Opinion: Fuller Picture Shows Trump's Policies are Devastating to Americans' Economic Well-Being

[babylonsister]

Posted on Sat, Dec 7th, 2019 by Tim Libretti
Opinion: Fuller Picture Shows Trump’s Policies are Devastating to Americans’ Economic Well-Being

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“The economy” is not the same thing as people’s economic life and livelihood.

As Steven Horwitz, Distinguished Professor of Free Enterprise at Ball State University, reminds us, “The economy isn’t a thing.” He explains, “Things are not ‘good/bad for the economy.’ They are good or bad for the people . . . Trump’s policies may well enrich many firms, but they will impoverish the average American.”

When we paint a fuller, more detailed, and indubitably more accurate picture of the economy, we can see very clearly the way Trump’s policies on healthcare, education, the environment, taxes tariffs, food stamps, and more, have inflicted and promise to inflict more pain on Americans’ pocketbooks and lives.

One place to start in providing a more accurate view of Trump’s handling of the economy is with the deficit.

Reports indicated that in October the federal government’s budget deficit ballooned 34% from a year earlier to $134.5 billion, projecting that the annual deficit will top $1 trillion for the first time in eight years.

Hmmm. If the economy is booming, shouldn’t the federal government’s coffers be filling up and not depleting?

more...

https://www.politicususa.com/2019/12/07/opinion-fuller-picture-shows-trumps-policies-are-devastating-to-amercians-economic-well-being.html

[scarletwoman]

1. Excellent piece - great explanation in plain language of the true state of our economic well-being -

or rather, the lack thereof.

Another excerpt:

When Trump slashed corporate tax rates from 35 to 21 percent, we were told, as usual, that these tax cuts would pay for themselves, create an economy that enriches us all.

But deficits actually take money from Americans. How? Well, first, more of our tax dollars are diverted from paying for services and infrastructure (education, healthcare, roads, etc.) we all use and need, to simply paying interest for which we receive nothing in return.

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Consider that Trump’s proposed 2020 budget called for significant cuts to education and services, even though we know, for example, that investing in education promises to serve the health of the economy overall as well as helping individuals increase their earnings over the course of their lives, thus also creating more tax revenue. In short, these cuts are harmful to ordinary citizens as well as the overall health of the economy.

And the ballooning deficit resulting from the Trump tax-cuts, for example, cultivated a fertile context for Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell to loudly renew their insistence that cuts to Medicare and Social Security are necessary to address the out-of-control deficit their own policies immediately exacerbated. Far from benefiting Americans, these tax cuts, which were supposedly to trickle down, just keep cutting Americans and increasing economic precarity, not prosperity. How about we measure that?

[Mc Mike]

2. Fetishism.