Seriati, I'm basing my opinion on analyses like this one, along with the general consensus among economists.
Well, I don't find it terribly impressive. Maybe because it's trivially easy to find "experts" who will state their own views persuasively while not really responding to the other side on point.
Let's think about what she said (and, she's definitely a progressive based on her history). She said that she thinks the claims of how much the wages would increase are overstated, not that they aren't true. She admits that how much of the benefits go to wages versus shareholders is a topic of debate among economists (by the way I never said otherwise), yet she doesn't even try to directly refute the connection. She acknowledges both the high tax rates and the repatriation problem.
Her primary argument for why wages
may not increase is summarized as follows, "There are important reasons to doubt that these mechanisms will be particularly strong at present, and there is little empirical evidence to suggest that these effects will contribute much to wages." That's pretty much an acknowledgment of the link, and an opinion based argument on how big the swing will be (the reference to lack of empirical evidence, is what in left leaning causes would be rephrased, as "promising research shows reasons for optimism and a need for more study").
She questions that lower taxes will lead to new investment. Her argument, we subsidize debt and corporations already borrow. They sure do, as I mentioned above, they use US debt to boost global tax advantaged profits and reduce troubling tax disadvantaged profits, this accelerates the investment of capital outside the US. She cites to record corporate profits (with reference to GDP, a favorite to create misleading statistics), which should increase wages (and by the way, most predictions are that wages will increase in the near future as a result of the profit levels), without really acknowledging any of the policy decisions that have caused actual corporate decision makers not to reinvest. The regulatory climate of the Obama administration certainly contributed to the "war chest" phenomenum.
She has a fair point that greater investment may put more people out of work. Of course that doesn't answer that those remaining will have higher wages (which is the claim that was made). Nor does it answer the fact that as the economy has been increasing unemployment has been heading down. But it is fair to consider whether the historically proven link between investment and employee wages will continue in the future. Do you not however find it curious that this proposition - for which there is even less empirical evidence - is something that shows up as worthy of consideration by her, but the politically less advantageous one (from her view point) doesn't have enough empirical evidence? She's not writing a paper here, she's writing an opinion piece.
So end of day her conclusion is that the scale of the worker benefit is disputable. Like wow. Almost all economic predictions are disputable. She didn't do anything though to undermine the claims that the two concepts are linked.
But, of course, what I was trying to find out was what you based your opinion on, which is why I asked for better references (since the ones you linked to I found to be somewhat lacking).
Well generally I pick references for clarity, and if possible for clarity. Opinions are based on extensive reading, as well as some research into the bias of the sources and into critiques of studies and opinion pieces that I strongly agree with or strongly disagree with. In this case, I found the research interesting and surprising and worth sharing since it's initially counter intuitive (though not really after you think about it). Didn't really expect the dogmatic responses of some.
I mean really, denying any link seems silly, questioning the scale seems reasonable. Refusing to acknowledge that our current system has over time come to be massively anti-competitive on a global scale seems almost insane to me.
