“Right now we’re going to have an adjustment where you see probably more dividends and share buybacks than wage increases,” Mr. Hassett said. “But going forward we’re going to see a lot of capital formation and wage growth.”

That is not what happened in 2005, when a one-time tax holiday allowed companies to repatriate money on the cheap. That plan, championed by President George W. Bush, was sold as a way to get American companies to invest more in the domestic economy.

Some $300 billion came back to the United States that year. But economists estimated that as much as 92 percent of it may have been paid out to companies’ shareholders — mostly in the form of buybacks.

Read more at The New York Times