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Over the last few decades, the American poor and middle class have been stagnant. Financial wellbeing from policy changes in the economy was anathema to all but those at the top. Americans are unwittingly responsible for this stagnation and must stop it now.
Americans cannot allow Republicans to once again destroy the economy. It is true that over the last several election cycles, Republicans with their fiscal irresponsibility required Democrats to clean up the mess. There is a direct correlation between policy and outcome. We took our eye off of the ball. We must not allow the GOP to continue to fool us with false information and platitudes.
Republicans are never good for the economy and the middle class
Krugman’s article “On Economic Arrogance” is a must read. He wrote the following.
According to press reports, the Trump administration is basing its budget projections on the assumption that the U.S. economy will grow very rapidly over the next decade — in fact, almost twice as fast as independent institutions like the Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Reserve expect. There is, as far as we can tell, no serious analysis behind this optimism; instead, the number was plugged in to make the fiscal outlook appear better. …
The Trump team is apparently projecting growth at between 3 and 3.5 percent for a decade. This wouldn’t be unprecedented: the U.S. economy grew at a 3.4 percent rate during the Reagan years, 3.7 percent under Bill Clinton. But a repeat performance is unlikely.
For one thing, in the Reagan years baby boomers were still entering the work force. Now they’re on their way out, and the rise in the working-age population has slowed to a crawl. This demographic shift alone should, other things being equal, subtract around a percentage point from U.S. growth. …
Yes, Reagan presided over pretty fast growth. But Bill Clinton, who raised taxes on the rich, amid confident predictions from the right that this would cause an economic disaster, presided over even faster growth. President Obama presided over much more rapid private-sector job growth than George W. Bush, even if you leave out the 2008 collapse. Furthermore, two Obama policies that the right totally hated – the 2013 hike in tax rates on the rich, and the 2014 implementation of the Affordable Care Act – produced no slowdown at all in job creation. …
Kansas, dominated by conservative true believers, implemented sharp tax cuts with the promise that these cuts would jump-start rapid growth; they didn’t, and caused a budget crisis instead. Last week Kansas legislators threw in the towel and passed a big tax hike.
At the same time Kansas was turning hard right, California’s newly dominant Democratic majority raised taxes. Conservatives declared it “economic suicide” — but the state is in fact doing fine.
In other words, history proves that every time Republicans experiment with the fantasy that tax cuts and tax regulations create faster growth and a good economy, they’ve failed. And in fact, Democrats come into power, clean things up and make things better compared to the past Republican administration. Americans must learn this lesson once and for all.
Robert Reich wrote an article specifically on Trumponomics that everyone should read. The rhetoric does not match reality.
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