For a number of years, I’ve been baffled by the number of people who support political parties in contravention of their own interests.

For many years, I had a colleague who expressed blind loyalty to the Republican Party. He was the essence of a blue-collar employee; he was a union member and his wages were low, relative to the cost of living. Yet he hated Bill Clinton just because he was a Democrat (even before other reasons to dislike the philandering president were revealed), and he worshipped Ronald Reagan.

I’m certain that today, my colleague is a devout worshipper at the Trump alter, joining millions of other Americans who just don’t want to hear any criticism of their man.

But I have a point for you to consider: Donald Trump has not done anything truly positive for the working class (and I include myself in that category) of this country, many of whom are considered to be his base supporters (I am not in that category).

The most recent example, among many, is his plan to give the ultra-wealthy yet one more gift: changes to capital gains tax reporting rules that would index the cost of the asset to the rate of inflation. This would be yet another significant tax break that would elude at least 90 percent of Americans in any significant way.

For example, an asset bought 20 years ago for $200,000 and sold today for $1 million would be taxed at 20 percent of the difference between the purchase and sale prices; this asset’s gain of $800,000 would yield a tax bill of $160,000. However, indexing to inflation over 20 years could increase the basis (net cost) to, say, $400,000, making the taxable amount $400,000 and halving the tax liability.

It’s virtually impossible to see any benefit to the common American. For most, their largest (and sometimes only) capital asset is their home, and only about 65 percent of us are homeowners. And since the law allows capital gains to be excluded as long as a new residence replaces each preceding one (there are formulas where this isn’t always true, but it is true for the majority of transactions), and there is a once-in-a-lifetime exemption for all, capital gains taxes aren’t even a blip on the radar of most Americans.

There is no way that this action, if it is undertaken, is going to benefit the vast majority of Trump’s base. Because it will add to the national deficit, it likely over time will have a negative impact on almost everyone. It is just one more way in which this administration looks after the financial welfare of the fabled One Percent, those earning at the very rare echelons atop the rest of our taxpayers.

And guess what: Donald Trump is in that tiny group. So what benefits the wealthiest, benefits him.

Adding to the egregiousness of this proposal, the administration has decided that while it faces a bleak future in Congress, it can get this through by a sort of executive fiat. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said he wants to do this through IRS regulation rather than by changing the tax code. This is the most blatant example of Trump’s march to a monarchy to date.

Even some Republicans in favor of changes to the capital gains tax are crying foul, rightly believing this needs to be ratified by Congress.

This comes after his highly self-praised tax cuts of last December, which made steep and permanent cuts for businesses and the wealthy, and timid and temporary cuts for everyone else.

The theory, dusted off and spruced up from the Reagan years, was that all of the money being made available to businesses would result in substantive raises for workers and capital investments to boost job ranks.

There has indeed been job growth. In many places, although not here, effective full employment has been reached. That is definitely a boost for the economy. But burrowing down on a smaller-scale geographic basis, many Trump bastions are being left out of these good times. As the most obvious example, unemployment rates in the 21st Congressional District, which Trump captured, lag badly behind the national rate. And this is true across the rust belt, farm areas in the Midwest and Plains states and rural America in general.

So Trump’s tax cuts have raised some boats a lot, more boats moderately and many not at all.

And it appears a very large number of companies have chosen to use the bulk of their tax windfall to buy back stock. This benefits the corporations and their shareholders but doesn’t do much for workers.

Many companies issued quick pay bonuses when the tax bill was enacted. But bonuses aren’t wages; they happen when they happen, and there could be years between the handouts.

American Airlines gave its 126,000 employees a $1,000 bonus. It cost them $126 million. But the bulk of its line employees have not had raises in three years. And a recent report in MarketWatch said American “has bought back $11 billion of its stock since mid-2014 and authorized repurchases totaling $2 billion more by 2020.”

There is a lot of room in there to buy a little less stock and pay the employees a living wage.

The company is negotiating a new contract now, and it has said its proposal is 3 percent a year over a five-year contract. With compounding, that’s a little more than a 15 percent increase. However, a significant number of its employees make the minimum wage and a little above, meaning in this state outside of New York City they are making $416 a week — $21,632 a year. In five years, they’ll be making $24,877.

This is one example; there are others, where the results vary wildly in additional pay for workers related to the tax cut. And there, of course, is part of the problem: Companies are guaranteed the tax cut, but employees benefit at the whim of their employer. For most, their personal tax cuts are minuscule and temporary (they expire in 2025).

So what part of Trump’s base really benefits from his financial policies (I won’t even get into his trade wars and the devastation they’re already creating across the country)? Republican fat cats, the uber-rich and corporate America are rolling in clover while the rest of us are left sniffing it.

For all his pronouncements about being for the common man, he has yet to do anything that supports that claim. His successes almost all show his deepest and most abiding concerns are for himself and others like him. Yet his base wants to hear nothing about this.

Like the king in the short story “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Trump claims he has magnificent raiment when his is really marching around in his underwear. I wonder if his base will ever see this.

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Perry White is the managing editor (expiry date: Oct. 12) of the Watertown Daily Times.