Donald Trump is 'just wrong' about the economy, says Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz

[applegrove]

Donald Trump is ‘just wrong’ about the economy, says Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz

Max Zahn at Yahoo

https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-wrong-economy-nobel-prize-joseph-stiglitz-202041681.html

"SNIP....

Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University who won the Nobel Prize in 2001, refuted the claim, saying the failure of Trump’s economic policies is evident in the decline in average life expectancy among Americans over each of the past three years.

“A lot of it is what they call deaths of despair,” he says. “Suicide, drug overdose, alcoholism — it’s not a pretty picture.”

The uptick in wage growth is a result of the economic cycle, not Trump’s policies, Stiglitz said.

“At this point in an economic recovery, it’s been 10 years since the great recession, labor markets get tight, unemployment gets lower, and that at last starts having wages go up,” Stiglitz says.

“The remarkable thing is how weak wages are, how weak the economy is, given that as a result of the tax bill we have a $1 trillion deficit.”

.....SNIP"

[bdamomma]

1. the

State of The Union at this present time for those of who live in reality...……...sucks right now

now tRump has another delusional interpretation of the economy doing great, everything is great yea, of course for him, but he stills wears "I" over his head and he will ever be "impeached".

[Skittles]

2. the economy is great for the people the Greedy Old Pig party cares about

FUCK THEM ALL

[napi21]

3. IMO DT's economy might have unemployment down, but a lot of those employeed people aren't making

enough money, even working 2 jobs, to live on.

[Kurt V.]

4. I'm seeing a woke ppls. Very positive

[Igel]

5. I'm seeing people with gaps in their dataset.

The decline in life expectancy started in 2014 and continued for several years. But the 2018 numbers are out and it's time to update one's knowledge base. (They were published before the OP was, so it's not a time snarl.)

The life expectancy increased by a trivial 0.1 year in 2018 over 2017, but few would call a trivial increase a "decrease". It remains to be seen why this was the case--perhaps that's published and I've missed it, that wouldn't be a surprise. It might be fewer suicides, might be higher cancer survival rates or lower cancer incidence (that's where I put my money), it might just be fewer young men killing each other.

[hughee99]

6. I don't think I read this right, it sounds like he just blamed Trump's economic policies

For the suicides, drug overdoses and alcoholism over the last 3 years.

[applegrove]

7. Well wages have not gone up and that affects relationships and

happiness and retreating into addiction. Think of some 45 year old who used to have a union job and now makes 12/hr managing a cafeteria. He lost his wife. Then he losses his job.

[hughee99]

8. Is a recently laid off middle-aged middle-class union worker the prevalent profile for suicide,

overdoses and alcoholism?

These problems aren't new to the Trump administration, are previous administrations also responsible for the same issues "on their watch"?

[applegrove]

9. Obama wanted an infrastructure plan and keynesian spending after

the subprime meltdown. That would have increased wages. Republicans stopped him at every turn after 2010. Trump was gooing to do infrastructure too and bring good jobs back. He did not. Young people who don't have access to good union jobs go into despair and start using drugs. It is waves of these things that are leading to despair. Republican gerrymandering. People being divided into tribes so they feel less interconnected. All republican waves. I don't think racists and haters in general are happy. Do you?

[hughee99]

10. If think it's one thing to say Trump and republicans have done a bad job

With their economic (and all other) policies. I think it’s another to blame not just economics, but specific policies for suicide, overdoses, and alcoholism in general.

[applegrove]

11. Well i disagree. Scared and unhappy people with financial anxiety vote

inutuitively for strongmen who promise to take from 'others' like Trump instead of voting using reason and for their economic self interest. They've done studies.

[hughee99]

13. I'm unclear what you are disagreeing about.

Are you saying that suicide, drug overdoses and alcoholism are the result of Trump’s economic policies?

[applegrove]

14. And GOP policies. They got rid of unions. They destroyed people's

lives and have fought adequate healthcare that every other wealthy country has. Do you think they do not know what devastation their policies bring? That by making people poorer they would be destroying their lives? Why are canadians not doing those three things in increasing numbers?

[hughee99]

15. Everything you say here is true, and none of it

Shows that suicide, drug overdoses and alcoholism are caused by economic policies.

[applegrove]

16. Here is an article that describes the insecurity young people under 55 are facing. And the GOP was

mostly responsible. It does not link directly to premature death or addiction but it is food for thought.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/boomers-have-socialism-why-not-millennials/605467/

[hughee99]

17. I certainly don't deny that it could be a contributing factor in some suicides and addictions, but

It doesn't seem like the biggest factor in most cases. My issue is that Stiglitz seems to given the impression that it is the major factor, which seems pretty dismissive of the real (non-economic) issues that need to be dealt with. "Fixing" the economy won't fix these issues. Suicide and addiction were issues well before Trump and the republicans had control, they happen in other countries (communist, socialist and capitalist), they happen in good times and bad. It seems like Stiglitz may have picked this particular factor because it enables him to blame someone he disagrees with politically, rather than because it's the major factor. There's a lot of problems out there that aren't of Trump's making, and won't be fixed just because we get him out of office.

[applegrove]

18. Well the republicans, when obama was in power, did everything they could

to stop wages from going up. And now with the baby boomers retiring it is an employees market which means their wages should be going up. But they are not. That inequality is the cause of so much pain and it was completely predictable. So we still disagree. Americans are dying younger. Canadians are not.

[hughee99]

19. Again, all of what you say is true, and none of it shows causation.

No demographic has it economically better than white men, so why do they have a significantly higher suicide rate than women or minorities? Why do countries like France and Belgium have higher suicide rates than the US?

If someone asserts a direct and significant link between two things, they have to “show their work”.

[rictofen]

12. But Trump knows better than the economists, generals, meteorologists, etc

[sakabatou]

20. Mr. Stiglitz, there's a Captain Obvious calling you.