\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
That\u2019s the same argument they used in their opposition to the Clinton-era reform. It was flawed then and it\u2019s even more preposterous now.<\/p>\n
Back in 1993, the National Restaurant Association predicted that if businesses were able to write off only half the cost of their business meals (instead of 80 percent), restaurant industry sales would plummet by $3.8 billion and 165,000 jobs would be lost in just the first year.<\/p>\n
The opposite occurred. In the year after the reform went into effect on January 1, 1994, sales at full-service restaurants grew by 3.5 percent, outstripping overall U.S. economic growth, according to Census and Labor Department data. And instead of the NRA\u2019s predicted loss of 165,000 jobs, full-service restaurant payrolls grew by 132,300. That was a 4-percent increase, compared to only 3.5 percent growth in national employment.<\/p>\n
Today, when the real problem is a public health crisis that\u2019s keeping people at home, it\u2019s even more laughable that lowering taxes on business meals will do anything to help struggling restaurant owners and employees.<\/p>\n
In this time of crisis, any support for corporations should encourage executives to treat their workers well, trim their own fat paychecks \u2014 and pay for their own lunch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the world is reeling from the pandemic, corporate lobbyists have been focused on making taxpayers subsidize lavish lunches for wealthy executives. And their work has paid off\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3411"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3412,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3411\/revisions\/3412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}