Can you believe we're getting away with this?

With last year's corporate tax cuts, Republican lawmakers were finally able to step up and deliver on their most cherished of theories: The more you cut a rich person's taxes, the better off the common rabble will be. Lobbyists for the uppermost class have been extremely insistent on this for decades, would-be wonks like Rep. Paul Ryan went to the trouble of drafting up visual aides with big, bold letters saying so, the party finally had a president who would sign anything they put in front of them and there ya go.

It's been nearly a year, so how's that working out? It's working out exactly as actual economic experts predicted; a short-lived stimulus that is already receding, in exchange for long-term structural problems that will threaten the economy, exacerbate inequality and screw up social services for a generation.

The New York Times has a rundown. The short version is that great gobs of the promised corporate re-investment are instead being translated into stock buybacks and other payouts to shareholders–which is what analysts predicted.

Workers, however, continue to be eaten alive. Which is also what analysts predicted.

Many companies also said they would use tax savings to create jobs. But the Just Capital research finds that, since the tax cuts were passed, the 1,000 largest public companies have actually reduced employment, on balance.

As for the deficit? Ah, what can we even say. Back during the Great Recession the Republican Party was aghast at the notion of stimulating the economy via short-term government spending, no matter how many jobs had been lost or how long the crisis might drag on. It was all garbage, and they were lying, and if you see any pundit explaining away their actions during the recession compared to their actions now without noting that it was garbage and they were lying that pundit is Bad and Wrong and is probably trying to sell you something. Because while Republicans insisted that stimulus during a recession was an insufficient reason for burdening the federal government with more debt, the Paul Ryan brigade lit the damn budget on fire with this one.