Thread regarding Verizon Communications Inc. layoffs

This had nothing to do with Trump or "trickle down". This company was mismanaged strategically with terrible investments and failure to see the landscape around us.

When a restaurant is failing you simplify the menu and do only a few dishes, but do them well. We were adding to the menu so much we looked like cheesecake factory with no direction.

Hans will get his bonus while you're blaming the wrong people for doing what had to be done to turn things around.

@e1 you must have asked ChatGPT and it confirmed my statement. lol Corporate Taxes do NOT benefit the middle class. But republicans, independents, and libertarians just LOVE thinking that. You guys scream that people advocating for reducing corporate greed are Marxist, but who takes tax breaks, subsidies, and get rid of DEI programs bc they are afraid of the POTUS? Not the Marxist, we aren’t asking for handouts like corporations.

I wish you nothing but the best of luck and hopefully stop demeaning people bc they disagree with you. And I own a lot, not just capital, but respect and kindness. I hope you achieve that someday.

@an Most households are 2 income. Wife and I are approximately $235 K. Your numbers were AI generated and flawed but you knew but they fit your Marxist ideology. You will own nothing and be happy near term so not to worry.

@a8 IF corporations’ taxes are cut from 32% to 25%… how would the US make up that loss of tax revenue??

👀👀 YOU, ME, and the normal people arguing on this thread.

Ask ChatGPT, who benefits the most from corporate tax cuts? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the workers, it’s the Shareholders/Owners. Hence the 200% CEO pay and increasing gap between the middle class and the wealthy.

They are playing in your faces and you are cheering them on. Baffling.

@ah the latter part of your comment is simply not true.

The yelling from Democrats was earlier this year when DOGE was firing govt workers. The Democrats were protesting with the workers… when was the last time Mitch McConnell and JD Vance stood in protest with workers?

@am Let’s stick to facts instead of buzzwords, because the economics here aren’t on your side.

1. The middle class absolutely does fund the lion’s share of the federal budget.

Here’s the breakdown using IRS and CBO data (these don’t change year to year by much):
• Middle-class and upper-middle-class households (roughly $50k–$500k)
→ Contribute ~51–55% of all federal tax revenue.
• The top 1%
→ Contribute ~26% of federal income taxes, but pay far less in payroll taxes and almost nothing in consumption taxes.
• The bottom 50%
→ Pay 2–3% of total income taxes, but they contribute through payroll taxes, sales taxes, and local taxes, which hit lower incomes the hardest.

When you add up income tax + payroll tax + corporate tax + sales tax + excise tax (the full federal revenue picture), the story is very simple:

👉 The middle class is the tax base of the United States.

Not billionaires.
Not the bottom 50%.
The middle 40–60% pays the bulk of what funds the country.

You don’t get a $5 trillion federal budget off the backs of people making $20k… and you don’t get it off billionaires hiding money in tax shelters either.

1. Billionaires don’t “pay the lion’s share”their rate is higher but their effective burden is lower.

The wealthy use:
• stepped-up basis
• pass-through deductions
• preferential capital gains
• carried interest
• corporate write-offs
• offshore holdings
• real estate depreciation loops
• stock-based compensation loopholes

…which means you can have a billionaire with a 3–8% effective tax rate while a middle-class W-2 worker pays 20–30% with no ability to hide or defer anything.

1. “Poor people don’t offer jobs” is a made-up talking point.

Jobs are created by:
• consumer demand
• public investment
• infrastructure
• technology cycles

NOT by the personal generosity of the wealthy.

The middle class is the economy. Their spending drives 70% of GDP.

When corporations lay off tens of thousands of them, the economy shrinks.

1. Verizon workers are not “the top 10%.”

Let’s do some math:
• Top 10% of the U.S. starts around $190k household, not individual.
• Most Verizon employees (union or management) make $60k–$120k firmly middle class.
• You are closer to the bottom 90% than to a billionaire by a mile.

A billionaire is literally 10,000× richer than someone with a $100k job.

1. “The poor don’t pay taxes” is the biggest myth in U.S. politics.

Low-income Americans pay:
• Payroll taxes
• Sales taxes
• Gas taxes
• Property taxes (through rent)
• Fees, fines, tolls, excise taxes

Lower earners often pay a higher share of their income in taxes than the wealthy, because these taxes don’t scale down with income.

1. Calling people ‘Marxists’ doesn’t change math.

Nothing you said has anything to do with Marxism, socialism, communism, or any other ideology.

Everything being discussed is basic:
• fiscal math
• tax distribution
• corporate behavior
• labor policy
• wage stagnation vs profits

That’s economics, not “red books.”

This thread is hilarious. A bunch of Co-mies frantically trying to pass out little red books.
Never had a poor individual offer me a job.
If you’ve worked for this company for a few decades, you ARE close to that 10% in comparison to the rest of the nation and that is whether Manager or Union.

In addition, the wealthy pay the lion’s share of taxes where the lower income levels pay little to none or get a refund. Having no skin in the game has a greater negative effect on the nation as a whole.

Sell your cr-p Marxist mantra somewhere else.

The Dems left the working class for the costal collegiate elite and tech bros a few decades ago.
The chickens have come home to roost.

Biden hangover economy. Fed holding rates high for political reasons, Trump derangement exists everywhere. May 2026, new Fed chair and this economy will be hot.

@ae that’s BS. The Democrats haven’t been for the working class since the 1960s. Wake up, they’re funded and cater to a different constituency but it certainly isn’t the average person.

Now lets be serious. Post ONE democrat thats spoken out about these job cuts. Post one video of cnn screaming about this. You cant. They are all investors and want the stock to go up AND they started the mass off shoring of jobs AND are ushering in illegals to take the jobs we have left. Get off the D train and get to the root of the problem.

@ae You’re actually proving my point for me. I’m not saying both parties are the same or that their policies have the same impact. What I’m saying is that workers don’t get the protections we all need because we let culture-war distractions dominate the conversation while the material issues jobs, wages, housing, and economic security, barely get airtime.

The things most Americans agree on worker protections, job security in an AI economy, affordable housing, wages that keep up with inflation should be the center of political pressure. But they aren’t, because we get pulled into identity fights and outrage cycles instead of demanding real policy commitments.

So my point is simple: stop letting politicians bait us with culture wars. Start forcing every candidate, red or blue, to answer the same three questions:

1.  What are you doing to protect workers from layoffs, automation, and corporate consolidation?
2.  What are you doing to make housing affordable again?
3.  What are you doing to raise wages in line with inflation?

If a candidate can’t answer those, all the other noise doesn’t matter. If they can, then that’s someone the 90% should rally around because those issues cut across race, party, and every culture-war line they use to divide us.

@a3 agreed on getting united against the greedy elites.
One thing that must stop is the out of control immigration. Between the EB-1, H1-B and L-1 visas, companies have been bringing in about 8K skilled workers per month since 1991! What if companies first hired native talent?

@a6 I think this is a very naive response. Which party is talking about building up safety nets for workers losing their jobs bc of AI? Which party campaigned on investing into high speed internet across the USA? Which party wanted to invest into microchips? It definitely wasn’t the red. It was the blue.

Equating the blue party to the red party when I mentioned three policy that could directly impact the telecom and tech industries for the good came from the blue party. Not the red. The red pass culture war laws, pass tax cuts for corporations, and cuts to safety nets. How is that even equate to the blue party.

Is there corruption in both parties, of course. Human are corrupt period, but this thinking is why our country suffers, Americans can’t seem to assign blame to the ones causing the bleeding, the uber wealthy and the red party “taking back their country.”

I hope everyone finds another great job and I’m so sorry corporate profit is more important.

@a2 Build Back Better worked out great! My town had two bridges replaces, the highway resurfaced, sewer system capacity expanded, and the rail road tracks all got new ties and lines, and federal funding from Build Back Better paid for a good chunk of it, so there's that.

I think we have a uniparty system.
Both parties vote and represent folks with $$$.
Be it a $100M CEO, or a foreign sovereign fund, or some random country that pumps $$$ into our political system.
Trickle down sounds good but it does not work, nobody can calculate the ROI on tax cuts, they can tell you a story but cannot prove anything.

All I know is my benefits are deteriorating every year.

All I know, is that when adjusted for inflation I am making 10% less than in 2015 when Verizon hired me.

All I know that CEO total comp went 200% up in since 2015 when Verizon hired me.

All I know that folks with millions invested in the market went up 9000% (yep, 9thousand percent) since 1985, this is a inflation adjusted number. S&P and NYSE went up 3000% percent. If you did not have millions back then you are fu---d today.

All I know that an average US family has 100K in the market, the market going up does ja-----t for them.

All I know is that immiseration of the masses always end up in a revolution.

@a8 Tax cuts don’t disappear into thin air they have to be paid for somewhere. When corporations and high-earners get large cuts, the missing revenue is replaced by shifting costs onto everyone else. That’s why the 2017 bill was scored as adding trillions to the deficit while reducing funding for things like healthcare, job programs, and working-family benefits.

So yes, it does come out of our pockets not as a direct line item, but through reduced services, higher costs, and fewer protections for the people actually doing the work. Corporations got record cuts, record profits, and record stock buybacks. Workers got layoffs, automation, and “do more with less.”

Personally, I’d rather my taxes support regular people than subsidize corporations that clearly don’t need help and aren’t passing any of it down. But Go off King.

THIS
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the top climbs higher and the middle gets squeezed until it almost disappears.

Trickle down has been horse isht for 40+ years. Back when this country had a middle class we had the very rich taxed at a rate of 70+ percent, and we had about 1/3rd of the country unionized. Today we have media outlets telling you're a a radical to question why a hundred million dollar a year CEO is shrinking or outsourcing the workforce, and not to question why a guy who is on his way to a TRILLION dollars in net worth (his DOGE majesty, Elon Musk) is going to decide if our SS and Medicare are waste and fraud.

@OP Tax cuts don't come out of our pockets. We are just taxed less when there is a cut. I'm sure your leftist union loving teachers never taught you basic economics when they were indoctrinating you.

@a2 💯

Honestly? You stop playing red vs blue by shifting the fight to where the actual leverage is. The top 10% wins because they keep the rest of us divided. The only way anything changes is when people in the 90% start pushing for the same protections regardless of party, around jobs, wages, healthcare, and corporate accountability.

It’s not about agreeing on everything. It’s about agreeing on the basics: nobody wants to get laid off, nobody wants their wages stagnating while CEO pay skyrockets, nobody wants their job replaced by AI with no safety net. Those are shared interests.

The “answer” is building pressure around those shared interests so politicians, no matter their party, can’t ignore them. When the 90% shows up aligned on material issues not culture wars that’s when protections actually get passed.

@a3 THIS. Stop with the damn red/blue sh-t. Both parties su-k. Our politicians are not there to "serve" the people no matter how hard they campaign that they will.

The 116k added jobs were mostly in healthcare and hospitality.

@a1 I get what you’re saying, but one politician was never going to “fix” this, Kamala included. The bigger truth is that the bottom 90% has way more in common with each other than with the top 10% calling the shots.

Until we stop doing red vs blue and start pushing together on jobs, wages, and corporate accountability, we’re all just running in the same hamster wheel while the millionaires and billionaires cash out. The system should work for people, not the other way around.

Well. You had Build Back Better. Other than the Trillions in debt how’d that work out??