Oh, and in addition, those drug companies are utilizing legal tax loopholes to shelter most of their foreign profits from taxation in America. But of course we shouldn't be considering universal healthcare, as that will stifle drug innovation.

2 comments:

adam said...

When will conservatives understand that being pro-business isn't anymore "free market capitalism" than government regulation?

Nat-Wu said...

Hey guess what! Only economists who exist to serve their Republican masters say that tax breaks create jobs. The rest already know that levels of taxation have little to do with job creation and that we could tax corporations at a much higher rate without doing any harm!