They argued over who gets more credit for the Trump vs. Obama economy…but I would argue it’s more of a moot point. The President doesn’t have as much control over the existing economy on their watch as people tend to think. Plus as our current & former presidents both take credit for our current economy, I contend it’s not such a great economy, since persisting problems have yet to improve in any meaningful way. So in this contest of who’s most responsible from comparing the Trump vs. Obama economy, I blame them both!
Ongoing Economic Problems
As the current White House & GOP Congress are doing high-fives over solid job creation & unemployment rates trending lower, which is the exact same trajectory we saw in the last few years of the Obama economy, such an attitude is cherry-picking the best metrics of the jobs report while missing the most relevant points. So this big question of the Trump vs. Obama economy, I complained about the Obama economy back then much like I complain about the Trump economy now. As we recovered under Obama from the great recession, while the sugar-high from Trump’s tax cuts help maintain those glossy statistics serving as a sleight of hand for political leadership, it totally ignores the ongoing structural problems within our economy, that too many of the new jobs being created are dead-end & don’t pay well. Even as this current overheated economy are finally showing signs of some wage growth, it’s far overshadowed by inflationary pressures & out-of-control deficits which will certainly curtail future economic growth. Plus the lack of quality jobs keep restricting the participation rates.
Current economic policies are more like putting lipstick on a pig, where DC leaders hide behind the beauty of the economy while ignoring the underlying ugliness. The articles below pulled from recent newsfeeds bring home the point America has serious economic conditions which are mostly being swept under the rug, so nothing of substance is really being done to improve the plight of roughly half the working population, who are stuck in jobs that fall short or barely cover the monthly bills. In DC we hear a lot of bluster about this great economy from the GOP, while we’re only hearing crickets when it comes to ideas for solving the real problems. With massive wealth creation stemming from modernization & technological advances that could hardly have been envisioned a half-century ago, it’s nothing short of a crime that during that same time the working class has seen no real wage growth!
In the debate over the Trump vs. Obama economy…
there’s really not much difference. I’d give Obama the edge for the deficits trending lower, whereas Trump has them trending skyward. Among the many big lies coming from Trump world is the notion the economy stunk under Obama, while Trump rode in on his white horse to save the day: donald-trump-jr-obama-
Trump also lies about the economy
Another big whopper was Trump claiming the GDP is higher than the unemployment rate for the first time in 100 years: fox-news-calls-bs-on-
There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics. This famous saying popularized by American humorist Mark Twain aptly describes the current use of economic statistics to paint an overly rosy picture of our economic health. Too often, we rely on aggregate numbers or averages which camouflage the uneven distribution of economic progress (or lack thereof) among lower income families. For instance, the use of aggregates in calculating GDP masks the fact that those economic gains remain heavily skewed toward the rich. Similarly, the use of averages in reporting wage gains conceals distortions caused by booming wages among higher paid workers and the fact that by traditional measures, hourly real wages for most middle-class workers have slightly declined.
Lots of jobs, lousy jobs
Inside most-jobs-created-
*Since the crash, about 75% of new jobs have paid less than $50,000 a year, putting them just above the $45,000 annual middle-class threshold for a household.
*Professions that were once the backbone of the middle class have been vanishing, and similar professions have not been bubbling up to take their place, report the WP’s Andrew Van Dam and Heather Long.
*Most wage growth since 2009 has been concentrated in the extreme lows and highs.
Minimum Wage
Hiking the minimum wage is not the be-all end-all, but if modest increases in minimum wages have shown to be beneficial, it can be a part of the overall equation. These excerpts are seen inside study-minimum-wage-
In November 2012, fast food workers across the United States walked off their jobs to demand a living wage. This spurred a raft of minimum-wage hikes in major American cities — and many heated arguments among economists about whether such measures would help or hurt the working poor. Some (typically conservative) policy analysts insisted that raising the wage floor would lead employers to cut staff and hours, leaving those on the bottom rungs of the labor ladder even more cash-strapped than they were before the government intervened. Other (typically liberal) technocrats argued that effects on unemployment would be minimal, and could even be positive: The more cash workers earn, the more they’ll spend — and the more workers businesses will have to hire to keep pace with demand. Now, the debate over minimum-wage hikes in 21st-century American metropolises is finally moving from the realm of theory to fact. The results from our natural experiments are coming in — and the latest numbers look like a win for team “forcing businesses to pay their workers more money is good.”
In the first six major U.S. cities to raise their minimum wage above $10 an hour, workers’ earnings went up while job growth held steady or improved, according to a new study from Berkeley’s Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics. Drawing on data from the Labor Department, the economists found that across the six cities studied, a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage boosted weekly earnings in the food services industry by an average of between 1.3 and 2.5 percent (depending on which economic model they used) by the end of 2016. Meanwhile, their models pegged the wage hikes’ impact on jobs to a range of 0.3 percent reduction (i.e. negative but tiny) to a 1.1 percent increase. “We find that they are working just as the policy-makers and voters who enacted these policies intended,” Sylvia Allegretto, co-author of the report, told the Seattle Times. “So far they are raising the earnings of low-wage workers without causing significant employment losses.”
Wrong Focus
The far-right, tea-party, Trumpeter mentality has always raged against government handouts & the ever-expanding safety net, which they certainly have a point. I wholeheartedly agree we hand out way too many benefits with our taxpayers’ dollars, but my point has always been to have the moral mandate to curtail such spending, we must first implement a wide array of policies creating better jobs with higher pay on a mass scale. And welfare programs at the lower end highlight how conservatives are not nearly focused enough on perhaps a bigger problem, welfare programs at the top end. The GOP are especially protective of large corporate interests & their big donors. As seen in this entire article taken from billionaires-welfare-
Year after year, decade after decade, Republicans in Washington have lectured the American people about the need for “welfare reform.” In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan railed against a fictitious “welfare queen” driving a Cadillac. Just a few years ago, Republicans turned their attention to a young surfer who used the food stamp program to purchase lobster. But if you listen closely, you will never hear much talk from our Republican colleagues about some of the biggest welfare recipients in America: The billionaire owners of some of the most profitable corporations in our country.
Here are just a few examples.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is the wealthiest person on Earth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He is now worth $168 billion. In fact, since the beginning of this year, his wealth has increased by about $277 million — every single day. Meanwhile, Mr. Bezos continues to pay many thousands of his Amazon employees wages that are so low that they must rely on food stamps, Medicaid or public housing in order to survive. In effect, the middle-class taxpayers of this country are subsidizing the low wages paid by the richest person on Earth. That’s nuts.
But Jeff Bezos and Amazon are not alone. The Walton family of Walmart and many other billionaire-owned large and profitable corporations also get richer because of taxpayer support for their low-paid employees. The Walton family of Walmart is the wealthiest family in the country with a net worth of over $160 billion. This one family has owned more wealth than the bottom 40% of Americans. Meanwhile, just like Amazon, Walmart pays its workers wages that are so inadequate that many of them are forced to depend upon public-assistance programs, at a cost of some $6.2 billion a year to taxpayers in order to survive.
The fast food industry is another major recipient of corporate welfare. While the co-owner of Burger King, Jorge Paulo Lemann, has a net worth of about $25 billion, low wages at this fast-food chain cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $356 million a year. And it’s not just Burger King. McDonald’s workers are actually encouraged to sign up for government assistance— meaning the company fully acknowledges that it pays its employees wages that are non-livable. In total, 52% of all fast food workers rely on public assistance programs to make ends meet. The wealthy owners of big airlines are also major welfare recipients. While American Airlines made nearly $2 billion in net profits last year, and its CEO is on track to make $31 million in total compensation this year, 27% of workers at its subsidiary Envoy Air, which has over 16,000 employees, need food stamps and other forms of public assistance because of the inadequate wages they receive.
The working families and middle class of this country should not have to subsidize the wealthiest people in the United States. That’s absurd. That’s what a rigged economy is all about. The fact is that if employers in this country simply paid workers a living wage, taxpayers would save about $150 billion a year on federal assistance programs and millions of workers would be able to live in dignity and security. That is why we are proposing legislation to demand that billionaires get off of welfare. The bill gives large, profitable employers a choice: Pay workers a living wage or pay for the public assistance programs their low-wage employees are forced to depend upon. Specifically, this legislation would establish a 100% tax on corporations with 500 or more employees equal to the amount of federal benefits received by their low-wage workers. For example, if a worker at Amazon receives $2,000 in food stamps, the employer would be taxed $2,000 to cover that cost.
Let us be very clear: We believe that the government has a moral responsibility to provide for the vulnerable — the children, the elderly, the sick and the disabled. But we do not believe that taxpayers should have to expend huge sums of money subsidizing profitable corporations owned by some of the wealthiest people in this country. At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, and when millions of our fellow Americans are working at starvation wages, we must create an economy that works for all — not just the people on top.
Health Care
Another Bernie idea, single-payer healthcare coverage, is worth studying since we must find some way to rein in exorbitant costs before it bankrupts America. It does work quite well in some other countries, so we need to determine the feasibility of a similar system working here: single-payer-medicare-
The redesigned healthcare system would be far from perfect or fair, but it could become much better than letting rising premiums & Medicare costs add to astronomical debt levels we have no hopes of ever paying, until it crashes our entire economic system when the bubble pops. This next article is important to read for an overall perspective just how broke our country truly is, with political leaders hiding the truth, since trying to address this monumental expense is way too politically toxic to even talk about: an-economist-thinks-us-
Good Video
In Fareed’s Take, this video explains how misguided Trump’s agenda is for the world & how tenuous our current situation really is: fareeds-take-look-beyond-
Time for Conservatives to stand up for what’s right
As for Sasse, who’s contemplating breaking free from the GOP cult, I’d say come on in, the water’s fine! Myself & many others have already exited stage left: gop-senator-says-he-
That’s a message independents and persuadable Republicans need to hear over and over again. This is not normal. No president has attacked our institutions in the way President Trump has; no Congress has abdicated its role as a co-equal branch to the extent this Congress has. Because Republicans refuse to shoulder their constitutional obligations, voters concerned about fortifying our democracy must deprive the GOP of majorities in one or both houses. It’s the only way to get oversight, to hold Trump accountable and to begin the process of restoring democratic norms. Obama is making this case from the Democratic perspective, but shouldn’t some Republicans join him to make the case for ridding us of one-party government? There are those who served in Republican administrations — Michael V. Hayden (CIA and National Security Agency), Robert Gates (defense secretary under Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, as well as a former CIA director) and others in the national security realm who protested Trump’s decision to strip former CIA director John Brennan of his security clearance. During the 2016 election there were a batch of former Republican officials and lawmakers who backed Hillary Clinton for the very reasons Obama now cites as requiring a Democratic Congress. Some or all of them can be enlisted once more. These Republicans put country above party in 2016 by trying to prevent a disastrous Trump presidency. Events have proved them prescient about the threats Trump poses to our democracy. So now it’s time to again put country before party to urge voting against Republicans in the midterms. Even if you think the GOP can be saved (I remain highly skeptical), it has to get wiped out in its current incarnation in order to rebuild. Republicans willing to sacrifice policy objectives to shore up our democracy could send a powerful message to voters. They should get out there in the advance of the midterms. Obama could use the help.
As the House goes Dem, Senate also in play
The House in all likelihood will turn blue, with even the Senate solidly in play despite a map decidedly in the GOP’s favor geographically. This next link takes us to a likely GOP bloodbath, while clicking on another link at the bottom of that article has an assessment by Dan Balz on the battle over the Senate: 2018-midterm-
We need the American people to send an unmistakable message in November that we cannot support a major party enabling a corrupt demagogue, so our votes bringing on a blue wave can help break the cult mindset the GOP has fallen under. Even for conservatives agreeing with Trump policies or the consensus that’s ballyhooing this so-called great economy, nothing could ever justify the constant lying, moral degradation & attacks on democratic institutions we’re getting from this president. And no amount of tax cutting, deregulation & conservative judges can overcome the unmitigated disaster of clueless calamity existing in the leader now residing in the White House. The GOP in its current state cannot be saved, so it’s necessary to clean house. To be honest, the only GOP rep anywhere in the entire country I would vote for this year is Sarah LaTourette, the incumbent state rep in my Ohio district. That’s because I revered her dad, Steve LaTourette, who was our bipartisan GOP U.S. congressman in our district for 18 years, who graduated to serve as a rep in a better place when we lost him from this world a couple years ago.
New Polls
After a very turbulent week, every poll that just came out showed the Trump numbers dropping as approval ratings dipped into the 30’s. With the midterms largely a referendum on the President, get ready for a massive blue wave! In limiting the number of live links in my blog, please look up some of these articles below on recent polls which are truly dismal for Trump. There was an especially big dip among independents. If Trump only had the self-discipline to only focus on the economy instead of constantly lashing out at critics, he’d be way further ahead. It’s his own fault for not even trying to be President of the United States, as all he cares about is his base (& hear our selected song at the bottom). The first group of titles all come from The Hill, while the DeSantis articles report his resigning from Congress to campaign for the Florida governorship (which Fla voters should permanently retire that radical extremist from politics):
george-conway-retweets-slew-
poll-trump-receives-lowest-
pollsters-gop-voters-distrust-
conservative-columnist-
desantis-resigns-house-seat-
desantis-spoke-at-events-
Esquire: ron-desantis-florida-
Business Insider: polls-trump-approval-
CNN: cnn-poll-trump-approval-
It’s All About That Base
The failure or even lack of desire for Trump to expand his base will prompt the big blue wave for the midterms. His statements & governing are entirely crafted to only please his narrow base. It appears he doesn’t care about anyone else. In Congress, the mindset of the gutless wonders that runs almost unanimously throughout the GOP, is they’re more afraid of their base than the disasters Trump threatens to bring on America. So in honor of the corrupted party who’ve joined the Trump cult, here’s a more modern song than we normally dig up, but it best describes the flawed strategy Trump & his GOP puppets are using as we head into the midterms:
Recent Comments