Despite Booming Economy And Record Profits Google, Amazon, Microsoft And More Lay Off Over 42,000 So Far In 2024::Despite a booming U.S. economy and significant advancements in the tech sector, including a robust performance by companies like Nvidia Corp. and a thriving artificial intelligence (AI) industry, tech companies have continued to lay off workers at an alarming rate in 2024. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index has shown an impressive uptick and the U.S. economy added 353,000 jobs in January, outpacing economists’ forecasts. However, this overall economic strength masks a wave of layoffs in the tech sector
Whew! We dodged a bullet! Imagine what would have happened if we Raised Their Taxes or the Minimum Wage!
I think a big reason these companies are laying people off is because we actually did increase their taxes. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (Trump’s only major legislation passed) changed the rules on R&D deductions after 2022 to balance the other cuts and allow Senate Republicans to pass the bill without a supermajority (through Reconciliation). This was meant to be a poison pill that everyone expected would get repealed before it went into effect, but efforts to repeal it fell apart.
Required R&D cost amortization
Under I.R.C. §174, a current deduction is allowed for research and experimental expenditures paid or incurred in tax years beginning before 2022. The TCJA amended I.R.C. §174 such that, beginning in 2022, firms that invest in R&D are no longer able to currently deduct their R&D expenses. Rather, they must amortize their costs over five years, starting with the midpoint of the taxable year in which the expense is paid or incurred. For costs attributable to research conducted outside the U.S., such costs must be amortized over 15 years. This will be the first time since 1954 that companies will have to amortize their R&D costs, rather than immediately deduct those expenses.
https://pro.bloombergtax.com/brief/rd-tax-credit-and-deducting-rd-expenditures/
I sure am glad we get these large corporations so much in the way of legislation, relaxed regulation, and financial incentives. Surely these will guarantee loads of FUTURE hiring when it will all start trickling down.
Right? Right?
For trickle-down economics to work, there would need to be a tax structure in place that ratio’d your businesses net worth to your number of employees. And then have tiers. And at a certain tier, you’re just 99% taxed. This way when the robots take over, it generates wealth for the masses instead of the few.
…until lobbyists play the “robots count as employees” card. Which inevitably leads to wealthy individuals propping up a robot to run for president. Which is how you get skynet.
Ok I’m gonna go make coffee.
Thank god we gave a massive corporate tax cut. This way they have more money to pay their employees
Don’t forget they pay little to no taxes and even some are getting money for negative tax. We pay something like 154 billion to those top companies, according to another article I read on Lemmy today.
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What‘s the point of not regulating them when they don‘t create new jobs? I mean putting congressmen self interest aside, they should be broken up. No point in keeping them together.
The US economy is booming?
In every way that matters to corps, yes.
For the rest of us who are getting laid off, not so much.
Profitability is up, but that’s partially because of the layoffs not despite them.
GDP is doing just fine, its just that there is a class warfare where wages are being suppressed significantly by corporations with State help and so most people are getting poorer as the wealthiest get richer faster than ever before.
Maybe it’s due to over hiring, maybe due to the fact that some those people had jobs that were replaced by AI bots, it does not really matter, right now the market is fucked and good luck finding a job if you were laid off.
