Facebook Co-Founder Wants To Repeal Trump Tax Cuts, Replace It With $500 Per Month Worker Stipend
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes wants the United States government to repeal President Donald Trump’s recent $1.5 trillion tax cuts, and he has a different idea for what to do instead.
According to a CNBC report, Hughes, the author of Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn, crunched the numbers and found that for less than one-third of the cost of this tax cut, the U.S. could instead give workers a $500 monthly stipend. That equates to $6,000 yearly — far more than what typical workers see with the recent reduction in payroll taxes.
While the tax cuts were touted as helping everybody, Forbes recently reported that instead of passing the benefits on to workers by raising wages and adding more positions, companies instead engaged in stock buybacks benefitting shareholders instead of workers.
Trump initially tweeted about the lower taxes writing, “TAX CUTS will increase investment in the American economy and in U.S. workers, leading to higher growth, higher wages, and more JOBS!”
However, it has been reported that most workers haven’t noted a significant change in their financial status as a result of the massive cuts. Any tax savings for many people simply offset the rise in insurance premiums.
Hughes believes not even one-third of citizens benefit from the Trump tax cuts. In a Squawk Box interview, he said that everybody else is “making the same amount that they made in 1978.”
The federal government could give U.S. workers a stipend of $500 per month by repealing the Trump tax cuts, says Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. https://t.co/3EJ9IjkRqd
— CNBC (@CNBC) October 18, 2018
Of course, the cost of living has risen dramatically over the past 40 years, according to Hughes.
“If we invested in the American people, we would see economic growth.”
In this vein, California Senator Kamala Harris introduced a bill called Lift the Middle Class Act. The act would provide up to a $500 monthly stipend for lower-income families. Hughes tweeted about the new act earlier today, writing that Democratic candidates are “ready to go big to repeal Trump’s tax bill and use the savings to provide monthly cash transfers to the families who need it most.”
The support for this new idea is not bi-partisan. Democrats support it, while Republicans vehemently oppose the idea of what is essentially a universal income.
For his part, Hughes and Mark Zuckerberg met at Harvard as dormmates. He served as an early spokesperson for the social media network, and Hughes also went on to earn his degree from the Ivy League school. In 2008, Hughes left Facebook after making a fortune, and he went on to work on then-president Barack Obama’s campaign. For Hughes, being involved in Facebook’s beginnings was a “lucky break.”
