People who think tax breaks will mean increased hiring just don't understand how business works.
A company doesn't hire people because they have extra money. They hire people because they believe those people will generate them more money than they cost (and enough more money to be worth the opportunity cost). Sure, tax breaks might change the math a little bit if the math is close, but this is pretty rare.
You make it sound like some generic class of people have dopey business expectations. But in this specific situation AT&T promised to hire people as an inducement for the massive tax gift. Criticisms are rightly directed at CED Randall Stepto who promised to turn our (we taxpayers) gift to AT&T into 7K hard hat jobs for every $1B of tax giveaways.
Even then, not always... only if they think hiring more people will help them grow faster. If they don't have productive work that helps the business to give to someone, they aren't going to hire someone no matter what.
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People who think tax breaks will mean increased hiring just don't understand how business works.
A company doesn't hire people because they have extra money. They hire people because they believe those people will generate them more money than they cost (and enough more money to be worth the opportunity cost). Sure, tax breaks might change the math a little bit if the math is close, but this is pretty rare.
You make it sound like some generic class of people have dopey business expectations. But in this specific situation AT&T promised to hire people as an inducement for the massive tax gift. Criticisms are rightly directed at CED Randall Stepto who promised to turn our (we taxpayers) gift to AT&T into 7K hard hat jobs for every $1B of tax giveaways.
More specifically, hiring occurs if a business is growing, i.e. due to increased consumer demand.
Even then, not always... only if they think hiring more people will help them grow faster. If they don't have productive work that helps the business to give to someone, they aren't going to hire someone no matter what.