Trump s economic adviser, Gary Cohn, has bought into the GOP s tax plan lock, stock and barrel to the point where he likely has a deep belief that trickle-down economics actually works. The thing is, it doesn t, and at a Wall Street Journal event packed full of CEOs, Cohn seemed absolutely stunned that this crowd of corporate leaders wouldn t automatically say they d use the GOP s tax cuts to invest in their own companies.An editor from the Wall Street Journal asked the audience: If the tax reform bill goes through, do you plan to increase investment   your company s investment, capital investment? Only a few of them raised their hands indicating they would. Cohn s response was: Why aren t the other hands up? Really? Well, yes, really. It seems so easy to Cohn, apparently. One might even think that he genuinely doesn t understand why most of the CEOs in the room kept their hands down. Cohn now looks incredibly ignorant and stupid.Corporate tax cuts do not result in greater capital investment and these CEOs know it. Anybody who knows anything about business and economics (and even modern history) knows it. It s really quite simple: CEOs will not invest in things like new machinery, new factories, or new jobs when they don t have enough customer demand to justify it.In fact, most money saved from these kinds of tax cuts go toward stock buybacks, which is a controversial practice in which a company buys back its own stock to artificially drive prices up and put more money into the pockets of shareholders and the C-suite. CEO pay also tends to go up when taxes go down.CEOs know this. They want the tax cuts for precisely this reason. Their greed has gotten the best of them and they know tax cuts will make them richer. But they can t, and won t, commit to using the money they ll save on taxes to expanding operations and creating jobs because if they do, they create a PR nightmare for themselves.Watch Cohn get shocked below:1. Tax-overhaul backers say corporate rate cut will encourage investment by businesses 2. During #wsjceocouncil interview with Gary Cohn, WSJ asks CEOs to raise hands if they ll boost investment if rates cut 3. Few CEOS raise hands 4. Cohn asks:  Why aren t the other hands up?  pic.twitter.com/5PI60NlW0A  Tim Hanrahan (@TimJHanrahan) November 14, 2017Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images