Part Three – An American Tragedy Plays Out Yet Again

Economy Section….

Far more important subjects to discuss here before we get to the economy.  Another American tragedy, so senseless.  Outside of countries in the midst of war, we are the only country in the world with this type of gun violence.  And it’s WAY worse here, the stats aren’t even close.  The most obvious variable is our sheer number of guns.  Random shootings have become commonplace & seemingly could happen anywhere, even our children going about their normal days inside schools.  These are innocent kids.  Before Columbine two decades ago, such acts were unthinkable.  We’ve already had (arguably) 18 incidents of school shootings in America just this year, in only a month & a half.  And that doesn’t include mass shootings like that country music concert in Vegas or church shooting in Texas.  It’s gotten hard to recall them all.  We must have a sensible discussion how to reduce the risk, talking common sense & rising above the partisan noise, the NRA be damned.  I’ve never understood why we need assault weapons & can’t have universal, across-the-board background checks.  Anyone who shoots down valuable suggestions to help lessen the risk will continue to have blood on their hands.  Many in the GOP are offering prayers & little else.  Yes, we certainly need that, but God also gave us brains to work out rational solutions.  Such atrocities are signs of a sick/twisted society, which politicians who shut down sincere debate are sick/twisted leaders, which they should step down from their positions before being seen as complicit in any more mass murders.

Overwhelmingly, Americans favor stricter gun laws.  With Trump’s remarks on Thursday, he mentioned mental illness but not a word about guns.  That’s a cop-out.  Those discussions we must have need to be all-encompassing, including automatic weapons, registration, background checks, databases, metal detectors, informant hotlines, venue, state & local rights/laws, awareness of warning signs & mental health.  I thought Newtown would be the turning point, but this time we really do need to act!  Doing nothing is no longer acceptable!  How many more deaths will result from DC inaction?  We’ll never prevent them all, but there must be ways to make it tougher to carry out such heinous acts.  Consider how that deranged murderer left a trail of warning signs leading up to this week’s shooting rampage, including rumored ties to a white supremacist group & a professed desire to become a professional school shooter, yet our society failed to intervene.  How could someone like him be allowed to even buy an AR-15?  The party I’ve supported for a lifetime seems to have literally been possessed with the spirit of deception & evil, a clear example of that is how they’ve sold out to the wishes of their big donors, with the NRA being a classic example.  See the various articles on the shooting at the very bottom of the links.

As for the economy, too many unwittingly give Trump credit for a seemingly strong economy.  And for much of the public the economy has gotten stronger, especially as over the years we’ve finally inched towards full employment by some metrics.  But looking big picture, what Trump is really doing is juicing the economy now by running up enormous future deficits, just so he can have the talking point look at how smart & great he is.  That strategy will have huge implications for the future, as the harm it will bring can overshadow the temporary spike in economic growth we’re getting currently.  Stimulus spending & running up $1 Trillion+ deficits are irresponsible in times we’re not in recession.  These policies are also contributing to higher interest rates, volatile stock markets & inflationary pressures that can wipe out whatever wage gains we might squeeze out of this.  Plus as is his way, he’s exaggerating or lying about economic achievements, like claiming all these factories are moving back here, or the middle class will really benefit.  I’m almost sure there wasn’t much thought put into these recent tax cuts, as Trump just went along with his supply-side advisers convincing him huge cuts at the top will magically trickle down.  They are sadly mistaken, as we’ll see how this plays out with the working middle class not making appreciable gains, but the end result will see the United States already having perhaps the highest level of income inequality in the developed world, yet our wage/wealth gaps will only grow worse.  Trickle down?  Thanks for nothing!  This is worth reading: economists-are-beginning-to-worry-that-trump-might-nuke-the-economy

In the related articles, the link one-way-to-help-the-middle-class-redistribute-wealth offers up a very ominous future.  Something will have to be done, but I’ve never been comfortable with concepts we’re hearing like redistribution, guaranteed incomes or socialism.  As a society we should never want to trap ourselves into an attitude of seeking a free lunch, creating a dependency mentality that erodes away at initiative & a strong work ethic.  But we need to invent more productive jobs utilizing the high-tech technology in this rapidly-changing world, plus provide the training so workers learn the skills.  For roughly half the workforce, the American Dream is now only a pipe dream.  Based on these projections from the excerpts below, it will only get worse.  Making America great again can’t rely on looking to & trying to recreate the past, as we must adapt to the new realities/challenges presented by the future.  We should plan now in developing innovative ideas which can totally reshape how we look at careers & compensation.  Here I’ve patched together much of the message from this important article:

Growing inequality in the U.S. and labor automation could put a quarter of the U.S. workforce out of a job by the end of next decade, according to management consulting firm Bain & Co. That could put a chokehold on economic growth. To address that threat, the firm proposes the kind of solution not often heard from corporate advisers like Bain: Take from the rich and distribute some of those resources to the rest of the country. The analysis, laid out in the report Labor 2030: The Collision of Demographics, Automation and Inequality, examines the intersection of three major trends in the global economy: increasing reliance on automation, the aging workforce in most developed economies and the unprecedented levels of inequality in the world’s largest economies. Demographics are the catalyst for eventual economic stagnation, Bain writes. As businesses invest in machinery over workers, by 2030, she projects, “about 80 percent of jobs are going to feel automation, either because their jobs go away or wages get suppressed.” “What happens to that bottom group is you have to be, essentially, cheaper than a robot,” she added. That in turn will feed existing inequalities, including eroding the middle class. The result will be “deeply unbalanced economies in which income is concentrated among those most likely to save and invest, not consume,” according to the report. The imbalance will effectively cap demand, leaving the economy at a standstill.

That seemingly paradoxical result occurs because higher-income people, on average, don’t spend as much of their income as those who earn less. When wealthy people gets an income boost, they’re more likely to save or invest that additional money, whereas a poorer person is more likely to spend it. Consider that the U.S. economic expansion during the last century, and more recent expansions in China and India, were driven largely by the growth of the middle class. Whatever form it takes, government activity is inevitable, the report predicts: “If history is a guide, governments will not only discern a need to intervene, their societies will demand it.” But lately, even fervent capitalists have expressed serious concerns over the unprecedented inequality in the U.S. That inequality will almost certainly worsen in coming years as the recent $1.5 trillion tax cut reverberates through the economy. The legislation overwhelmingly benefits the wealthiest Americans as well as foreign investors while giving much smaller amounts to middle- and low-income earners. But just as technology upends the workplace and society, containing it might also require a completely different response, she said. “Existing social programs are set up for a different population scheme, and I think expanding them is not going to solve the problems we see today.” 

Trump lies about everything else, so naturally he’d also lie about manufacturing plants relocating to the U.S., revealed in this article trump-general-motors-plant-detroit.  Here’s an excerpt:

During a meeting about trade with lawmakers at the White House on Tuesday, President Trump took personal credit for General Motors’ decision relocate a plant from South Korea back to the United States. “GM Korea company announced today that it will cease production and close its Gunsan plant in May 2018 and they’re gonna move back to Detroit,” Trump said. “You don’t hear these things except for the fact that Trump became president, believe me, you wouldn’t be hearing that… and you have many others companies, they all want to be where the action is.” There’s just one problem — Trump’s relocation announcement was fake news. The president appears to have just made it up.

All these promises & hype for so little in return, but we’re certainly headed towards blowing a huge hole in the budget, as seen in this chart from budget-deficit-charts:

In a Newsmax article albert-edwards-donald-trump-budget-deficit, we see these dire predictions resulting from the tax cuts:

Albert Edwards, the top-ranked strategist at Societe Generale, said President Trump’s tax reform will bring an end to the U.S. economic expansion, topple the stock market and result in a massive budget deficit. “This fiscal expansion is probably the most foolhardy escapade in modern economic policy history,” Edwards said in a Feb. 14 report obtained by Newsmax Finance. “To say it is ill-timed and ill-judged would be a massive understatement.”

So by perusing the newsfeeds below, there are various articles on our economic challenges, with separate groups on topics such as deficits, infrastructure, immigration & the school shooting.  Different factions in Congress wrote different proposals on immigration/DACA, but the divide between the different groups is too wide to get enough votes on any one bill.  The bipartisan immigration bill in the Senate got a lot more votes than the one Trump supported.  Gridlock-Teddy Cruz crawled out of his hole to complain how dare we even discuss doing anything with Dreamers or guns.  But the American people by a large majority favor doing something on both, so true leadership may need to step forward & forcefully push bipartisan legislation.  Check out these charts in here: us-gun-violence-statistics-maps-charts