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 This was meant to be a poison pill that everyone expected would get repealed before it went into effect, but efforts to repeal it fell apart.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/
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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.
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.
I won’t! And don’t forget to vote with your dollars and buy local whenever possible. Local owners spend money in local towns.
They need to free up the cash to pay the CEO bonuses somehow.
Fucking seriously. My company (in the tech industry) has gone through a few rounds of layoffs recently. We keep hearing about how things are absolutely in the shitter and how we’re all struggling to survive tough times.
Then they shared their financials last week and we had a 20% profit margin!! I was expecting a negative profit based on all the layoffs and doom and gloom. Wtf!
It’s at the non-profits too. My work turned around suddenly in November claiming there was no money/funding for the work that had already been approved and highly praised. Gas lighting. Turning (or trying to) turn our colleagues against us. Yelling and crying (I kid you not, I was horrified at the time). Calling us disrespective and divisive (because we were trying to fix access/health and safety issues and had not only been given the go ahead, it was incorporated into our strategic plan in the summer and our boss repeatedly said that funding wasn’t an issue at the time).
Cue 3 weeks later in our AGM, where the auditors come in to talk about the financials.
“We have to be careful not to give the illusion that we’re hoarding money because we have so much in the bank”.
All because my bosses feelings were fucking hurt and she’s the definition of a fragile neo-liberal white lady who thinks she’s a radical leftist.
(We’ve now been in mediation for three months, surpriiiiise, lol. And I have lawyers on hand in case they don’t get their heads out of their asses, which seems more and more likely as time goes by becauze they broke labour law and my province’s human rights code)
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.
