If Corporations Keep Getting More Money, They’ll Create More Jobs

NOT

Trickledown — the most absurd intelligence-insulting urban legend of the past thirty years — has now been officially laid to rest. It was a scam; a trillion dollar prank. Stop falling for it!

The linked article starts out with:

“Corporate America is hoarding a massive pile of cash. It just doesn't want to spend it hiring anyone. Nonfinancial companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash, roughly one-quarter more than at the beginning of the recession.”

In a survey last month of more than a thousand chief financial officers, a majority said they’re projecting a 12% earnings increase but aren’t planning to do much hiring.

Between 1980 and 2006, the average cash-to-assets ratio for American industrial firms more than doubled. Zachary Karabell, president of River Twice Research, said:

“CEOs don't like taking risks. They kind of move in packs. There's not a whole lot that you could do to entice companies to hire. You could cut taxes on them, but they're not going to hire just because they have the extra cash, because they already have the extra cash.”

That pretty well sums it up.

The Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Trickledown — three of those four legends are only believed in by children. But millions of grown-ups (chronologically anyway) keep on believing that if we get rid of all business regulations and shower businesses with tax breaks and tax subsidies, these companies will create so many jillions of new jobs, your head will be spinning.

Wanna buy a bridge?