Economic theory doesn't even suggest that companies would raise wages just because they have more after-tax profit. It predicts that they would invest so much that capital would bid up the price of labor by competing for workers in the marketplace. This obviously isn't what's happening here. John Cochrane covers this:
Starbucks was just going to rise wages anyway, because the labor market has been tight (since before the tax cuts), and it saw an opportunity to simultaneously ingratiate itself to progressives and to the trump administration.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/11/news/companies/starbucks-bar...
Economic theory doesn't even suggest that companies would raise wages just because they have more after-tax profit. It predicts that they would invest so much that capital would bid up the price of labor by competing for workers in the marketplace. This obviously isn't what's happening here. John Cochrane covers this:
https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2018/01/right-answer-wron...
Starbucks was just going to rise wages anyway, because the labor market has been tight (since before the tax cuts), and it saw an opportunity to simultaneously ingratiate itself to progressives and to the trump administration.