ECONOMY GNP

wow really belated 11/18 prolly neglected

see jobs jobs jobs BS

see MANUFACTURING

SEE LAYOFF UNEMPLOY JOBS

SEE INEQUALITY PLUTO OLIG

see stock exchange

see inflation

see deregulation

no merri

TRUMP FIRES LABOR INFLATION STATS 8 25

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AN 10 26

Trump’s massive $150 billion manufacturing boom just hit a major snag: WSJ

Fox News reveals Trump crisis caused wave of bankruptcies

'Food or rent': Families face agonizing choices as health coverage vanishes

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AN 9 26

President Donald Trump's economic policies, especially tariffs, are drawing strong criticism on both the left and the right, from liberal economists like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich to conservative and libertarian economists known for their admiration for the late Milton Friedman (who viewed steep tariffs as terrible for both businesses and consumers). But according to The New Republic's Michael Tomasky, the GOP's problems with economics go way beyond Trump himself.

Tomasky, in a Monday morning article, argues that Republicans in general are failing to understand key economic concepts.

Tomasky recalls that during his 2024 campaign, Trump promised, "Under the Trump economic plan, we will cut your energy prices in half … We are going to bring energy down by 50 percent, 50 percent, 50 percent within 12 months from January 20, which is the day we go into office."

According to Tomasky, those promises are "relevant to us today on two levels."

"The first is the more obvious: He was lying out his know-you-what without any regard for whether these words would end up being true," Tomasky writes. "They just sounded good at the time, so he said them. Fifty percent in a year … The second level is more interesting — and more damning not only of Trump, but of the entire Republican Party and of conservatism generally, in this country and across the world, and not just in Trump's second term, but for all time.

And that is this: There is probably some way in which Trump actually believed he could lower energy prices — maybe not by 50 percent in a year, but lower them substantially and noticeably. Why would he believe this? He believed it because conservatives believe stupid, simplistic things about how the capitalist economy works."

Tomasky continues, "They believe that if you just let the free market do its thing, wonders will arise and all will be well. They believe this first and foremost because their big-money donors believe it. But they also believe it because the economists — or more precisely, the economists they prefer to listen to — say so, and they must know what they're talking about."

According to Tomasky, a "new generation of economists … have seen with their own two eyes that markets do not always self-correct" and now realize that "sometimes, government intervention is required to achieve good ends."

"In the midterm campaign," Tomasky writes, "Democrats are understandably focused on attacking Trump for his lies and making these higher prices we're paying all about him. That makes political sense … But longer term, the Democrats need to do much more. It would be great if they nominated a presidential candidate in 2028 who had the guts and the rhetorical skill to indict not just Trump, but conservatism and traditional economics more generally. It's not an accident that the last three, now four, GOP presidents have wrecked the economy: Bush, Bush, Trump, and Trump."

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White House panic skyrockets as Trump triggers death spiral economy

Republicans fume as Trump breaks his own abysmal economic record

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AN COMMN DR?

5 26

Multiple polls and surveys released in recent days have shown US consumer sentiment cratering—and all the while, the US stock market keeps hitting record highs.

The Kobeissi Letter, a financial newsletter, posted a graphic Saturday that matched consumer sentiment as measured by the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers with the performance of the S&P 500 stock index over a 30-year span.

The graphic shows that, up until around 2020, consumer sentiment matched stock market performance closely, although there was a large divergence between the two leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, where stocks briefly outperformed consumer sentiment before crashing downward as the housing bubble burst.

But throughout the last six years, the graphic shows, the S&P 500 has produced an almost continuous upward surge even as consumer sentiment spirals downward.

“Absolutely incredible,” commented Kobeissi Letter. “Over the last six years, the S&P 500 has risen +130% while US Consumer Sentiment has collapsed by -55%, to its lowest since data began in 1952. We are witnessing the formation of the biggest wealth divide in modern history.”

Kobeissi Letter produced the graphic one day after the University of Michigan’s latest survey found consumer sentiment hitting the lowest level on record.

Joanne Hsu, director of the survey, observed that “the cost of living continues to be a first-order concern, with 57% of consumers spontaneously mentioning that high prices were eroding their personal finances, up from 50% last month.”

On the same day, Gallup published new data showing that Americans’ economic confidence has fallen to its lowest level since October 2022, with just 16% of Americans rating the economy as excellent or good, and nearly half describing it as poor.

Axios reported on Saturday that even Republicans have been growing sour on the US economy, citing a recent poll from The Associated Press showing GOP approval of President Donald Trump on the economy to be at around 60%, down from 80% just three months ago.

“The growing GOP gloom could hardly come at a worse time for Trump and the party,” Axios noted, “less than six months out from a midterm election that’s likely to turn on the economy.”

The gap between overall consumer sentiment and stock market performance also lines up with recent consumer spending trends. Data published by The Financial Times earlier this year showed that the top 10% of earners in the US now account for nearly half of all consumer spending, while the bottom 80% of earners now account for less than 40% of all consumer spending.

A February report from TD Economics economist Ksenia Bushmeneva noted that “the economic divide between America’s households at the top of the income spectrum and everyone else continued to widen last year,” as “upper-income households benefited from the still-robust wage growth, strong gains in equity markets, and better access to consumer credit.

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AN 5 26

President Donald Trump’s economic policies have created so much uncertainty abroad, a new report reveals that major COUNTRIES companies are divesting themselves of US treasuries.

In response to the war in Iran and persistent inflation, foreign governments have been getting rid of US Treasury bonds in order to stabilize their own currencies, according to a report by Semafor. Of the top 10 foreign holders of US government debt, seven of them reduced their holdings as of March including China, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Overall the US Treasury yields could fall to the lowest levels seen since 2007, which was before the 2007-2008 subprime mortgage crisis caused the Great Recession.

Before the report specifically indicating that foreign governments are divesting of US Treasuries at a historic rate, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) drew attention to the fact that for the first time since 2007 the US Treasury hit 5.2 percent. The investor education platform Wiseman Alpha argued on Tuesday that this puts America in the same economically vulnerable position that it was in before the economy crashed nearly two decades ago.

"Same setup we saw in '07, six to nine months before everything cracked. The bond market runs the show now. The Fed just reacts," Wiseman warned.

They added, "Early next year is when the blowup events start happening. A fund or a bank explodes. Dollar spikes hard. Everything pulls back. Gold, Bitcoin, silver, all of it. That's your mega entry. Q2 to Q3 2027. A COVID-xtem dlike moment.”

Gallego framed the issue in the context of Trump’s recent decision to award $1.8 billion to individuals he claimed were targeted by the federal government, including possibly himself.

"We are borrowing money to pay the January 6th slush fund at highest interest rate that this country has seen in quite awhile," Gallego argued.

Multifamily Owner's Blueprint national chair Reid Bennett warned that Americans "may want to sit down" as they contemplate this news.

"It’s about what your property is worth, what your refinance looks like, and whether your business plan still works," Bennett wrote on X. "Debt gets more expensive — agency debt, banks, life companies, [commercial mortgage-backed security] … all price off Treasury benchmarks. That means higher coupons, lower proceeds, and a whole lot of owners writing checks at refinance."

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich argued earlier this month that he believes the ongoing debt crisis is in large part caused by the wealthy not paying their fair share in taxes.

“America’s wealthy have never been wealthier,” Reich said. “If they paid their fair share of taxes, we wouldn’t have such a huge federal debt. And we wouldn’t be paying them so much interest on that debt.”

He added, “Know what’s happened, and pass it on.”

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booed at ufc fight?

an 4 26

President Donald Trump likes to boast about his supposedly unanimous support within his own base, but a recent editorial from a prominent financial publication suggested his movement is not just slipping away from him. It’s eviscerating itself.

"The 'Make America Great Again' (MAGA) 'manosphere' is showing signs of internal fractures, as disagreements over U.S. President Donald Trump's handling of the Epstein files and the war in Iran spill into the open,” wrote the Money Control World Desk in an editorial published on Wednesday. As they pointed out, the so-called “manosphere” that fueled the MAGA movement

Trump launched with his 2016 presidential campaign is fracturing over the war in Iran and his longtime friendship with late convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

"Prominent figures linked to the space include Andrew Tate, Ben Shapiro and Nick Fuentes, many of whom are now at odds over issues such as U.S.-Israel ties and the Epstein files,” Money Control World Desk wrote.

Even President Trump has been drawn into the fierce feud, which threatens to even further dampen enthusiasm that the Republican leader desperately needs as his party approaches the treacherous 2026 midterm elections.

"The tensions escalated after Trump lashed out at both commentators,” Money Control World Desk reported. “'They have one thing in common, low IQs,' he said. 'They're stupid people, they know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too.'"

As war blooms, others in the movement are taking sides. Podcaster Joe Rogan described Trump’s ICE agents as engaged in “Gestapo tactics,” said he was disappointed in Trump’s evasive response to releasing Epstein’s files and opposes his war in Iran. Far-right commentator Alex Jones went from being one of Trump’s staunchest supporters to claiming he has betrayed his base with the Iran war and even questioning his mental fitness. Nick Fuentes, a far right commentator, proclaimed that “MAGA is dead,” and told the president: “Trump, you don’t have any young fans anymore.” Because of Trump’s recent comparison of himself with Jesus Christ and feuding with Pope Leo XIV, many Christian conservatives are even questioning whether Trump is the Antichrist.

Trump is equally controversialamong his base on economic issues. "The White House promised a manufacturing renaissance,” wrote Fortune business editor Nick Lichtenberg on Tuesday. “Instead, the factory floor keeps shrinking."

In particular, Lichtnenberg pointed out that "the blue-collar job market has been slowing for more than a year, with jobs in manufacturing and construction racking up roughly 150,000 net losses on an annual basis as of March… During Trump's first year back in the White House, the manufacturing sector alone shed 108,000 jobs — even as the administration touted a coming 'manufacturing boom.'"

He concluded with irony that "the same working-class men the MAGA economy promised to rescue are sitting out a hiring boom in the fastest-growing sectors of the U.S. economy because those jobs are considered women's work. Meanwhile, the factories they're waiting to return to keep shedding workers."

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ai gooses stock mkt, constr jobs?

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MMA

1. ### The US economy has lost jobs since Trump’s “Liberation Day.” Fox is still celebrating his destructive import taxes.

03/06/26

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an 2 26

President Donald Trump repeatedly claims that manufacturing jobs have boomed during his second term, but a recent report reveals the construction spike is not doing what most people want — creating large numbers of jobs.

“Industry data show that much of the recent surge in construction jobs is tied to data centers and the power infrastructure that supports them, not a wave of new factories backed by fresh investment pledges Trump has secured,” wrote Politico’s Megan Messerly and Sam Sutton. “That matters because factories tend to employ far more people than data centers, one of the main reasons communities have been more receptive to the former setting up shop in their towns.”

By contrast, Trump claimed during his State of the Union message that “as thousands of new businesses are forming and factories, plants and laboratories are being built, we have added 70,000 new construction jobs in just a very short period of time. It’s getting bigger and bigger and stronger. Nobody can believe what they’re watching.”

Even though Trump says rising construction activity means Trump’s tariff policy is cultivating domestic manufacturing, Politico reports that many of these investments are in such early planning stages that “the factory jobs that could reshape communities are likely years away” — and that is assuming the factories in question produce lots of jobs, which often is not the case with data centers.

“Not one in the last year has started under this administration where we’ve procured the first man hour of work,” Sean McGarvey, president of the North America’s Building Trades Unions, told Politico. Although there have been announcements of projects, “they haven’t started yet… As far as actual shovels in the ground, that hasn’t happened.”

In terms of the 33,000 job gains in January, “economists believe those jobs were just a blip in the data, driven largely by unseasonably warm weather during the period when government statisticians were collecting data. That disconnect could complicate Republicans’ argument to working-class voters looking for signs of a Trump-fueled factory comeback.”

Quoting Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, Politico reported that “whether it’s warehouses, data centers, manufacturing or a Buc-ee’s or whatever, what is ultimately going to bring stable, high-paying jobs into the community? From that perspective, manufacturing is the winner. At a data center, there are fewer jobs. There will be a few high-skilled jobs, but not a lot of them.”

He concluded, “I think that’s a very fair question of, what’s going to get you more bang for the buck, employment wise?”

Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, confirmed the type of construction cultivated by the Trump administration will not be particularly fruitful in terms of creating thousands of long-term jobs.

“You’re going to get some construction jobs because of data centers and build out of power capacity and maybe chip plants — that kind of thing,” Zandi said. “But that’s going to be offset by job loss in the housing sector. Multifamily, single family completions are weak and are going to continue to fall. And they’re much more worker intensive than the data centers.”

In fact, not only has Trump failed to stimulate manufacturing job creation. According to the liberal-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, he is actually making things worse.

“Far from the manufacturing sector ‘roaring back’ as Trump promised, the United States has lost more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs over the past year,” Allison McManus and Dawn Le from the liberal-leaning think tank Center for American Progress recently wrote. “These actions have pushed the country’s closest trading partners to seek deals elsewhere, including with China: Canada, India, Japan, South Korea, and the European Union have all recently sought new agreements without the United States.”

Similarly, when Trump claimed during the State of the Union message that tariffs would one day replace the income tax, experts scoffed.

“I believe that tariffs paid for by foreign countries will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern day system of income tax,” Trump claimed, prompting American Bridge 21st Century to tweet that “American families and businesses paid at least 90% of Trump’s tariffs last year. His agenda taxes Americans anyway you slice it.”

A moderate commentator echoed this critique.

“After a fairly sober opening, Trump is now veering into fantasy, falsely claiming that he ended taxes on Social Security and suggesting that tariffs paid by foreigners will mostly replace the income tax,” Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times posted on X. “All false.”

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AN 2 26

3 times Trump promised stimulus checks — and never followed through

'No one seems to notice' Trump’s inflicting 'catastrophic damage' on dollar: conservative

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GIVING HIMSELF 10B $ FROM TREASURY BESSANT BONDI BC IRS? DEBANKED?

2 26

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AN COMMON DR 12 25

As workers face slowing wage growth, a worsening cost-of-living crisis, and rising unemployment, the chief executives of top corporate retailers in the United States are reaping huge gains from the tax cuts that US President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans extended over the summer.

An analysis released Friday by the progressive advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) estimates that the CEOs of Amazon, Best Buy, Costco, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Target, TJX, and Walmart have collectively saved close to $35 million on their individual tax returns in the seven years the Trump tax cuts have been in effect.

Thanks to the Trump-GOP tax law, which took effect in 2018, the companies examined in the analysis paid a tax rate of just 17.5% between 2018 and 2024—roughly half what they paid prior to the law’s enactment.

“While at the same time prices have soared for consumers and retail workers remain stuck in low-wage jobs, big-store CEOs and shareholders have reaped higher profits and lower taxes,” David Kass, ATF’s executive director, said in a statement. “If we want a system that alleviates economic stress on average Americans instead of exacerbating it during the holiday season, we need to raise taxes on corporations and the rich, invest in workers and families with expanded public services.”

Workers at the major retailers haven’t fared nearly as well. ATF noted that “the average worker at the eight stores was paid less than $32,000 in 2024.

“Amazon—the world’s largest retailer—refuses to even sit down with its employees who have formed a labor union for better pay, benefits, and working conditions,” the group observed. “If Lowe’s had used the nearly $50 billion it spent on stock buybacks over the seven-year period to instead raise employee wages, its workers would have each been paid almost $200,000 more.”

Across the US economy, workers are seeing wage growth stagnate amid elevated and still-rising prices, which are forcing many to skip meals and ration their medications to make ends meet.

The Labor Department said earlier this week that wage growth decelerated to 3.5% year over year—the slowest pace since before the Covid-19 pandemic. Unemployment, meanwhile, rose in November to the highest level in four years.

The ATF analysis came days after Trump delivered a lie-filled primetime speech defending his handling of the US economy as his approval ratings tanked, with American voters across party lines increasingly furious over the high costs of housing, groceries, healthcare, and other necessities.

During the speech, Trump vowed that Americans would soon “see the results of the largest tax cuts in American history.”

But the richest people in the country are set to reap disproportionate benefits from the tax cuts. As Bloomberg reported earlier this week, “Many filers—particularly those who could most use the financial boost—may soon be disappointed.”

“Wealthy taxpayers in high-tax states like California, New York, and New Jersey are the biggest winners,” the outlet noted.

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AN 12 25

White House scrambles for 'damage control' as report pins job losses on Trump policy

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rally small in casino in poconos?

trump admin hides econ #; djt says grade on econ a++++

an 12 25

Lisandra Vazquez, an Atlanta-based comedian, has gone viral with her frequent parodies of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt — who sees the MAGA Republican as a caricature of herself and mocks her relentlessly with her videos on YouTube and TikTok. And Vazquez isn't the only one with that opinion of Leavitt.

In a biting opinion column published on December 12, MS NOW's Steve Benen emphasizes that Leavitt's obsequious praise of President Donald Trump is only growing more cartoonish and divorced from reality.

"Earlier this week," Benen observes, "White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that China had refused to purchase American soybeans during Joe Biden's presidency because Chinese leaders 'had no respect for our president, Biden, or for the country at the time.' Thankfully, she added, Donald Trump has turned things around. As White House lies go, this one was odd — and rather lazy. It didn't take a lot of Googling to learn that Chinese purchases of American soybeans during the Biden era were quite robust."

Benen adds, "Beijing stopped buying the products, however, earlier this year in response to Trump's trade tariffs. It was a timely reminder that, in service of the president's political agenda, Leavitt isn't just willing to spin and exaggerate, she's also willing to turn reality on its head."

Leavitt claims were also "demonstrably ridiculous," according to Benen, when she claimed that "every economic metric" shows the "economy is improving" under Trump — and that "inflation is down" thanks to him.

"When CNN’s Kaitlan Collins dared to remind the White House press secretary that grocery prices have climbed," Benen observes, "Leavitt accused her of deliberately pushing 'untrue narratives,' despite the fact that grocery prices really have climbed….

As Americans turn sharply against Trump's handing of the economy, the president and his team have other options, but they appear determined to keep playing make-believe, hoping the repetition of nonsense will bully reality into submission."

Benen adds, "Trump's approval rating suggests Leavitt and her colleagues might need a Plan B."

Steve Benen's full MS NOW column is available at this link.}:

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AN 12 25

'Steep small business job cuts': New jobs data exposes weakness in Trump economy

Revealed: Wealthy ranchers profit from public lands while taxpayers pick up the tab

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an 12 25

*Newsweek*reportsthat blue collar jobs are collapsing under President Donald Trump as the labor market in 2025 "takes a decidedly white-collar tone" driven by artificial intelligence.

"AI has already been cited in many of the mass reductions announced by Amazon and other corporations in recent weeks," writes Hugh Cameron.

"But for all the hand-wringing over the potentially ill-fated employees of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, a quieter crisis appears to be unfolding for the U.S.'s blue-collar employees, despite the pledges and efforts of the current administration to foster a renaissance in marquee industries such as construction and manufacturing," he adds.

The delayed September jobs report corroborates this, showing "an encouraging uptick in overall hiring but no pause in blue-collar employment's long-term decline," Cameron writes.

Of the five areas of employment considered blue collar — manufacturing, mining and logging, transportation and warehousing, utilities, and construction — only construction saw an increase in employment, he notes.

That said, construction's 19,000-job gain was also "insufficient to offset the monthly loss of 25,300 jobs in transportation or manufacturing shedding a further 6,000," he writes.

"Year-over-year changes show that annual payroll declines have accelerated since January — albeit continuing a long-term trend—and have pushed blue-collar job growth into negative territory for the first time since the pandemic," Cameron explains.

Heidi Shierholz, chief economist for the Department of Labor during President Barack Obama's tenure, tells Newsweek there is "undeniably a deterioration in employment conditions for the U.S.'s blue-collar workers."

"Between April and September, goods-producing industries (manufacturing, construction, logging, mining), lost 72,000 jobs, with most of those losses (58,000) in manufacturing," she says.

Shierholz also says that "the services sector — which falls partially under the blue-collar umbrella — is 'limping along' thanks solely to gains in health care."

David Dorn, a labor market expert at the University of Zurich, says construction is particularly vulnerable to negative growth despite that slight uptick in employment.

"This sector is highly sensitive to broader economic deceleration, and increasingly restrictive immigration policies under the current U.S. administration are likely constraining labor supply," he says.

And while Dorn says it's hard to "isolate" the direct effects of Trump's tariffs on employment, he says he doubts "whether these had 'generated any sustained gains' in jobs."

Dean Baker, a co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, goes further and says "tariffs have been largely to blame for the uncertainty and 'overall weakness in demand' that has driven cautious hiring across blue-collar sectors," Newsweek reports.

"Companies are reluctant to invest in a context where they have no idea whattariffs will be in placesix months from now, much less three to five years from now," he says.

Baker also says that while manufacturing's gradual decline as a share of total employment has "been the case for more than 50 years," as labor demand shifted toward health care, education and other roles within the more service-focused economy, the president isn't trying to fix it either.

"Trump is doing nothing to address these issues," Baker says.

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AN 11 25

The Wall Street meltdown of September 2008 gave the United States its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Both then-President George W. Bush and his successor, Barack Obama, drew criticism for supporting the costly Wall Street bailout, but both of them maintained that the bailout was necessary in order to prevent the Great Recession from worsening.

In a Substack column posted on November 28, liberal economist Paul Krugman made a comparison between the 2008 financial crisis and the current 2025 economy, and laid out a variety of Trump administration policies that he warns could lead to a "future financial crisis" — from a cryptocurrency bubble to undermining the independence of the U.S. Federal Reserve.

"The clear lesson of 2008 is that effective financial regulation is essential," Krugman emphasizes. "For three generations after the great bank runs of 1930-31, America avoided 'systemic' banking crises — crises that threaten the whole financial system, as opposed to individual institutions. This era, which Yale's Gary Gorton calls the Quiet Period, was the result of New-Deal-era protections — especially deposit insurance — and regulations that limited banks' risk-taking. But post-1980, finance was increasingly deregulated."

Krugman adds, "In particular, the government failed to extend bank-type regulation to shadow banks that posed systemic bank-type risks. And the crisis came."

According to Krugman, Trump and his allies haven't learned the lessons of The Great Recession.

"In a way," Krugman explains, "the laxity that made the 2008 crisis possible was understandable. By the 2000s, nobody in government or the financial markets remembered what a real financial crisis was like. And no, watching 'It's a Wonderful Life' on Christmas Day doesn't count. But here we are in 2025, and 2008 wasn't that long ago. Many of us still have vivid memories of the gut-wrenching panic that gripped the world when Lehman fell. Yet Donald Trump's allies and cronies are now moving rapidly to dismantle the precautionary regulations introduced after 2008 to reduce the risk of future financial crises ... But key players in Congress, within the administration, and, alas, at the Federal Reserve, are apparently determined to make a 2008 rerun possible."

"The MAGA war on financial stability is being waged largely on two fronts. First, there's an ongoing effort within some parts of the Federal Reserve to drastically weaken bank supervision — oversight of banks to prevent them from taking risks that could threaten the financial system. The Fed has multiple roles: in addition to setting interest rates, it also has primary responsibility for bank supervision," Krugman continued. "The Fed is supposed to be quasi-independent, and so far, it has preserved its interest-rate-setting independence in the face of intense pressure by Trump to cut rates. Yet a Trumpian agenda is attempting to overtake the Fed's bank supervision operations…. The second front of MAGA's war on financial stability is on behalf of the crypto industry…. Along with its many other sins, the Trump administration is doing its best to make a future financial crisis more likely."

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AN 11 25

Late credit card payments 'highest since Great Recession' this holiday: analyst

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Trump claims quashed as he's accused of 'cherry-picking' affordability reports

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MMA

November 20, 2025, edition of Fox Business' Mornings with Maria

Later in the program, a guest touched on the downward revisions, mentioning the changes to attack the BLS, much like Fox has done in the past — but didn’t mention that the August jobs numbers had turned negative.

Bartiromo continued promoting the jobs report as “a good report” on America’s Newsroom, saying that it shows “an economy that is growing, an economy that is producing jobs.”

Later on America’s Newsroom, Fox Business correspondent Edward Lawrence said: “This could be considered a blowout report.”

On Fox & Friends, Fox Business host Jackie DeAngelis said, “This is a good report … by all accounts,” and added that the four-year high unemployment rate “is not a great headline for the president,” and that “people will look at that and maybe think the economy isn’t doing well, but it actually is.”

While Fox personalities were praising this jobs report, they didn’t mention that it showed that the economy lost 4,000 jobs in August. From the September jobs report:

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for July was revised down by 7,000, from +79,000 to +72,000, and the change for August was revised down by 26,000, from +22,000 to -4,000. With these revisions, employment in July and August combined is 33,000 lower than previously reported.

As a reminder, Fox was so pessimistic about the employment situation in August that, before that month’s report came out, network personalities began excusing an expected weak month of job growth by echoing President Donald Trump’s attack on the Bureau of Labor Statistics and its data production.

Crucially, and contrary to Fox's spin, these September data and prior month revisions are not giving a snapshot of the economy right now.

The data for September predates the historic government shutdown, which shaved billions of dollars from the economy and is likely to have coincided with significant job losses — the payroll firm ADP estimated the private sector was losing 11,250 per week in October.

And due to complications from the government shutdown, the Labor Department has canceled the official BLS employment situation for October.

Some economic experts have also pointed out that the September jobs report was, in fact, not particularly strong.

New York Times chief economics correspondent Ben Casselman noted that “this is the highest the unemployment rate has been since October 2021, when the economy was still emerging from the COVID pandemic.”

Harvard University economics professor Jason Furman called it “a weakish jobs report,” noting that the “3-month average is only 62K” jobs created.

Economics writer Joey Politano wrote: “The unemployment rate for Black Americans remained at 7.5% in September, the highest level since 2021 and a nearly 1.9% increase from the start of this year.”

Fox itself had attacked President Joe Biden over one September jobs report during his term of office that featured significantly more job gains than the most recent data. In 2023, Fox Business host Charles Payne declared that the 336,000 job gains initially estimated for that September — nearly three times more than in this jobs report — “was not a strong jobs report.”

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1. ### As the August jobs report showed a weakening economy, Fox cast doubt on the data before it was even released

09/05/25 11:48 AM EDT

2. ### On Fox Business, Stephen Moore reacts to weak jobs report: “I think this is all a result of — this disappointing number — is a result of all the turmoil over tariffs and and the trade wars”

08/01/25 11:13 AM EDT

3. ### Fox celebrates “amazing” April jobs report despite downward revisions

05/02/25

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Right-wing media embrace Trump policies that experts say increase housing costs

Conservative media join Vice President JD Vance in scapegoating immigrants for high housing costs

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published 11/20/25

Right-wing media have continued to assist the Trump administration pivot to affordability after a slate of Democrats successfully ran on the issue, now focusing on high housing costs, which have risen in many markets during President Donald Trump’s second term. But many of the policies embraced by Trump’s media allies — including tariffs, 50-year mortgages, and mass deportations — will likely contribute to even higher housing costs.

Conservative media have also joined Vice President JD Vance in scapegoating immigrants for housing affordability issues, even as reporting and research suggest that immigration is not the primary source of high housing costs.

Much like the hoax Vance propagated ahead of the 2024 election that immigrants were eating pets, the idea that immigrants are responsible for housing woes has fascist and Nazi roots.

Many economists say immigration is not driving high housing prices

• • New York Times: “Most economists do not believe that immigrants have been a major driver of the recent run-up in housing prices. Rents and home costs started to surge in 2020 and 2021, before the flow of newcomers began to pick up in 2022 and 2023.” The Times article added: “Even the economist whose paper Mr. Vance had cited as evidence said in an interview that she thought that immigration’s recent impact on housing costs had been minuscule.” One economist said that “if her old results were applied to the recent immigration numbers, they could explain about one percentage point of the 58 percent rise in home costs over the decade through 2023.” The New York Times, [10/11/24]

• • Former Yale Budget Lab economic director Ernie Tedeschi: “Actual studies find that the relationship between immigration and housing gets complex fast. As with the labor market, immigrants add to both housing demand *and* supply, and immigrant demand for housing is often not in competition in native-born demand.” In response to Vance’s argument during the October 2024 vice presidential debate in which Vance blamed immigration for unaffordable housing, Tedeschi noted, “In these studies of England, Wales, & Italy, for example, the net effect of immigration was to lower housing prices.” Twitter/X, [10/2/24, 10/1/24]

• • Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies: “The surge in home price and rent growth predates the surge in immigration.” Senior research analyst Riordan Frost wrote that “the timing of the recent surge in immigration … does not line up with the high growth in both rents and home prices that happened at the start of the pandemic,” adding that “housing demand during the pandemic has been primarily shaped by native-born household growth in a time of constrained housing supply.” Frost further explained: “Home prices surged in both 2020 and 2021, and rents reversed a slight drop in 2020 with a sharp increase in 2021. After immigration ramped up in 2022, growth rates of house prices and rents slowed substantially. By 2023, as the surge in immigration continued, home price growth fell even further while rent growth completely stalled.” Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies, [10/29/24]

• ## Right-wing media join Vance in scapegoating immigration for the housing affordability crisis

• • JD Vance to Fox News host Sean Hannity: “A lot of young people are saying housing is way too expensive. Why is that? Because we flooded the country with 30 million illegal immigrants who were taking houses that ought by right go to American citizens.” Vance added: “So, what we're doing is trying to make it easier to build houses, trying to make it easier to build factories and things like that so that people have good jobs. We're also getting all of those illegal aliens out of our country and you're already seeing it start to pay some dividends.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [11/13/25]

• • Vance to Fox host Will Cain: “Why did housing get so unaffordable for American citizens? … You had way too many people in this country who are competing against American citizens for scarce homes.” Vance added: “Why has housing leveled off over the past 6 months? I really believe the main driver is you’ve had negative net migration into the United States for the first time in 60 years in this country. You cannot flood the United States of America with 20, 30, 40 million people who have no legal right to be here, have them compete against young American families for homes, and not expect the price to skyrocket.” Fox News, *Will Cain Country*,[]

• • Vance during the October 2024 vice presidential debate: “You have got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.” CBS News, [10/4/24]

• • OnThe Story with Martha MacCallum, Trump economic advisor Stephen Miran said about Vance blaming housing unaffordability on immigrants: “I absolutely believe that that’s the case.” Miran, who serves as the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and is a Trump-appointed member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors added on Fox: “There is an abundance of evidence in the economic literature that there is a relationship between immigration and home prices, because the supply of homes adjusts only very slowly, and if you throw a large number of new people into an economy, you're going to push up the price of housing because the people need a place to live. And the supply of homes can't expand instantly. It takes time.” Fox News, *The Story with Martha MacCallum*, [11/14/25]

• • Fox host Griff Jenkins: “Vice President Vance is saying, look, we have millions come across the border illegally, and therefore, what happened to the supply? Well, it narrowed. Americans can't find houses to buy.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [11/14/25]

• • Fox Business host Larry Kudlow: “I think one of the biggest problems in the Biden years, as JD Vance pointed out last night, is the immigration problem. … They are driving up rents and they are driving up home prices, and this was just a wave that we could not accommodate.” Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*, [11/14/25]

• • On Fox, Turning Point USA’s Andrew Kolvet said: “I agree with JD Vance. I believe we’ve got to get a handle on immigration” to address high housing prices. Fox News, *The Story*, [11/14/25]

• • On Fox, Heritage Foundation’s E.J. Antoni said that Vance “really hits the nail on the head” regarding housing affordability. Antoni said, “The demand is obviously artificially high … because of illegal aliens in the country who shouldn’t even be here.” Fox News, *The Will Cain Show*, [11/13/25]

• ## Multiple Trump policies are contributing to an increase of unaffordability in the housing market and cutting back on housing assistance

• • According to the National Association of Realtors' 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, the share of first-time home buyers has dropped to a historic low of 21% and the median age of first-time buyers has risen to 40 years old, an all-time high. According to NAR deputy chief economist and vice president of research Jessica Lautz, “The historically low share of first-time buyers underscores the real-world consequences of a housing market starved for affordable inventory.” National Association of Realtors, [11/4/25]

• • Census data shows that the average sales price for a new home in August of this year is 12.3% higher than August 2024. Census data released in September cites average new home sale prices from August: “The average sales price of new houses sold in August 2025 was $534,100. This is 11.7 percent (±9.5 percent) above the July 2025 price of $478,200, and is 12.3 percent (±10.3 percent) above the August 2024 price of $475,600.” United States Census Bureau, [9/24/25]

• • After Vance’s comments during the 2024 vice presidential debate, University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers pointed to a study showing that deporting undocumented immigrants led to higher home prices and reductions in homebuilding. Wolfers wrote: “You were promised econ studies on the effects of immigration on house prices. So let's deliver: An important new study finds that more robust enforcement of immigration laws reduces the construction workforce, which has led to higher house prices.” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

• • Economists and industry associations have warned that Trump’s mass deportations are hurting the construction industry. An October 24 New York Times article explained: “A number of economists and housing industry experts said that one of the solutions Mr. Trump was proposing — large-scale deportations — could actually backfire and make the housing crisis worse … because immigrants do not simply add to the demand for housing: They are an important part of the work force that supplies it. Foreign-born workers make up a quarter of the construction labor force.” Associated Builders and Contractors President Michael Bellaman told the Times earlier this month: “The current immigration policies are putting huge stress on the work force.” And NPR reported that a summer survey from the Associated General Contractors of America showed “in the past six months, 28% of the surveyed firms said they were affected by immigration actions — 5% said ICE agents had visited a jobsite, 10% said they had lost workers due to actual or rumored ICE raids, and 20% reported those concerns caused subcontractors to lose staff.” The New York Times, [10/11/24, 11/2/25; NPR, 11/6/25]

• • Recent reporting showed that tariffs are also driving up construction costs for new housing. NBC News reported in July that “the total cost of building a mid-range single-family home could rise by more than $4,000 — an estimate that industry experts who reviewed the analysis called conservative.” A survey from the National Association of Home Builders alternatively found that “builders estimate a typical cost effect from recent tariff actions at $10,900 per home.” NBC News, [7/6/25; National Association of Home Builders, accessed 11/14/25]

• • Trump imposed tariffs on lumber and some home furnishings in October. Bloomberg reported: “On Sept. 29, Trump announced 10% tariffs beginning Oct. 14 on imports of softwood timber and lumber, as well as levies on kitchen cabinets, vanities and other wood products that initially start at 25%. In January, the fees on kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities will increase to 50% and on upholstered furniture to 30%.” Bloomberg, [10/14/25]

• • Multiple economists explained that the Trump administration’s 50-year mortgage idea could lead to higher interest rates, raise total interest costs, and drastically slow accumulation of home equity. The economists that criticized this Trump administration plan included former Labor Department chief economist Betsey Stevenson, former director of economics for Yale’s Budget Lab Ernie Tedeschi, Economic Security Project senior director for policy and research Mike Konczal, American Action Forum president Douglas Holtz-Eakin, and incoming Brookings Institution tax policy expert Jessica Riedl. Bloomberg, [11/12/25; Twitter/X, 11/9/25, 11/8/25, 11/8/25, 11/10/25; Fox Business, Kudlow, 11/10/25]

• • New York Times: The Trump administration is planning to cut $3.9 billion in HUD funding, putting housing grants in peril. According to The New York Times, the policy “could quickly place as many as 170,000 formerly homeless people at risk of returning to the streets.” The New York Times, [11/12/25]

• • NPR: “Trump's VA strands thousands of veterans by ending a key mortgage program.” NPR reported in May that the Department of Veterans Affairs “has ended a new mortgage-rescue program that so far has helped about 20,000 veterans avoid foreclosure and keep their homes.” NPR, [5/1/25]

• • ProPublica: “Some 4 million people could lose federal housing assistance under new plans from the Trump administration, according to experts who reviewed drafts of two unpublished rules.” The article continued: “The rules would pave the way for a host of restrictions long sought by conservatives, including time limits on living in public housing, work requirements for many people receiving federal housing assistance and the stripping of aid from entire families if one member of the household is in the country illegally.” ProPublica, [9/29/25]

• ## Right-wing media have expressed support for many of these policies

• • Fox & Friendsco-host Brian Kilmeade: “I’m not anti- the 50-year mortgage if it gets people, young families, from renters to buyers.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [11/14/25]

• • Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro claimed that Vance “is right that deporting 30 million illegal immigrants would definitely help” the housing supply. Shapiro added: “I mean, you have a lot of people in the country who should not be here, and who are taking up housing space.” The Daily Wire, *The Ben Shapiro Show*,[]

• • Fox & Friendsco-host Lawrence Jones on the Trump administration’s 50-year mortgage idea: “I think that's going to encourage more younger people to get within the market to buy a house.” Jones also said: “One thing I like about this is, these are tangibles. This is something that could help the American people, especially younger Americans, immediately. But this administration also doesn't want to have a financial crisis like giving these mortgages to people that aren't qualified. So they’re not saying, hey, if you don't have the money. What they’re saying is, OK, let's span this out a little bit more. Let’s broaden this out a little bit. You may not be able to do the 30 year. But it's an option for you to do the 50 year.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [11/13/25]

• • Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh: “How about 50 million deportations instead of 50-year mortgages?” Walsh added: “A much better idea, one that will actually lower the prices of homes, is to, as we talked about a couple days ago, deport all of the tens of millions of foreigners who are here illegally and taking up housing that should go to Americans. A lot of housing. Give America back to Americans.” The Daily Wire, *The Matt Walsh Show*,[]

• • Fox host Jesse Watters: “If you let Trump deport the 2 million illegals that poured into” New York City, “that is going to bring rent down.”Fox News, *The Five*, [11/6/25]

• • Conservative writer @amuse: “Trump’s 50-Year Mortgage: The New Deal for the Next Century.” In a later post on X, @amuse added: “Many developed countries allow 50+ year mortgages without any issue.” Substack, [11/9/25; Twitter/X, 11/11/25]

• • Fox has defended Trump’s tariffs and dismissed their contribution to higher inflation. As economists this summer explained how Trump’s tariffs were beginning to show up in inflation data, Fox Business hosts Maria Bartiromo and Jackie DeAngelis, along with guest Art Laffer, denied tariffs' impact on prices. Meanwhile, inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index re-accelerated following Trump’s Fox-endorsed “Liberation Day” tariffs first announced in April. Media Matters, [7/15/25, 8/12/25, 4/1/25; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics via Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, accessed 11/5/25; CBS News, 4/9/25]

• • Fox endorsed Trump’s April “Liberation Day” messaging of much higher tariffs on imports, with nearly 100 Fox personalities and guests cheering them on during the following week. Media Matters, [4/1/25, 4/11/25]

MMA //

1. ### This Fox segment demonstrates the network’s struggle to craft a coherent affordability message for Trump

11/18/25 3:59 PM EST

2. ### Fox & Friends praises Trump for “quick fix” on affordability by lowering his tariffs — which Fox used to celebrate

11/14/25 12:02 PM EST

3. ### It took big Democratic wins for right-wing media to admit that the affordability crisis is getting worse

11/06/25

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AN 11 25

Trump cut US 'expansion by a third or more' in quagmire even the 'Supreme Court can’t undo'

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AN 11 25

Consumer confidence in death spiral as Trump wrecks hope in the economy

//

White House says inflation is 'way down' — Americans aren’t buying it

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3X JOB WHAMMY, DOGE CUTS, SHUTDN, TECH CUTS AI 11 25

AN 11 25 badash

'Really hurting': US job cuts surge to decades-high level amid Trump recession fears

Employers have cut over one million jobs so far this year, with announced layoffs surging in October to levels not seen in decades. Some experts have been warning about a possible recession.

“U.S. employers have announced 1.1 million layoffs so far this year — the largest reading since the pandemic recession and on par with 2008 and 2009 job cuts during the Great Recession,” The Washington Post reported on Thursday, pointing to a report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which tracks workplace reductions.

Major corporations have cut or are reportedly planning to cut thousands of positions this year:

UPS: 48,000 employees

Amazon: Up to 30,000 employees

Intel: 24,000 employees

Microsoft: 15,000 employees

Target: 1,800 employees

"Employers announced more than 153,000 job cuts last month, a 183 percent increase from the month before, marking the worst October for layoffs since 2003,” the Post reported, citing data from the Challenger report.

“The worst October in 22 years” is how CNN reported the news.

“We’re entering new territory with these layoffs in October,” Challenger CEO John Challenger told the Post. “We haven’t seen mega-layoffs of the size that are being discussed now — 48,000 from UPS, potentially 30,000 from Amazon — since 2020 and before that, since the recession of 2009. When you see companies making cuts of this size, it does signal a real shift in direction.”

Amid the job cuts, the “AI bubble,” President Donald Trump’s massive deportations and tariffs, record-high household debt, climbing automobile payment and consumer loan delinquencies, some believe a recession may be in America’s future.

“Employment has stalled, companies are announcing massive layoffs to appease Wall Street, and car repossessions just reached 2009 (recession) levels,” wrote economics professor and managing director of an economic consulting firm, Hal Singer, just last week. “The GDP numbers mask real suffering in the economy. And the only fiscal tool in the Trump policy kit are tax cuts for the wealthy. This could get ugly.”

Late last month Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi said 22 U.S. states are already in a recession, Moneywise reported.

"While Zandi did emphasize that the U.S. is not in a recession just yet, he told MarketWatch that ‘we’re on the precipice,’ blaming much of the problem on President Trump’s tariffs and federal job cuts.”

“A growing number of states are struggling, some already in recession, others right on the edge,” Zandi wrote. “Together, they account for nearly a third of U.S. GDP. The national economy isn’t there yet, but it’s clearly losing steam.”

Pointing to a list of ten major corporations’ jobs cuts, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) last week declared, “This is Donald Trump’s economy.”

CNN Thursday morning reported that a “brand new report is out … and it shows layoff announcements hit their highest level for October in over 20 years.”

“It’s painting a picture of a job market that is really hurting,” CNN’s Matt Egan noted.

===

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AN 11 25 LAT

Los Angeles Times Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Michael Hiltzik writes that President Donald Trump has reversed the trend of President Joe Biden's booming economy and it's only getting worse.

Tuesday night's election boon for The Democrats, Hiltzik writes, only proves his point.

"The lesson delivered by the results is that Americans sense that the economy is reeling," he writes. "Most economic indicators are flashing yellow or even red."

Polls also point to Trump's abysmal economy, he notes, adding, "the indicators of economic pain are all around us. Every one of the leading opinion polls taken since Oct. 1 has shown Donald Trump’s approval rating on the economy to be deeply underwater, with the average calculated by RealClearPolling at negative 13.4 points."

Inflation, he writes, is "unmistakably on the rise again," as the consumer price index rose to 3.0 percent in September from a low of 2.3 percent in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

An increase in food prices — up from 2.1 percent in May to 3.1 percent — "has potent political implications, since food is an expense experienced by consumers on almost a daily basis," Hiltzik says.

Job growth has also ebbed, he says, with monthly job creation "fading since Trump took office, with the figures turning negative in June, August and September," he writes.

Farm bankruptcies are rising, too. "Prices of such key crops as corn, wheat and soybeans have been falling as Trump’s trade war shrinks foreign demand for American produce," Hiltzik says.

Consumer spending is also down in "a serious slowdown from the 3.7 percent and 4.0 percent growth rates in the third and fourth quarter of last year, before Trump took office, Fitch Ratings calculated in September," he explains.

As the historic government shutdown continues, "headwinds threaten to keep building" against the economy, one which was thriving under Biden, he says.

"It’s proper to note that the economy Trump inherited from Biden was strong and getting stronger," Hilzik says.

”In truth, Biden inherited an unemployment rate of 6.8 percent from Trump’s first term, and bequeathed second-term Trump a rate of 4.1 percent, the lowest rate since the election of George W. Bush. Annual job growth fell to negative 6 percent during Trump’s first term, and Biden brought it up to an average of 1.4 percent."

Under Biden, "real gross domestic product growth per capita had fallen to an annualized rate of negative 1.8 percent under Trump 1.0; Biden brought it up to positive 2.1 percent," he notes.

Trump 2.0 also inherited an excellent employment to population ratio for workers 24 to 54 years old.

"When Biden took over, it was 76.2 percent, rising to to 80.5 percent when he ceded the White House to Trump — the highest handover value since 2000, according to the labor-affiliated Economic Policy Institute."

Conservatives "viewed Trump’s impending second term with a certain level of trepidation," Hilzik notes, saying some expected “the actual policies [would have been] less severe than suggested by Trump’s blustery campaign platform.”

They were more severe, he writes.

"The strongest headwind against growth is the uncertainty that Trump has imposed on the economy," he says.

About 71 percent of CEOs polled by Yale said that Trump's tariffs"were harming their business, 62 percent said the tariffs weren’t prompting them to invest more domestically and 59 percent said they expected no results from domestic investment as a result of the tariffs."

Despite the White House insisting the economy is strong, Hilzik says "the signs are that the near future, at least, will be economically bleaker than the present," and that "the one unmistakable positive sign in the economic landscape —a stock market reaching record highs — may be less encouraging than it appears on the surface."

Those highs, he says, are gains concentrated "among seven stocks associated with spending on artificial intelligence, and whether they can be sustained is an open question."

Trump's economic future looks bleak, Hilzik says, with no economic development "visible on the horizon that might relieve consumers of the feeling that they’re paying more for necessities and that their very livelihoods are under threat."

Tuesday's election sounded the alarm bells, Hilzik writes, but he's not sure the White House is listening.

"What Tuesday’s election results show is that consumers are voters. A rational administration would take that as a warning siren and reconsider its policies. This administration? Who knows?" he says.

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an 10 25

The New York Times highlighted the stories of Iowan farmers who are hit hard by the administration's economic agenda.

Larry Ory, an 86-year-old farmer from Earlham, Iowa, expressed disbelief upon hearing of a $20 billion U.S. bailout to Argentina, especially as Argentine soybeans began shipping to China — a market that had been vital for Iowa's soybean exports.

China halted U.S. soybean purchases following Trump's trade war, leaving American farmers without their largest customer.

The report noted that the economic strain is evident across Iowa. The state's GDP fell by 6.1 percent in the first quarter of 2025, the steepest decline after neighboring Nebraska.

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Manufacturers face rising production costs due to tariffs on aluminum and steel, while meatpacking plants, which rely heavily on foreign-born workers, have been affected by changes in immigration policies. The wind energy industry, which supplies over half of Iowa's electricity, is under threat due to federal policies.

Summer Ory, who works on the family farm, likened the situation to "death by a thousand paper cuts," highlighting the cumulative impact of various economic challenges. Despite these hardships, some farmers remain hopeful.

Doug Keller, a 63-year-old farmer near Waterloo, expressed optimism that a new trade deal with China could eventually benefit farmers.

However, the growing discontent is palpable.

Josh Turek, a Democratic state representative running for the U.S. Senate seat held by retiring Rep. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), noted, "People are hurting everywhere in Iowa, and they’re looking for something different."

With key elections approaching, the impact of federal policies on Iowa's economy is expected to be a central issue.

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an 10 25

Economist Paul Krugman says U.S. consumer sentiment is much weaker than it was pre-Covid, “in fact comparable to its level at the depths of the 2008-2009 financial crisis.”

And people have good reason to feel that way, according to the Nobel laureate's Wednesday Substack article.

“While there have been no mass layoffs so far, people who have lost their jobs or are just entering the work force are finding it very hard to get new jobs,” said Krugman, describing a “K-shaped” economy with affluent people becoming more wealthy and the less well-off “under severe pressure,” an indicated by the rise in car loan and credit card delinquencies and grocery shoppers buying cheaper food. Meanwhile, the top 10 percent of Americans now account for nearly half of all consumer spending.

The rate at which businesses are hiring is currently “not far above its level during the 2008-2009 financial crisis,” Krugman said, although the Trump administration hasn’t released the latest figures.

Surveys conducted by the Conference Board tend to skew optimistic with nearly half of respondents saying in late 2019 — on the eve of Covid — that jobs were plentiful. But the latest Conference Board survey had only 26 percent of respondents saying jobs were “plentiful.”

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“And they’re right,” said Krugman. “Overall unemployment hasn’t risen that much, but the number of long-term unemployed — would-be workers who have been jobless for more than 6 months — had soared as of August, and has probably continued to rise since then.”

Another important indicator of a troubled labor market is Black unemployment, which is a reliable Geiger counter for what to expect in the greater economy later, said Krugman.

“After all these years, Black workers still tend to be ‘last hired, first fired.’ And while the overall unemployment rate hasn’t risen much so far, the Black unemployment rate has soared, presumably because Black workers are finding it especially hard to find jobs in this frozen economy,” Krugman said.

And even as the U.S. stock market cranks along, Krugman urged Americans to not be fooled.

“Investors seem to have decided that the wonders of AI matter more than Trump’s tariff madness, so we’re seeing a stock market surge dominated by technology companies,” said Krugman, adding that the AI boom “is troublingly reminiscent of the 90s tech bubble.”

“JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon suggested parallels between bad lending in the private credit market and the bad subprime lending that brought on the 2008 crisis,” said Krugman. “To quote Dimon: ‘I probably shouldn’t say this, but when you see one cockroach, there are probably more.’”

But aside from the question of whether this is a bubble, Krugman said it’s important to “be aware that the top 10 percent of households own 87 percent of equities, while the bottom half own almost no stock at all and gain nothing from a rising market.”

Read Krugman’s full report at his Substack here.

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an 9 25

'Biggest decline in 2-and-a-half years': Experts sound alarm on dismal labor market data

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ICE RAID HyUNDAI BATTERY PLANT DEPORT WORKERS SOUTH KOREA

PPL AFRAID TO GO TO WORK FARM CONSTRUCTION ETC

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AN 9 25

In the 2024 election, the fact that Donald Trump's hardcore MAGA base aggressively supported him came as no surprise. But it was independents and swing voters who ultimately got Trump past the finish line and gave him a narrow victory in a close election.

Trump won the popular vote for the first time in 2024, defeating Democratic nominee Kamala Harris by roughly 1.5 percent — and the economy, according to polls, played a key role in that victory. Although the United States enjoyed record-low unemployment during Joe Biden's presidency, frustration over inflation worked to Trump's advantage.

But The New York Times' Jamelle Bouie, in his September 17 column, argues that Trump sold U.S. voters a "fantasy" that is now unravelling.

READ MORE: 'I'm the one asking the questions': CNN host cuts off Ted Cruz after he shouts over her

Trump, according to Bouie, told 2024 voters that "that there were no trade-offs" with the economy — and that Americans "could have their cake and eat it, too" when, "in reality," it "was a binary choice."

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"The essence of President Trump's pitch to the American people last year was simple: They could have it both ways," Bouie explains. "They could have a powerful, revitalized economy and 'mass deportations now.' They could build new factories and take manufacturing jobs back from foreign competitors as well as expel every person who, in their view, didn't belong in the United States. They could live in a 'golden age' of plenty — and seal it away from others outside the country with a closed, hardened border."

One "binary choice," according to Bouie, was that "Americans could have a strong, growing economy, which requires immigration to bring in new people and fill demand for labor, or they could finance a deportation force and close the border to everyone but a small, select few."

"Millions of Americans embraced the fantasy," Bouie laments. "Now, about eight months into Trump's second term, the reality of the situation is inescapable. As promised, Trump launched a campaign of mass deportation. Our cities are crawling with masked federal agents, snatching anyone who looks 'illegal' to them — a bit of racial profiling that has, for now, been sanctioned by the Supreme Court. The jobs, however, haven't arrived."

READ MORE: 'Undisputed idiot king': Former NBC journalist calls Eric Trump 'the epitome of stupidity'

The New York Times columnist continues, "There are fewer manufacturing jobs than there were in 2024, thanks in part to the president's tariffs and, well, his immigration policies…. To embrace nativism in a global, connected economic world is to sacrifice prosperity for the sake of exclusion, just as the main effect of racial segregation in the American South was to leave the region impoverished and underdeveloped."

READ MORE: 'Didn't work for you': CNN analyst confronts Trump's favorite pundit on political violence

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an 8 25

A leading inflation indicator surged much more than expected last month, just as the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs started to weigh on American businesses and consumers.

New Producer Price Index (PPI) numbers released on Thursday showed that wholesale prices rose by 0.9% over the last month and by 3.3% over the last year. These numbers were significantly higher than economists' consensus estimates of a 0.2% monthly rise and a 2.5% yearly rise in producer prices.

PPI is a leading indicator of future readings of the Consumer Price Index, the most widely cited gauge of inflation, as increases in wholesalers' prices almost inevitably get passed on to consumers. Economists have been predicting for months that Trump's tariffs on imported goods, which at the moment are higher than at any point in nearly 100 years, would lead to a spike in inflation.

Reacting to the higher-than-expected PPI number, some economic experts pinned the blame directly on the president.

"So much for foreigners paying tariffs," commented Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at tax consulting firm RSM US, on X. "If they did, PPI would be falling. Wholesale prices up 3.3% from a year ago and 3.7% in the core. The temperature is definitely rising in the core. This implies a hot PCE reading lies ahead."

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Liz Pancotti, the managing director of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, took a deep dive into the numbers and found that Trump's tariffs were having an impact on a wide range of products.

"There is no mistaking it: President Trump's tariffs are hitting American farmers and driving up grocery prices for American families," she said. "Wholesale prices for grocery staples, like fresh vegetables (up 39% over the past month) and coffee (up 29% over the past year) are rising, squeezing American families even further in the checkout line."

Pancotti singled out the rise in milk prices as particularly worrisome for American families.

"Milk drove more than 30% of the increase in prices for unprocessed goods, rising by 9.1% in just the past month," she explained. "Tuesday's CPI print showed that milk prices rose by 1.9% in July, and this PPI data suggests further price hikes are on the way."

Betsey Stevenson, who served on former President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, also pointed the finger at Trump's policies.

"Tariffs will cause higher prices," she said. "Volatility and uncertainty will cause higher prices. The PPI jump is not a surprise, it was inevitable."

On his Bluesky account, CNBC's Carl Quintanilla flagged analysis from economic research firm High Frequency Economics stating that the new PPI numbers were "a kick in the teeth for anyone who thought that tariffs would not impact domestic prices in the United States economy."

The firm added that it "will not be a long journey for producers' prices to translate into consumer prices" in the coming months.

Liz Thomas, the head of investment strategy at finance company SoFi, argued that the hot PPI numbers could further frustrate Trump's goal of getting the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates given that doing so would almost certainly boost inflation further.

"The increase in PPI was driven by services, and there were increases in general services costs and in the Trade component (i.e., wholesale/retail margins)," she commented. "The Fed won't like this report."

Ross Hendricks, an analyst at economic research firm Porter & Co., described the new report as "scorching hot" and similarly speculated that it would stop the Federal Reserve from cutting rates.

"Good luck with them rate cuts!" he wrote. "Can't recall the last time we've seen a miss that big on a single monthly inflation number."

Hedge fund manager and author Jeff Macke jokingly speculated that the bad PPI print would cause Trump to fire yet another government statistician just as he fired Erika McEntarfer, the former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"Whoever compiles the PPI needs to update their CV," he wrote.

Just as with the monthly jobs report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics collects and publishes PPI data.

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mma

August 1, 2025, edition of Fox Business' Mornings with Maria

​MARIA BARTIROMO (FOX BUSINESS ANCHOR): ​73,000 jobs, 73,000 jobs, created in ​the month of July​, the number ​just coming out​.

...

​CHARLES PAYNE (FOX BUSINESS HOST): And that's total.

​BARTIROMO: ​F​our point two percent is the unemployment rate​, right in line with expectations​. ​Here are the numbers​: ​For the month July, jobs came in 73,000 that was lower than the expectation, ​which called for 110,000 jobs​. ​The unemployment rate right in step with expectations​ at 4.2%​. Steve Moore, your reaction.

STEPHEN MOORE (GUEST): Look. I think this is all a result of — this disappointing number — is a result of all the turmoil over tariffs and and the trade wars. And that's sort of good news and bad news because guess what? In just the last few weeks, Trump has racked off a lot of victories here. As he gets more victories with the Europeans, with Japan, with the UK, I think that's gonna settle things. And then, that kind of turmoil will over. So I think, I think that — this is kind of a blip, and, and so I'm kinda I'm still very bullish on the US economy, but this is a disappointing number. I'd love to see, what the number was for private sector, as John was saying, is it private sector, or government? I want to see the government employment number down because remember, under Biden —

PAYNE: 83,000

MOORE: So much of the job creation was in the government sector.

...

PAYNE: I want to push back on it, I think this is more about the Federal Reserve.

BARTIROMO: Yeah.

PAYNE: Again, we've got a bifurcated economy. The Fed is — is they have a regressive approach here, right? They're still trying to clamp down on this economy, but it's not working, it's hurting 70% of the folks out there. Look at delinquencies, look at all the things that are hurting average household, I think — and also small businesses. They're coming into this year, the biggest question was how they even refinance. We're talking about financing government, then how do we help the small businesses out there? There are two economies, the Fed's looking at the wealthiest folks out there and thinking it means everyone. I think that's hurting jobs market more than anything else.

BARTIROMO: Mmhmm, yeah, it's a great point. I agree that this report is so critical for the Federal Reserve's next move. Stephanie, how do you read things?

STEPHANIE POMBOY (MACROMAVENS PRESIDENT): Well, I'm just stunned at another number in this report, and that is the downward revisions to the June figure, from 147,000 to just 14,000. So, looking over the last three months, we've got 73,000 in July, 14,000 in June, and 19,000 in May. Those are incredibly weak headline numbers, and that's the total, not just private jobs, so this is a very soft report. And I guess what I'm really blown away by July generally is a report where the seasonals are such that you can surprise on the upside very easily. Because a million people, roughly, drop out of the labor force with the school year, you know the school vacations. So that sets a very low seasonal bar for the data to clear, and clearly we tripped over the bar. So this is a very weak report.

...

POMBOY: And I guess it, you know, certainly strengthens the argument materially for the Fed to cut rates. It's interesting, because one presumes they've had at least some of the preliminary components of this report when they were in their meeting on Wednesday and made the decision, they probably had an early look at this. So, that probably is one of the reasons why you had the two dissents, but amazing that Powell stood firm despite that in the face of this data.

BARTIROMO: Well it's a great point you make, because these downward revisions show a lot more about this economy in the last couple of months. And if we're learning now in, you know, the first day of August, for the month of July, and the month in June that things were weakening, Jay Powell had access to that. How is it possible that he went forward and did not cut interest rates, even as he saw all of this data, Stephanie? Yes, that's why we had two dissenters, Miki Bowman and Christopher Waller.

POMBOY: I think that Trump kind of put him in a position where he had to stand firm, otherwise he would look like a total pushover. So ironically, by putting all that pressure on him, the president may have actually reinforced Powell's determination to stand firm in the face of data that clearly indicate that he should have been moving in the other direction. But as you said, Powell's always too late. That's not just a slight against Jay Powell. The Fed is always too late. They always overstay accommodation and create some kind of massive bubble. And then when that bubble bursts, they act like they're shocked that anything adverse happened, and they run in, and they put way too much stimulus there. And the next think you know, we've got another correction — recession on our hands. And so it's either too tight or two easy, they just can't seem to get it right. And I think it is definitely time to do a deep review of the Federal Reserve, and look at really, as Charles has talked about, the incredible damage that Federal Reserve's policy has done to the middle class of this country. I mean, it is responsible, in my view, for this yawning gap between the high end and the low end, and with each serial monetary bailout, they create, you know, they expand that wedge even wider.

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combo of uncertain tariff BS and voodoo2 b b bill BS; voust to borrow for debt goes up; dngrade not for decades?

an 5 25

'Debt bomb': Morning Joe explains why Moody’s downgrade is 'siren going off' for US economy

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AN 525

NO LNX

Trump’s clown car cabinet is driving off a cliff

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reacts as she walks towards the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 10, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

Sabrina Haake, Raw Story May 03, 2025

UPS, the United Parcel Service, just announced that it is laying off 20,000 employees and closing 73 of its buildings by the end of June. It attributes the downturn to reduced shipping volume from its largest customer, Amazon, due to Trump’s tariffs.

When a division of Amazon considered telling consumers the truth, by posting the costs tariffs added to the price of each imported product, the mere possibility set the White House on attack mode. Trump immediately called Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, who reassured him Amazon would never do such a thing, while Karoline Leavitt accused Bezos of a “political and hostile” act just for thinking about it.

When a presidential team of incompetent egoists calls truth-telling a “hostile act,” we’re in trouble.

Ruinous economic indicators prompt ruinous deflection

Trump’s first quarter report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis reflects a sharp contraction in the economy, showing an annual decrease in the GDP of 0.3 percent. Compared to Biden’s last quarter, when “real GDP increased 2.4 percent,” the data suggest that perhaps Trump isn’t the economic genius he claims to be.

These are not partisan data; that the Bureau falls under the US Department of Commerce suggests Trump may soon hobble its reporting capacity. For now, the data show economic contraction, reflecting a colossal reversal from Biden’s expansion. Wall Street sums up Trump’s first 100 days in office as the “worst for the stock market in half a century.”

On brand, when faced with these data, Trump lied, deflected, and blamed his predecessor, posting,“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s. I didn’t take over until January 20th. This… has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that (Biden) left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”

Trump continues to manufacture Biden’s “bad numbers”

Trump can’t stop parroting his own campaign lies about Biden’s economy. During the 2024 presidential campaign, when he wasn’t manufacturing a border invasion to enrage people, Trump repeatedly attacked Biden’s economy. It worked. While remaining mum on how his own COVID-19 mismanagement worsened the economy, he convinced 49% of voters that they were impoverished, despite economic indicators to the contrary.

After commerce reports came out this week, Trump doubled down. During an embarrassing televised cabinet meeting orchestrated to praise himself, Trump confirmed that he sought to undo everything Biden did to improve the economy, stating, “We came in and I was very against everything that Biden was doing in terms of the economy. … We took over his mess in so many different ways.”

Trump and his cabinet may drink their own economic Kool-Aid, but Wall Street is abstaining. Multiple indicators confirmed that Biden delivered the strongest post-COVID economic recovery in the world, including: growth and job creation that exceeded G7 and other advanced economies' growth in 2024; inflation control despite global inflationary pressures; avoidance of the post-COVID recession predicted by many; wage gains; strong market performance with record S&P 500 highs; and stellarinfrastructure investment that Trump, in a toddler-esque pique of jealousy, is scrambling to unravel.

During Biden’s term, the U.S. added 16 million jobs, low earners were experiencing wage growth, inflation levels approached the Federal Reserve’s target, and unemployment hit a 54-year low. By these metrics, Biden performed economic jujitsu, delivering an economy that The Economist called “the envy of the world.”

Teaching Trump media how to lie better

After Trump officially blamed Biden this week for economic contractions caused by his own ill-conceived tariffs, he went further, instructing right-wing media how to spin bad economic news of the future. During his televised “Praise Dear Leader” cabinet meeting, Trump told his preferred outlets (Fox, Newsmax, OAN) that they should also blame any economic downturns in the second quarter on Biden.

Trump showed similar intransigence during an interview with Terry Moran of ABC News about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man Trump is keeping in an El Salvador prison despite a Supreme Court order to facilitate his return. Trump insisted during the interview that an obviously photoshopped picture showed Garcia with “MS13” tattooed on his knuckles. When Moran told Trump that the image was clearly photoshopped, Trump acted like a tyrant. He first suggested Moran owed him something – it was thanks to Trump that Moran got the interview at all. Frustrated by Moran’s continuing refusal to lie, Trump told him, “you’re not being very nice,” before pivoting to attacking media as a whole, saying this “is why people no longer believe the news … It’s such a disservice…”

Discussing the Supreme Court order to facilitate Garcia’s return, Moran stated the obvious — that Trump could simply pick up the phone, call El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, and get him back. Trump confirmed that he is, indeed, flouting the Supreme Court’s authority, stating, “I could…. And if he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that.”

In one interview, Trump vacillated between being the all powerful Oz, and the cheap salesman behind the curtain. When Moran reminded him that the high court ordered him to return Garcia, Trump deflected, incredibly: “I'm not the one making this decision. We have lawyers who don't want to do this.”

Trump’s clown car cabinet is driving off a cliff

After the Supreme Court slapped the administration and ordered Garcia’s return with a 9-0 decision, White House adviser Stephen Miller simply lied about it. Miller claimed on Fox News that the administration had “won” the case, “clearly,” prompting a conservative columnist to retort, “Nope, you lost. Unanimously.” Fox viewers, of course, won’t hear that rejoinder as Fox anchors continue to throw falsehoods at the wall to see what sticks.

As Team Trump continues governing the country like a made-for-Fox-TV reality show, real-life consequences are piling up. China just canceled orders for American pork, soybeans, and lumber, putting US farmers in “full-blown crisis” mode.

Maybe, like dolls for Christmas, farmers can make do with selling one or two hogs instead of 30. As Trump put it during a town hall Wednesday night, he plans to defeat public skepticism over his tariffs through deception. “I just think that I’ll be able to convince people how good this is.”

NOW READ: Trump's rampage is out of control — but there's one way to stop it

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are or have been published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News, State Affairs, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

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trump inherited the strongest economy ever? “envy of world”trump 2016 BO’s 10 of 11 biggest stock drops under trump?

but

Trump claims that U.S. manufacturing slowed down during former President Joe Biden's four years in the White House, and he insists that his tariff-driven trade policy will lead to a renaissance in manufacturing jobs.

But according to Cleanview Energy founder Michael Thomas, Biden — not Trump — is the one with the stronger record on manufacturing jobs.

In a Thursday, April 10 post on X, formerly Twitter, Thomas posts, "The manufacturing boom that started under the Biden administration is grinding to a halt under Trump." And Thomas backs it up with a chart.

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READ MORE: GOP’s defense of 'Dear Leader' Trump’s 'idiocy' resembles famous suicide cult: analysis

The chart, using U.S. Census Bureau figures, shows data on manufacturing jobs between 2016 (when Barack Obama was still president) and 2025 (when Trump returned to the White House). Altogether, the chart offers data spanning four presidential administrations.

U.S. manufacturing jobs, according to the chart, declined slightly during Trump's first presidency — before surging during Biden's four years as president. The chart shows the number of manufacturing jobs continuing to climb under Biden, peaking in 2024 before starting to decrease under Trump.

In separate tweets, Heatmap News' Matthew Zeitlin and Hassan Khan offer some reasons why Trump's policies aren't conducive to creating manufacturing jobs.

Zeitlin, in an April 10 tweet, notes that "buyouts at the department of energy could cripple its industrial policy efforts."

READ MORE:Donald Trump has an addiction: WSJ

In response to Zeitlin, Khan tweets, "The dismantling of LPO and sidelining of CHIPS staff are not things you do if your primary goal is re-industrialization. They’re doing this because they spite anything the other guys did."

READ MORE: 'Compete mess': Trump slammed as Wall St. CEO says policies will 'probably' cause recession

See the chart above or at this link.

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aha if # good there must be a problem with them--> tariff stock and bond crash 4 25 dow no matter, shd not get addicted to cheap proices and material things

fox business guest and Project 2025 contributor Stephen Moore dabbles with conspiracy theory that monthly jobs reports are artificially inflated 09/06/24 mma

https://www.mediamatters.org/stephen-moore/fox-business-guest-and-project-2025-contributor-stephen-moore-dabbles-conspiracy)

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aha 11 24 fox echo xitter constantly trash alt fact

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an 1 25

Data proves Trump 'inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets': report

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an 12 24

During his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly blamed President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for inflation in the United States. His messaging worked: Trump pulled off a narrow victory, defeating Harris in both the electoral and popular votes.

Trump didn't win by a "landslide," as "War Room" host Steve Bannon, Rep. Rick Scott (R-Florida) and other far-right Trump supporters have been claiming. The president-elect, according to the Cook Political Report, won the popular vote by roughly 1.5 percent. But he successfully used voters' anxiety over inflation to his advantage.

Nonetheless, the U.S. has had low unemployment rates under Biden's presidency. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), unemployment was only 4.2 percent in November.

READ MORE:'Not going to cooperate': Border state sheriffs vow to defy Trump’s mass deportations plan

In an article published on December 18, the New York Times' Ben Casselman emphasizes that Trump is inheriting a "stable" economy from Biden/Harris — and addresses fears that the stability coud disappear.

"After five years of uncertainty and turmoil," Casselman explains, "the U.S. economy is ending 2024 in arguably its most stable condition since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Inflation has cooled. Unemployment is low. The Federal Reserve is cutting interest rates. The recession that many forecasters once warned was inevitable hasn’t materialized."

The Times reporter continues, "Yet the economic outlook for 2025 is as murky as ever, for one major reason: President-elect Donald J. Trump. On the campaign trail and in the weeks since his election, Mr. Trump has proposed sweeping policy changes that could have profound — and complicated — implications for the economy."

:{READ MORE:'Chilling effect': ABC News employees condemn network‘s 'surrender' to Trump

Possible Causes for concern, according to Casselman, include new tariffs, mass deportations, and regulation changes that could "make the financial system more prone to crises over the long run."

Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist for Morgan Stanley, told the Times, "It is a very uncertain outlook, and most of that uncertainty comes from potential changes in policy…. There's a wide range of potential outcomes, and a base-line outlook isn't quite as useful as it is in normal times."

Economist Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute warns that changes in "trade and immigration policy could be extremely disruptive to the economy" and lead to slow growth combined with high inflation.

Strain told the Times, "In this scenario, the price of imported goods, the price of groceries, the price of restaurant meals, the price of homes all shoot up dramatically."

READ MORE:'The source of much evil': Baptist minister warns against MAGA’s 'weaponization of Christianity'

*Read Ben Casselman's full New York Times article at this link (subscription required).

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an 2 24

Fox & Friends credits November jobs gains to “Donald Trump's victory”

12/06/24

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EARTH2 BEN STEIN WINNERS:

MMA

As Trump wrecks the economy, Fox News pivots to blaming Biden

Fox personalities are blaming worsening economic indicators on the previous administration to absolve Trump of responsibility

Written by Zachary Pleat & Craig Harrington

Research contributions from Lis Power

Published 03/04/25

Even though President Donald Trump’s administration has taken multiple actions that have effectively weakened the economy, Fox News is helping Trump prepare to place the blame for worsening economic indicators on former President Joe Biden, who handed off a strong and stable economy to Trump less than two months ago.

Trump reportedly plans to blame Biden for his own economic turmoil

• • Time: “A White House official tells TIME to expect more of” Trump blaming Biden for the Trump “administration’s woes” during his March 4 address to Congress. Time further quoted the Trump official as saying: “He’s going to speak directly to the American people about the challenges he inherited from the previous administration.” Time, [3/3/25]

• • On Fox, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt previewed that Trump will highlight some of his “accomplishments” and “talk about his plans to fix the economic mess that was created and left for him by Joe Biden and his administration.”Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [3/4/25]

• • :{:{Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro told Fox that “the economy is in good shape right now because the Trump cavalry is riding to the rescue,” but that “ Biden inflation” remains a problem.Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*,:(style="background-color:#ffff00ff"):}: [3/4/25]}:

• • On Fox, counselor to the president Alina Habba said of economic concerns: “I think honestly the biggest challenge we have is that these are Biden's economic numbers — we’re in the first quarter, so we’re dealing with the repercussions of what was — and we're trying to fix it as quickly as humanly possible.”Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*, [3/4/25]

• ## Fox joins in blaming Biden for Trump’s self-inflicted damage to the economy

• • Fox contributor Newt Gingrich: “Just as Reagan inherited Carter's bad economy, President Trump inherited Biden's bad economy.” Gingrich added, “We are sliding towards a recession.” Fox Business, *Mornings with Maria Bartiromo*, [3/3/25]

• • Fox Business host Larry Kudlow: “Right now the economy is doing poorly. This is still the Biden economy.” Co-host and Fox Business anchor Cheryl Casone added that Trump has to “remind Americans what” he “was just handed by Joe Biden.” Kudlow concluded: “The Biden economy is sinking rapidly.” Fox News, *Outnumbered*, [3/3/25]

• • Fox anchor Sandra Smith on Federal Reserve data indicating an economic slowdown: “This is still the hangover from the Biden administration.” Fox Business host Brian Brenberg added: “The Trump administration is trying to unravel an economy that was absolutely tied up in government spending and government hiring — which is totally unsustainable because it is nobody's money but the taxpayers’ money.” Fox News, *America Reports*, [3/3/25]

• • Fox host Laura Ingraham: “Trump is trying mightily” to turn around a “weak” economy. Ingraham said the economy is “weighed down with $36 trillion and counting in debt,” calling it “weakness.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [3/3/25]

• • Fox guest Stephen Moore: “These numbers that have come in so far are really the Biden numbers. ... This is a bit of the Biden hangover.” After Democratic strategist Robert Wolf listed a number of economic indicators that have quickly soured in Trump's first few weeks in office, anchor Sandra Smith and Heritage Foundation economist Stephen Moore pivoted to blaming the sudden economic malaise on the Biden administration. However, Moore concluded the segment by agreeing that Trump's tariffs “are not a good thing for the economy right now,” adding that businesses and investors disliked the uncertainty Trump's policies had created. Fox News, *America Reports*, [3/4/25]

• ## The labor market was strong before Trump took office

• • Washington Post economic columnist Heather Long: “JUST IN: A strong December jobs report. The US economy added 256,000 jobs (well above expectations).” Long concluded, “Bottom line: No recession in site. Hiring did slow, but that's what the Fed wanted.” Twitter/X, [1/10/25]

• • KPMG U.S. chief economist Diane Swonk: “We generated 2.2M jobs in 2024, the slowest pace since 2020, but still above the 1.99M of 2019.” Swonk further noted the jobs report is “well outperforming expectations.” Twitter/X, [1/10/25]

• • Harvard University economist Jason Furman: “Bottom line: The really economy remains very robust. A variety of indicators show the labor market has stabilized.” Furman also noted that “overall jobs and employment are way above pre-COVID projections. Most of that is the unexpected surge of immigration.” Twitter/X, [1/10/25, 1/10/25]

• • RSM US chief economist Joseph Brusuelas: “2024 represented one of the best years in memory for American workers that saw their wages rise above inflation during the entire year while that 4% unemployment rate is pitch perfect definition of full employment.” Brusuelas elaborated: “Over the past year the economy generated 186,000 jobs per month on average and the unemployment rate averaged 4% during 2024. During the entire year wages increased 0.3% on average per month and were up 4% overall.” Twitter/X, [1/10/25]

• ## Trump's mass layoffs and disruptive tariffs are driving economic turmoil, consumer price increases

• • Numerous economic indicators have already flipped negative in response to Trump's policy agenda.For months, MAGA sycophants and right-wing media personalities warned that Trump’s agenda to gut the federal government and institute widespread tariffs could devastate the economy, which they attempted to spin as an important step to restoring the balance supposedly missing from the strong economy Trump inherited from the Biden administration. With many of Trump’s policies now being implemented, economists, analysts, and news organizations are pointing to numerous indicators of a pullback in consumer spending, weak consumer confidence, worsening inflation expectations, and higher than expected weekly jobless claims as evidence that the promised economic mayhem has already begun. Media Matters, [3/3/25]

• • Bloomberg: U.S. stock markets slumped the day Trump’s tariffs went into effect, erasing all post-election gains. On March 4, Bloomberg reported that “the bet that Trump wouldn’t do anything to disturb the stock market rally has, for now, been lost” as the financial industry recoiled at the imposition of new tariffs. At the time of publication, the S&P 500 index had lost nearly $3.6 trillion in value since peaking last month, a downturn investors attributed directly to Trump’s policies. Bloomberg, [3/4/25]

• • University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers to MSNBC: “What's coming out of the White House is, frankly, unmitigated nonsense, and there's not an economist alive who would defend what they're doing.” Wolfers pointed to stock market declines after Trump’s tariff announcements, saying: “This is the stock market telling you, ‘We think this is absolutely terrible for American business.’” MSNBC, *Ana Cabrera Reports*, [3/4/25]

• • Heather Long: “Trump is steering the economy toward a recession with these massive tariffs and swift gov't cuts.” After listing the dropoff in stocks, the reduction in consumer spending, and the Canadian tariffs in particular, Long added: “This is a recipe for much slower growth, fewer jobs and higher prices.” Twitter/X, [3/4/25]

• • Jason Furman: 10-year interest rates are declining “because the uncertainty Trump has unleashed is reducing demand.” Twitter/X, [3/3/25]

• • Stony Brook University economist Stephanie Kelton on GDP growth for G7 nations: “We had the fastest 🏇 in the race--by far--and Trump decided to take it out back and shoot it.” Twitter/X, [3/4/25]

• • Ontario to mark up electricity prices by 25% in three U.S. states in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs.In response to Trump's imposition of a 25% tariff on imported Canadian goods, The Wall Street Journal reported that the province of Ontario “will slap a 25% export tax on electricity it sends to 1.5 million homes in Minnesota, Michigan and New York.” Ontario's conservative premier, Doug Ford, also announced the province was prepared to escalate further retaliatory measures if the Trump administration initiated any additional tariff burdens on Canada. The Wall Street Journal, [3/4/15]

• • GasBuddy.com: Prices for gasoline, fuel oil, and other petroleum products will increase across the United States due to Trump’s tariffs. In a March 4 blog post, oil and gasoline industry analyst Patrick De Haan explained how Trump’s imposition of 10% tariffs on petroleum products from Canada would result in fuel price changes across the U.S. De Haan predicted that the Northeast would “see the most significant increase” for gasoline prices “at around 20-40 cents per gallon by mid-March,” while other regions of the country would see a delay in price increases “of 1-3 weeks.” De Haan noted that “U.S. refineries can’t simply switch from processing Canadian to American crude oil due to specialized equipment, infrastructure, and pipeline configuration that has been built up over the last 50 years. Long-term, the tariff will add costs throughout the entire supply and refining system, ultimately passing costs to consumers in the form of higher fuel prices.” GasBuddy.com, [3/4/25]

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AN 12 24

During the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump relentlessly attacked President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the economy — blaming both of them for post-pandemic inflation in the United States. And the message resonated with enough voters for Trump to pull off a narrow victory over Harris.

According to the Cook Political Report, Trump defeated Harris by roughly 1.5 or 1.6 percent in the popular vote and picked up 312 electoral votes compared to 226 for the vice president.

A victory of 1.5 or 1.6 percent is hardly a "landslide," as Trump's allies have been claiming. But it's a victory nonetheless, and Trump will be sworn in for a nonconsecutive second term on January 20, 2025.

READ MORE:**Trump’s tariffs on Mexico could devastate border region: TX economists**

Some of Biden's supporters have argued that history will be kind to the outgoing president — not unlike the kind words for the late President George H.W. Bush after he lost the 1992 election to President Bill Clinton. And history, they argue, will remember Biden's job-creation record and the low unemployment of his presidency.

In October, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), U.S. unemployment was 4.1 percent.

In a December 2 post on X, formerly Twitter, Alex Armlovich — a senior housing analyst for the Niskanen Center — praised Biden's record on creating manufacturing jobs. And he made his point by tweeting a chart from Joey Politano, who publishes a financial newsletter.

Armlovich tweeted, "This rise in US manufacturing construction spend via @JosephPolitano is absolutely mindblowing. So many CHIPS & IRA-fueled factories are about to start opening in January you're not gonna believe it."

READ MORE:[Bombshell report details 'dangerous' new allegations against Trump Cabinet nominee

In a separate tweet, Armlovich laments that Trump, in 2025, will get the credit for Biden's economic achievements.

Armlovich predicts, "Trump's name will be on every IIJA, CHIPS, & IRA ribbon cut b/c key Dem factions thought NEPA red tape was more important than permitting reform to finish projects in <4 yrs FDR didn't respond to the 1930s by saying 'Mussolini is too fast we need NEPA.' He just started building."

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11 7 24 thom

Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off. And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires. It all has to do with something called the administrative state.

While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy. A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine. }:

:{ :{For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.}:

A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others. A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.}:

Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago: > “Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”

But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every*Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies;none*of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon). We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snydernotes: > “Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs. > >

“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time. And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs. > > “The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked. And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many. Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”

Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law. Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added: > “Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”

We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc. But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.

Even whenChevronwas still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started*before*Covidcame along. Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign). The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.

Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash. Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.

A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.

:{:{ So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression. It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled. It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs. Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed. }:

===

==

Fox News panel slams the Inflation Reduction Act with data that’s 2 years out of date

09/06/24 mma

===

an 9 24

US economic growth over 5-year period 'significantly revised upwards'

MMA 8 24

MAGA media respond to annual jobs report revisions with conspiracy theories

Pro-Trump media claim that the routine BLS revisions are “cooking the books” and “election interference”

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published 08/21/24

Earlier this week, economists with Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo predicted that upcoming benchmark revisions scheduled to be published on August 21 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics would show a negative revision of up to 1 million net jobs created over the past year. (The actual preliminary estimate published this morning was -818,000 jobs.) In response to these negative expectations, right-wing commentators, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and advisers to his campaign swung into action.

Fox News and other pro-Trump media trafficked in conspiracy theories, even falsely suggesting that the United States is in recession, in response to the BLS’ annual benchmark revisions of employment data between March 2023-24. They ludicrously claimed that jobs numbers had been fabricated to benefit the Biden administration and that the BLS was “cooking the books” in service of the Democrats’ presidential campaign.

The right-wing histrionics neglected to mention how the same BLS published negative revisions during the Trump administration, including -501,000 in 2019, nor that the same benchmarking process in 2022 actually revealed that the government had significantly undercounted job growth. Additionally, as Bloomberg reported, this revision is routine and occurs every year as “a more accurate but less timely data source” that “covers nearly all US jobs” becomes available.

• ## MAGA media spin conspiracy theories, false suggestions of recession over announcement of jobs count revision

*

• • Right-wing commentator ZeroHedge: “On Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will downward revise jobs for the April 2023-March 2024 period by up to 1 million. This means that all ‘beats’ recorded in the past year will have been misses and the US job market is in far worse shape than the admin would admit.” Twitter/X, [8/18/24]

* Trump senior adviser Jason Miller: “This isn’t a ‘revision’ … this is a LIE! And it’s Election Interference!” Miller added: “The Harris Administration has been cooking the books the entire time and now it’s caught up to them!” Twitter/X, [8/20/24]

• • Fox contributor Charlie Hurt: The revision “really does beg the question whether or not they’re using the Labor Department as an arm of their political campaigns, to either hide bad news or make up good news to help Democrats win elections.” Hurt added: “It is so glaring. It is so obvious and it kind of makes you wonder why we even have a Department of Labor.” Fox Business anchor David Asman agreed: “Yeah, well, it sounds conspiratorial but sometimes these conspiracies have some truth to them.” Fox Business, *Kudlow*, [8/20/24]

• • The Gateway Pundit: “BREAKING: Biden and Harris Were Cooking the Books the Whole Time! 1 Million Jobs VANISH in Downward Revision.” The Gateway Pundit, [8/20/24]

• • Newsmax host Rob Schmitt: “They have so many ways to trick you into thinking that their economies are good.” Newsmax guest Peter Schiff said, “It’s been obvious for years now that the employment statistics were an illusion created by the statisticians.” Schiff also pushed the lie that “all these net jobs went to nonnative-born Americans. I mean they went to immigrants.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [8/20/24; Media Matters, 2/20/24]

* Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo: “You are talking up to a million jobs that were basically fake.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [8/20/24]

* Fox host Laura Ingraham called for “an investigation into how this could happen.” She added: “This is not just a rounding error. So, this is a real scandal. … [to] regular people, this just looks like putting the finger on the scale to make Joe Biden look better and Kamala Harris look better going into an election cycle.” Ingraham later said that the jobs numbers are “fraudulent. It was wrong. And I think it was fraudulent.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [8/20/24]

• • Conservative Substack author “amuse” came up with a “payback” conspiracy theory that “the administration has been forced to negatively revise economic data for 12 of the last 14 months - presumably to help the president get re-elected. Now that Biden has been forced out is he sabotaging Kamala Harris for stabbing him in the back?” After the BLS was late in releasing the revisions, amuse posted: “COVERUP? The Bureau of Labor Statistics missed the scheduled 10 a.m. Eastern release of its annual payroll revisions, and there's still no update.” Twitter/X, [8/20/24, 8/21/24]

• • Former president and current GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump: “MASSIVE SCANDAL! The Harris-Biden Administration has been caught fraudulently manipulating Job Statistics to hide the true extent of the Economic Ruin they have inflicted upon America.” Truth Social, [8/21/24]

• • Washington Times columnist and Trump staffer Tim Murtaugh: “Another way to describe a jobs number revision is that the Biden-Harris admin LIED to make their record look better than it really was. Up to a million jobs they claimed to have ‘created’ aren’t actually there and now it’s biting them because they cooked the books.” Twitter/X, [8/21/24]

• • :{“Trump War Room” account: “Kamala was cooking the books the whole time — and lying to the American people while she did it.” :{Twitter/X, :(style="background-color:#ffff00"):}:[8/20/24]}:

• • GOP strategist and Trump campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita: “THIS IS A LIE - NOT A REVISION!” Twitter/X, [8/20/24]

* Citing ZeroHedge, right-wing commentator and conspiracy theorist Bill Mitchell wrote: “You gotta love these HUGE downward revisions to jobs numbers when no one is paying attention. How do you miss by a million?” Twitter/X, [8/20/24]

• • Fox Business anchor David Asman: Jobs numbers revision shows “a real, genuine slowdown we’re in the midst of right now.” Fox Business, *:{Kudlow*, [8/20/24]}:

• • Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt: The existence of jobs numbers revisions “pokes holes in the Biden administration narrative that the economy is strong.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [8/21/24]

• ## The BLS revises its jobs count every year, and economists explained that even with the downward revision, jobs growth was strong

* Wall Street Journal economic correspondent Nick Timiraos: “While some people might point to such revisions as an example of ‘cooking the books,’ this is not true. It's actually evidence that there's a high fidelity to making sure the numbers are as accurate as they can be.” In a lengthy post, Timiraos outlined a series of frequently asked questions about the BLS benchmark revision process, noting that this August figure is only preliminary and will not be finalized for another six months, and specifically debunking accusations that a negative revision is proof that BLS was “cooking the books” over the prior year. In a subsequent post, Timiraos explained that the expected negative revisions were not unprecedented — for example, the data in 2009 were revised down by a similar amount. TwitterX, [8/20/24, 8/20/24]

• • Responding to Trump adviser Jason Miller, Center for Economic and Policy Research senior economist Dean Baker wrote: “This should be a massive story in the sense that Trump is pushing an absurd lie about a revision to the data that occurs every year in August and is scheduled months ahead of time.” Twitter/X, [8/20/24]

• • Niskanen Center employment policy fellow Matt Darling replied to Miller: “This is a standard revision. Similar revisions happened during the Trump administration.” Twitter/X, [8/20/24]

• • Yale Budget Lab director of economics Ernie Tedeschi responded to Miller: “If this were true, then Trump cooked the books too, because the Aug 2019 preliminary benchmark revision was -501K (very close to the final in Jan 2020).” He added: “Of course, it's not true. @BLS_gov revises b/c they have integrity and want the best estimate possible.” Twitter/X, [8/20/24]

• • MarketWatch's Jeffry Bartash: “The annual update to U.S. employment gains is late, as is often the case.” With the delayed publication of the Labor Department's jobs revisions, MarketWatch reporter Jeffry Bartash noted that the delay was hardly abnormal: “The report usually doesn't make waves and investors rarely anticipate it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has often been a bit, well, tardy, to post the numbers on its website.” MarketWatch, [8/21/24]

• • Tedeschi: “If the final revision ends up the same as this preliminary revision, average monthly payroll growth over Apr 2023-Mar 2024 would have been +174K/m rather than +242K/m, still a solid number.” Twitter/X, [8/21/24]

• • Ziprecruiter chief economist Julia Pollak: “This one is quite a biggie, but the monthly payroll gain remains pretty strong post-revision.” Twitter/X, [8/21/24]

• • Burning Glass Institute economic research director Guy Berger: “We’re not in recession” over this revision — the data show that “post-revision employment growth will remain quite solid” and “this revision applies to data pretty far in the rear view mirror.” Twitter/X, [8/18/24]

relATED

Economists blame the Fed for jobs report missing expectations. Trump sycophants instead blamed Kamala Harris.

08/02/24

2. ### Trump and his MAGA media boosters try to blame VP Kamala Harris for a drop in the stock market

08/05/24

3. ### New inflation report showed “amazing” improvement. Fox News trashed it anyway.

07/11/24

===

an 2 24

Larry Kudlow, who served as director of the National Economic Council (NEC) in then-President Donald Trump's administration, recently acknowledged that President Joe Biden is overseeing a strong economy.

In a Fox Business appearance on Thursday, Kudlow pointed to the news that the US economy grew by 3.3% in the 4th quarter of 2023 as evidence of the strength of the economy heading into an election year. That increase is much higher than the projected 2% growth forecasted by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. While that level of growth could be partially attributed to higher than average spending in a holiday season, the fact that expectations were shattered is a byproduct of other positive factors, like higher wages, lower costs and a decrease in the rate of inflation.

"Yes, I'm an honest broker, he got a good 3.3% for the fourth quarter, following a good 4.9% in the third quarter, OK?" Kudlow said. "If I were he, I would be bragging about it too. And inflation has come down. All's fair in love, war and politics. Brag when you can. I get it. I've been there."

While his term began with a rocky start given the mass layoffs and broken global supply chains as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, Biden has presided over a massive turnaround after his first three years in office. As NEC director Lael Brainerd stated in December, the US unemployment rate has remained under 4% for the longest stretch in more than five decades, and wage growth is outpacing inflation, meaning more workers have more money in their pockets.

Costs are also coming down for many Americans. Bloomberg reported on Monday that median rents — typically the biggest monthly expense for millions across the country — have declined for eight consecutive months. A gallon of gas costs roughly 34 cents less today than it did at this time last year. And while food prices have gone up, the rate at which they've increased is far lower. Nerdwallet found that while groceries went up in price by more than 2% between December of 2022 and December of 2023, that pales in comparison to the 10% increase that happened during that same window between 2021 and 2022.

The stock market has also fared well under Biden's leadership, in spite of Trump's October 2020 prediction that markets would crash. In fact, the S&P 500 closed at an all time high of over 4,839 last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 38,000 this week for the first time in history. Biden's economic performance has also been touted by his fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives, who will be sharing a ballot line with him this November. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pennsylvania) pointed out that a side-by-side comparison of the Trump and Biden economies shows Biden's has been more prosperous.

"The 3.3 percent GDP increase in [the fourth quarter] of 2023 caps off a year of exceptional growth for our economy," Boyle stated. "With last year’s numbers, average annual GDP growth for the first three years of the Biden administration comes in at 3.4 percent, far outpacing the 2.6 percent during the first three years of the Trump administration."

READ MORE:'Longest stretch in 50 years': Unemployment historically low despite experts' predictions

Watch the video of Kudlow's comments below, or byclicking this link.

---

2 24

larry Kudlow, the Trump White House’s Director of the National Economic Council, on Thursday admitted on Fox News he was wrong about the Biden economy and all the predictions of an economic slowdown and impending recession that turned out to be false.

“Mea culpa,” said Kudlow, who has an extensive financial background including being the chief economist and senior managing director for Bear Sterns, the once powerful but now-defunct investment bank.

“I was wrong about the slowdown and the recession,” Kudlow continued. “So was the entire forecasting fraternity.”

“I don’t think you were wrong,” a Fox News on-air host responded.

“The Fed, everyone was wrong,” Kudlow insisted.

READ MORE: ‘You Bend the Knee to the Orange Jesus’: Democrat Blasts House Republicans in Fiery Takedown

For nearly two years many economists predicted a recession was imminent, and when it never came some continued the warnings.

But the United States never entered a recession under President Biden, and now economic experts have praised the U.S. economy as having performed the best post-COVID.

“The United States economy grew faster than any other large advanced economy last year — by a wide margin — and is on track to do so again in 2024,” Axios reported Wednesday. “America’s outperformance is rooted in its distinctive structural strengths, policy choices, and some luck. It reflects a fundamental resilience in the world’s largest economy that is easy to overlook amid the nation’s problems.”

“All countries were dealing with the same problems of post-pandemic inflation and high interest rates meant to combat it. But the U.S. managed to achieve solid growth in spite of those headwinds,” the report adds.

READ MORE: ‘Slave Trade’: House Republican Makes Wild Allegations Accusing Biden of ‘Traitorous’ Acts

Axios also notes that “White House economic adviser Lael Brainard, speaking to reporters last week, cited ‘strong policy actions that were designed to lead to a strong and broad-based recovery faster than we have seen previously in the U.S. — and faster than we saw in other countries.'”

Watch Kudlow’s remarks below or at this link.

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thefed says no increase rate maybe cut 3x next year; all indicators good

trump said wd collapse if biden elected (also K said US best in world history) but see chris hayes 12/14/23 did bogus ceo presser ambushed ggl 1700 engr covid website unlike fail dig at aca but no idea and 1700 engr # fabricated, then mon 3rd biggest drop when exposed?

//

The Dow closed at a record high of over 37,000, exposing as hollow right-wing warnings that the stock market would crash if Democrats won elections | Media Matters for America

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capitalism is a powerful story, and econ adds math to do tests all the time, but externalities [see wm nordhaus]/ biz plan exxon is fry planet; incentive structure all wrong short , term "efficiency"

doh human health depends on enviro/planet health

1021 an comm dr

Just ahead of a major United Nations summits on biodiversity and the climate—and amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic—a global consortium has launched a planetary health declaration in which they "raise an alarm that the ongoing degradation of our planet's natural systems is a clear and present danger to the health of all people everywhere" that must be countered with a fundamental paradigm shift transforming nearly every aspect of society.

"The planetary health science is clear," the São Paulo Declaration on Planetary Health, published Tuesday atThe Lancet, states. "We can no longer safeguard human health unless we change course."

Authored by the Planetary Health Alliance, a global coalition hosted within the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the declaration is endorsed by over 250 organizations representing 47 countries.

"The urgency of this moment is hard to overstate," said declaration lead author Sam Myers, director of the Planetary Health Alliance and research scientist at Harvard, in a statement ahead of the launch.

The document centers on what various stakeholders—from urban planners to governments to artists—must urgently do as part of the "Great Transition," what the declaration authors frame as the necessary "fundamental shift in how we live on Earth."

To the agricultural sector, the document recommends utilizing "all ways of knowing, including the latest science and millennia of traditional and Indigenous knowledges, to implement agricultural systems that meet demand and reduce pressure on natural systems."

Economists, meanwhile, are urged to reject a focus on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in favor of "metrics and investments that support preservation and regeneration of Nature, human well-being, equity, and happiness—the things we truly value."

Numerous recommendations are laid out for governments with "an urgent first step" being promoting "public access to health services as a human right." Covid-19 recovery plans must also focus on decarbonizing the energy sector and ensuring equity for the most disenfranchised and marginalized communities.

The general public is also called to action.

"We invite you to consider yourself a partner in planetary healing," states the declaration. "We all live together in an interconnected world and the actions of each of us inspire others. Therefore, together, we pledge to dedicate our lives to the service of humanity, and to the protection and restoration of the natural systems on which humans and all other species who share our home depend."

Put together, the document says its recommendations should serve as "a compass guiding us towards the most promising pathways to support a more just and resilient post-pandemic world."

Courtney Howard, an emergency physician in Canada and a contributor to the declaration, put the document in the context of global vaccine inequity.

"In the midst of Covid, disparities in vaccine accessibility must be part of the same conversation as addressing planetary emergencies," Howard said in a statement.

"On an interconnected planet, no one is safe until everyone is safe," she added. "We need vaccine equity, and in the long run, protecting nature will be the true vaccine against future pandemics and other planetary emergencies."

---

https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/the-best-economic-choice-renewable/

'The best economic choice': Switching to :(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}::{renewable energy could save the world $12 trillion by 2050

Jessica Corbett Common Dreams

Peer-reviewed research released Tuesday by a team at the University of Oxford reveals that transitioning to 100% clean energy within the next three decades could save not only live...

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/08:(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}::{/budget-deficit-projected-to-shrink/

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both biden and obama had record recovery for gop econ fail / recession?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/biden-has-one-of-the-best-economic-records-of-any-post-war-president-business-professor/

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/republicans-have-conveniently-ignored-jobs/

yell about gas and inflation, which pres has little control and has acted

trump boasted about tho due to BO policies? AA?

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we must shop in covid for sake of GNP; we must accept polluters in our town b/c of jobs, and :

---

tisch maine timeline:

2017 (June)

President Trump announces that the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate

Agreement

Stephen Bannon and the anti-globalist, climate denying contingent of White House advisors

trump the personal entreaties of Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Pope Francis, Ivanka Trump, Rex

Tillerson, European Union heads of state and many others. Oblivious to the fact that the

emissions standards under the Agreement are voluntary, subject to revision, and entail no

penalties for noncompliance, the President calls the deal “draconian,” imposing unfair standards

on American companies and employees. “At what point does America get demeaned? At what

point do they start laughing at us as a country?” Trump says. “We don’t want other leaders and

other countries laughing at us anymore. And they won’t be.”

The New York Times observes that

“Mr. Trump’s decision to abandon the agreement for environmental action signed by 195 nations

is a remarkable rebuke to heads of state, climate activists, corporate executives and members of

the president’s own staff, who all failed to change his mind with an intense, last-minute lobbying

blitz. The Paris agreement was intended to bind the world community into battling rising

temperatures in concert, and the departure of the Earth’s second-largest polluter is a major

blow,”* and its editorial board calls the withdrawal “disgraceful.”** Wall Street Journal

headlines declare: “U.S. Climate Pivot Puts a Reluctant China in Driver’s Seat: Trump’s

withdrawal from Paris accord gives China a new opening to exert sway on a big global issue” ***

Some find a May 30 op/ed in the Wall Street Journal by presidential advisors H. R. McMaster

and Gary Cohn as illuminating on the withdrawal decision in: “The president embarked on his

first foreign trip with a cleareyed outlook that theworld is not a ‘global community’ but an arena

where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage.”

:{:{}:

}:

Writes David Brooks in The New York Times: “That sentence is the epitome of the Trump project.

It asserts that selfishness is the sole driver of human affairs.”**** Al Gore’s statement on the

withdrawal declares that “Removing the United States from the Paris Agreement is a reckless and

indefensible action. It undermines America’s standing in the world and threatens to damage

humanity’s ability to solve the climate crisis in time. But make no mistake: if President Trump

won’t lead, the American people will. Civic leaders, mayors, governors, CEOs, investors and the

majority of the business community will take up this challenge. We are in the middle of a clean

energy revolution that no single person or group can stop. President Trump’s decision is

profoundly in conflict with what the majority of Americans want from our president; but no

matter what he does, we will ensure that our inevitable transition to a clean energy economy

continues.”*****

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers states that “We may have our

first post-rational president,” and that “It is possible that last week will be remembered as a

hinge in history — a moment when the United States and the world started moving on a

path away from the peace, prosperity and stability that have defined the past 75

years.”****** The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication reports that US voters favor

staying in the Paris Agreement by a margin of 5 to 1, and that half of Trump voters support staying

in, with fewer than 3 in 10 saying we should not stay in.******* The formal process of

withdrawal will likely take four years, and not be final until after the 2020 presidential election.

[see 2015 (December)]

*Michael Shear, “Trump Will Withdraw U.S. From Paris Climate Agreement,” New York Times, June 1, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/climate/trump-paris-climate-agreement.html

**Editorial Board, “Our Disgraceful Exit From the Paris Accord,” New York Times, June 1, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/trump-paris-climate-change-agreement.html

***Brian Spegele and Te-Ping Chen, “U.S. Climate Pivot Puts a Reluctant China in Driver’s Seat,” Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2017,

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-climate-pivot-puts-a-reluctant-china-in-drivers-seat-1496380249

****David Brooks, “Donald Trump Poisons the World,” New York Times, June 2, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/opinion/donald-trump-poisons-the-world.html

*****The Climate Reality Project, “Statement by Former Vice President Al Gore on Today’s Decision by the Trump Administration

to Withdraw from the Paris Agreement,” June 1, 2017, https://www.climaterealityproject.org/press/statement-al-gore-us-commitmentparis-agreement

******Lawrence Summers, “After 75 years of progress, was last week a hinge in history?” Washington Post, June 4, 2017,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/after-75-years-of-progress-was-last-week-a-hinge-in-history/2017/06/04/2085b91e-47cf11e7-bcde-624ad94170ab_story.html?utm_term=.7ccf9ee984ec

*******Jennifer Marlon, Eric Fine, and Anthony Keiserowtiz, “Majorities of Americans in Every State Support Participation in the

Paris Agreement,” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, May 8, 2017,

http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/paris_agreement_by_state/

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/climate-crisis-2653267213/

comm dr

New research by global insurance giant Swiss RE warns that the looming devastation of runaway greenhouse gas emissions and the climate crisis could result in economic retractions twice as potent as the global recession unleashed by Covid-19—a calamity, unlike the pandemic, which could go on for many years without end.

Analyzing the figures compiled in a research report (pdf) by Zurich-based Swiss RE, Oxfam International said while the world's poorest nations will be hardest hit, even the rich nations—like those of the G7 meeting this week in the United Kingdom—will not be spared from the economic pain that will come if world temperatures rise by 2.6ºC that some scenarios predict.

According to Oxfam, economies of the G7 nations could see an average loss of 8.5 percent annually by the middle of the century―equivalent to $4.8 trillion―if more urgent action to address global warming is not taken immediately.

The international aid and anti-poverty group said this potential drop in GDP is double that of the coronavirus pandemic, which resulted in an average 4.2% reduction among G7 nations, recessions that resulted "in staggering job losses and some of the largest economic stimulus packages ever seen." But, Oxfam added, "economies are expected to bounce back from the short-term effects of the pandemic, the effects of climate change will be seen every year."

The devastation for poor nations would be enormous.

"The economic turmoil projected in wealthy G7 countries is only the tip of the iceberg: many poorer parts of the world will see increasing deaths, hunger and poverty as a result of extreme weather," said Max Lawson, head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam, in a statement. "This year could be a turning point if governments grasp the challenge to create a safer more liveable planet for all."

As the group's analysis notes:

• India could lose 27% from its economy.
• Australia, South Africa and South Korea are projected to lose 12.5, 17.8 and 9.7% respectively.
• The Philippines is projected to lose 35%
• Colombia is projected to lose 16.7%

Jerome Haegeli, a chief economist at Swiss Re involved with the research, told the Guardian that: "Climate change is the long-term number one risk to the global economy, and staying where we are is not an option—we need more progress by the G7. That means not just obligations on cutting CO2 but helping developing countries too, that's super-important."

The research from Swiss RE, as Oxfam details,

modelled the economic impacts of climate change on 48 countries in four different temperature paths and used different impact scenarios to account for the large parameter uncertainty and missing climate impact channels usually present in the climate economics literature. The projections used in this press release assume high stress factors and global warming of 2.6°C by mid-century, which is a level of warming that could be reached based on current policies and climate pledges from all countries. All figures relate to real GDP. The GDP projections compare a warmer world with a world unaffected by climate change.

Ahead of the G7 summit in the U.K., global climate campaigners have continued to urge the world's richest and most powerful nations—also its largest emitters—to not only commit to stronger pledges on reducing fossil fuel pollution, but to increase their financial pledges to the developing world that have contributed far less to the climate crisis but continue to face its most devastating impacts.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-economy/

record bad jake j cmn dr

When President Donald Trump departs the White House next month, he will leave in his wake a nation devastated by a pandemic he failed to confront and an economic scene characterized by rising poverty, widespread hunger, a looming eviction tsunami, and mass layoffs that have left the U.S. with fewer jobs than when his administration began.

And for that, a scathing new report (pdf) by Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee (JEC) argues, the outgoing president "only has himself to blame."

Released Friday in response to the 2020 Economic Report of the President (pdf), the assessment of Trump's economic performance during his four years in office runs directly counter to the rosy depiction frequently offered by the president himself, who seldom missed an opportunity to boast about the state of the stock market even in the midst of nationwide material suffering brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

"American businesses and workers are struggling to survive because President Trump refused to listen to advice from public health experts and economists about the best way to handle the coronavirus," Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), the incoming JEC chair, said in a statement. "In fact, his handling of the coronavirus will hurt the economy for years to come. That is President Trump's economic legacy—one of the worst among all U.S. presidents."

The President’s failure to acknowledge the threat of the coronavirus and his refusal to use the power of the presid… https://t.co/TVmSfEqhyh

— Joint Economic Committee Democrats (@Joint Economic Committee Democrats)1608317638.0

The new report examines Trump's economic record dating back to the beginning of his administration, which began with soaring promises on jobs, trade, wages, healthcare, and other key policy matters.

While Trump inherited an steadily improving economy, the president "failed to pursue policies that would sustain and strengthen the economic expansion," the JEC report argues.

As many analysts predicted before its passage and implementation, the $1.5 trillion Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that Trump signed into law in December of 2017 delivered most of its benefits to the rich and failed to produce anything resembling an economic boom.

"President Trump's televised claim that the tax cuts would be 'one of the great Christmas gifts to middle-income people' proved to be deeply misleading," the JEC report notes. "Analysis reveals that the tax cuts heavily favored the very wealthy, with the top 1 percent of households—those with average incomes of almost $2 million—projected to receive an average tax break of nearly $50,000 in 2020."

"This is approximately 64 times the average tax cut of the middle 20 percent of households, who were projected to receive an average tax cut of $780," the report continues. "The poorest 20 percent were projected to receive an average tax cut of just $60."

Trump's trade promises were similarly empty, the report finds. The president's oft-touted trade war with China "resulted in hundreds of thousands of lost U.S. jobs."

"A study by Moody's Analytics found that by September 2019 it had cost the U.S. economy nearly 300,000 jobs," the JEC notes.

While the president's economic performance prior to the coronavirus pandemic was far from successful, Trump's handling of the Covid-19 crisis and resulting economic collapse was catastrophic, pushing millions more into poverty and leaving countless Americans unable to afford basic necessities. At present, the U.S. has around 10 million fewer jobs than it did at the start of the pandemic.

NEW: Nearly 8 million Americans have fallen into poverty since the summer. It's the fastest rise in poverty in the… https://t.co/mFZEHmnM2Y

— Heather Long (@Heather Long)1608125887.0

The JEC observes that after Congress and the White House approved the $2.2 trillion CARES Act in March—providing a temporary $600-per-week boost to unemployment benefits and a round of one-time stimulus payments to many Americans—"the administration and Senate Republicans refused to work to negotiate another package until a few weeks before the expiration" of the unemployment supplement, a lapse that dramatically slashed the incomes of millions of people.

"The administration's mismanagement of the coronavirus, and its grudging response to limit the resulting economic damage, have exposed and widened vast structural inequalities," the report states. "Low-income workers and people of color have been most harmed by Covid-19 and the ensuing recession. They are more likely to be exposed to the virus, to be hospitalized and to die from it."

The JEC Democrats conclude that "by all objective measures—job growth, unemployment, gross domestic product—President Trump leaves the economy in much worse condition than he found it."

"However, the numbers do not tell the whole story—his failure to use the power of the presidency to fight the coronavirus will weigh down the U.S. economy for years to come," the report says. "His successor will be left with an extraordinary challenge—to reverse the failures of the Trump administration. He must also move beyond them to ensure that the United States builds back betterfrom this crisis, fully utilizing the talents and resources of all of its people to build an economy that is fairer, stronger, more inclusive, and more resilient."

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==

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/us-economy/

an 1120

The rich are getting richer and everyone else is getting poorer. That is exactly the plaN  

the reason everybody is so angst-ridden about the economy is because we all have the wrong idea about what it is supposed to do and how it's supposed to work.

Most of us have a quaint, 19th century idea about free markets and all that up-by-the-bootstraps Horatio Alger stuff. You know, work hard, play by the rules, keep your nose clean, and you'll do well. That is certainly the cultural myth our society bathes us in. but that's not how things actually work. It's the dissonance between how we imagine things work and how they really work that causes our perplexity and angst, and rage. It is also that dissonance that has been so deftly manipulated by Donald Trump and given rise to Trumpism.

Forty years ago, around 1980, the uber-wealthy decided they wanted to get their money out of the economy. There was too much political turmoil (Vietnam, Watergate), too much economic turbulence (Arab oil embargos, stagflation), and too high of a cost of production (high wages, environmental and labor protections).

They wanted to take their money somewhere where they could pay people 1/20th what they paid here (less than $1 an hour), where there were no environmental or labor laws, where the workforce was plentiful, hungry, and docile, and where politicians could be bought cheap.

so, they engineered a controlled demolition of the U.S. economy. The plan had two elements.

In the first part, they began systematically de-industrializing what had been the mightiest economy in the history of the world—the same economy that had almost single-handedly won World War II, the greatest industrial enterprise ever undertaken. They dismantled tens of thousands of factories, creating what became known as the "Rust Belt." They literally sent factory designs to east Asia, rebuilt them, and when they were ready to go, flipped the switch, shut down here, and opened up there. The consequences were devastating.

Tens of millions of white, working-class factory workers were put out of work, losing their high-paying jobs. Forever. With nothing to replace them. Major cities became hollowed out hulks of a once-glorious industrial past, bywords for decline. Think Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Toledo, and more. The data tell the story.

In 1980, manufacturing accounted for about 22% of the U.S. economy. By 2012, just 30 years later, it contributed only 12%, an astonishingly rapid decline in historical terms, effectively a controlled demolition. The U.S. trade deficit, where we buy more from other countries than we sell, went from $19 billion in 1980—pretty close to a rounding error—to what looks to be almost $1 trillion this year. That is money that is sent directly out of the country to buy other countries' goods. $1 trillion.

The second element of the controlled demolition of the economy was that the U.S. embarked on a plan to shift massive shares of U.S. income and wealth from the working and middle classes to the already wealthy. This is what was called "supply side economics." It was Ronald Reagan's signature economic policy when he ran for president in 1980.

The mythical story was that if we all gave more of our money to the already wealthy, they would invest it for us and the resulting economic boom would more than pay back the transfer, even after taxes and inflation. It sounded too good to be true. It was.

Taxes on the highest income brackets were lowered from 71% to 38%, essentially cut in half. Importantly, there was no requirement that the beneficiaries actually invest their new-found gains in the U.S. So, they didn't. They invested them in the those east-Asian countries that were the beneficiaries of the deindustrialization discussed above.

What happened?

In the first full year under Reagan's plan, the economy shrunk by 2.1%, the greatest shrinkage since the Great Depression. Factory workers were out of work, so they weren't paying taxes. And, because the wealthy were paying so much fewer taxes, the government didn't have enough income to cover its expenses. It had to make up the difference by borrowing. That is what is called a "budget deficit."

Jimmy Carter's last budget deficit was $78 billion. Reagan's first full-year budget deficit, after his supply side tax cuts were put in place, was $128 billion, a 64% increase. The next year, 1983, the deficit exploded again, to $208 billion, another 63% increase. By 1992, when Reagan's vice president, George H.W. Bush finished office, the deficits were running $300 billion a year.

Of course, annual deficits accumulate into the national debt. When Reagan took office in 1981, the national debt (the accumulation of all the annual deficits since the country began) was $1 trillion. In 1993, just 12 years later, when George H.W. Bush left office, it was $4 trillion. Think about that.

Over 204 years, paying off the costs of the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, building out the entire continent, fighting World War I, surviving the Great Depression, fighting and winning World War II, and winning the better part of the Cold War, the country only had to borrow $1 trillion. Then, in the next 12 years, years of peace and prosperity, that debt quadrupled, to $4 trillion.

These deficits and this debt benefit the very wealthy, because it is they who fund them, who loan the money to the government, at interest, that it has to borrow because it can't pay its bills from the taxes it's no longer bringing in. As with the deindustrializing of the economy, this was exactly the plan: to benefit the wealthiest people in the world.

Today, average working-class wages, adjusted for taxes and inflation, are the same as they were in the 1970s. For a stark comparison, average incomes in China are up more than 10 FOLD over the same period. This is why the U.S. has massive civil tension among its people and record distrust of the government while the people of China are ferociously loyal to their government.

The annual trade deficit—that money we ship out of the country to buy things we don't make anymore—is on track to exceed $1 trillion this year. That's $1 trillion taken straight off the top of what would otherwise be available national income, and shipped abroad. The national debt has exploded beyond belief, to over $27 trillion. This year's increment, the annual budget deficit, will exceed $4 trillion. That's four times as much as was incurred in the first 204 years of the country, combined. This is not a picture of economic vibrancy.

For the past forty years, the government has had to run average budget deficits of $675 billion a year just to keep the holes in the economy plugged. Otherwise, it would have fallen into recession, or depression. And the borrowing is going vertical.

This is a tremendous boon to the very wealthy because, as mentioned above, it is they who loan the government all that money. And importantly, they do so at higher interest rates because when anything is in higher demand, in this case, borrowed money, its price goes up. The price of borrowed money is the interest rate. But wait, it gets better—or worse—depending on whether you are a borrower or a lender.

Higher interest rates in one part of the economy mean higher rates in all of the economy, because the pool of loanable funds is essentially the same pool for all. That means that when budget deficits rise, the interest rates on mortgages, credit cards, automobiles, student loans—anything bought on borrowed money—goes up, too. This is a stealth way for the government to transfer still more money to the already wealthy, but with the appearance that it's an arms-length private transaction, between borrowers and lenders, involving interest rates.

What does all of this add up to?

For the four decades between 1940 and 1980, the share of national income that went to the top 10% of income earners was remarkably stable, around 34%. This included those decades that are generally regarded as "the golden age of capitalism"

But in the four decades since 1980, the share of the same top 10% has skyrocketed to 47%, a breathtaking upward shift in national income to those who are already the richest. The upward distribution of wealth over the same period is actually even greater.

It's a cliché, but like so many cliches, it is grounded in reality. The rich are getting richer and everyone else is getting poorer. That is exactly the plan, and the plan is working exactly as intended. In fact, it is accelerating, as every new crisis becomes a new pretext for ladling more and more and more of the nation's wealth into the coffers of the already wealthy.

Inequality is reaching feudal proportions, where very few own almost everything, and everyone else is crushed under the wheel of engineered destitution. This directly degrades democracy, because since it costs so much to run for office, office seekers pay attention to those who can write big checks. Have you written a $50,000 check to an office seeker lately? No? Again, that is exactly the plan. They don't want to hear from you because you can't help fund their expensive campaigns. But write a big check and you'd be amazed at how fast the doors fly open.

Two last, quick words on the politics of this all. Donald Trump has been stunningly successful for the very wealthy which is part of the reason they have backed him. He passed massive tax cuts that accelerated the upward transfer of wealth. But that is actually the lesser part of what makes him so valuable to the wealthy.

The far greater part is that he has re-directed the rage of the dispossessed, downwardly-mobile working class from the economic system that has caused their distress—those intentional policies mentioned above—to the altogether bogus factor of race. This has shielded the wealthy from being held accountable for having engineered and built an economy that has intentionally shafted the vast majority of its own citizens.

The mainstream media has been altogether complicit in this deception, focusing, laser-like, on the racist dimensions of Trump's issuances, but almost never on the much more legitimate economic origins of his base's rage. This is perfectly understandable because the mainstream media is owned by the very wealthy. They use it to condition cultural awareness of vital issues in ways that benefit them, like when they laundered the idiocy of supply side economics as some kind of divination come down from the mountain on stone tablets that would save the country.

The second political point is that we would be worse than naïve, even worse than stupid if we imagine that Joe Biden is going to do anything at all about this. We would be deceitful. Biden is one of the doyens, the stewards, the consiglieres of the neo-liberal order described here. He has spent almost five decades servicing the interests of the very wealthy who put him in power and kept him there and recalled him to service when it became apparent that Trump's utility had been exhausted. They didn't use to call him "The Senator from MasterCard" for nothing.

Biden is already discovering that there's not enough in the coffer to afford the kind of stimulus needed to simply feed people, to keep them housed, to help small businesses stay alive, to help schools reopen. But watch, he'll find plenty of money for weapons makers, for the Federal Reserve to buy the garbage debt of over-leveraged corporations, money for hospital chains and pharmaceutical companies, and for banks, and for all the members of the neo-feudal aristocracy that he helped build and who are our new masters.

The economy is working exactly as it is intended to work, the way it has been designed to work, to benefit the wealthy and to crush everybody else. The problem for the mass of the rest of us is that we didn't get the memo.

aha 9/15/20 trump/cap'l reductionstic so cannot come up w/ systemic plan

economist Paul Krugman: Republicans have no solutions for the huge problems the US faces in 2021

Alex Henderson  September 15, 2020

When Republican presidential candidates lost to Democrats in the past — President Herbert Hoover in 1932, Sen. Barry Goldwater in 1964, President Gerald R. Ford in 1976, President George H.W.…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/experts-us-is-experiencing-a-k-shaped-recovery-that-has-troubling-implications-for-the-future-of-americas-economy

During a Sunday appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Symone Sanders, a senior campaign adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, lamented how recent economic gains were distributed unequally. “It is going well for folks at the top, but for folks who are middle class or below, it’s going down,” Sanders told host Bret Baier. “The question really is, is this [economy] working for working families, and the answer is no.”

The economic pickle Sanders described is sometimes called a “K-shaped” recovery — meaning one in which the wealthy benefit from the recovery while everyone else continues to suffer. Regardless of one’s feelings about the Biden campaign, Sanders’ analysis is echoed by economists — who say that the nascent K-shaped recovery has troubling implications for the future of America’s economy.

“I do think the USA is seeing a K-shaped recovery,” Dr. Gabriel Mathy, a macroeconomist at American University, told Salon by email. “The working class has to continue working, and the government transfers and additional unemployment insurance payments are falling. They must work outside the home, exposing themselves to the virus, and with schools opening they must find childcare. Richer groups have seen their stock portfolios rise and they are working from home, doing okay.”

Indeed, as CNBC recently reported, the wealthiest Americans are prospering as the stock market rallies but millions of Americans face the prospect of long-term unemployment. If the current trends continue, it is entirely possible that Wall Street banks and large retail outlet chains will flourish while small business owners, restaurants and service profession workers suffer. Likewise, billionaires have seen tremendous gains during the pandemic: SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk saw his net worth rise to $82.3 billion, a 27.5 billion rise since the beginning of 2020. Jeff Bezos’ fortune rose $71.1 billion, and he is now worth $186 billion; he started the year at $115 billion.

in other words, the recession is over for the richest among us — or, in some cases, they never experienced a recession at all.

Dr. Karl Widerquist, an American political philosopher and economist at Georgetown University in their Qatar campus, echoed Mathy’s perspective.

“Although employment has come back unusually fast, it has not come back nearly as fast as the stock market, which has completely recovered, and the real estate market, which doesn’t even seem to have slowed down,” Widerquist wrote to Salon. “People used to tell a joke: ‘The stock market has predicted nine of the past five recessions’ (usually attributed to Paul Samuelson). They won’t be telling that joke again any time soon. This rise in asset prices is coming as poverty is unusually high, food insecurity is rising, and perhaps in most stark contrast to rising real estate prices, a very large number of Americans are unable to pay their rent or their mortgages.”

Dr. Richard D. Wolff, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, wrote to Salon that the K-shaped recovery shouldn’t come as a surprise. If anything, America’s economic system was designed decades ago to guarantee unequal wealth redistribution.

“The whole system is set up to achieve this end, which is why the last 40 years have seen widening gap of rich and poor,” Wolff explained. “The rich and corporations use their wealth to shape politics, so it does not undo the results of an economy geared to inequality. In a political world of universal suffrage where capitalism pits an employer minority against an employee majority, such political corruption by money follows.”

Wolff noted that sometimes the poor and working classes revolt and force systemic changes that temporarily reduce income inequality — the most prominent instance being during Roosevelt’s presidency in the 1930s, which is no doubt why Biden is promising to emulate that administration —  but Wolff pointed out that “once the crisis is past, the resumption of ‘normal capitalism’ likewise resumes the deepening of economic inequalities.”

Economists say if America wishes to halt the unequal recovery and create an economy that benefits all Americans, drastic reforms are needed — starting with a continuation of the temporary stimuli implemented in the immediate aftermath of the economic shutdown, but which have subsequently been allowed to expire.

“I think continuation of unemployment insurance benefits at the 600 dollar level is essential,” Dr. Mouhcine Guettabi, an associate professor of economics at the University of Alaska Anchorage, wrote to Salon. “This should be accompanied with aid to states and local governments so that we don’t see a second wave of layoffs due to budgetary pressures. Additionally, there should be extensions on the eviction moratoriums to ensure that the jobs crisis does not turn into a housing/homelessness crisis.”

Mathy expressed a similar thought to Salon, writing that “reauthorizing the pandemic assistance is important, and having additional transfers to households would help too. The CARES Act should have never expired, and additional help should be focused on struggling small businesses and poorer households.”

Widerquist told Salon that wealth redistribution on a large scale will also be necessary.

“The solution to increasing economic inequality is simple: taxation and redistribution,” Widerquist explained. “We need taxes on people who own assets — on the people who own all the things we make out of our land and natural resources — to support redistribution to everyone. With that in place, we all pay for resources we use and we all get paid for the resources everyone else owns or uses. As it is now, the people who own stuff get paid almost no matter what happens.”

One major obstacle to doing this, Widerquist observed, is that the current economy is “increasingly controlled by super-dominant corporations.” As one example, he drew attention to how almost all social media platforms depend on content provided by its users, even though those same people rarely have any ownership over what they produce.

“It might be necessary to transform them into users’ cooperatives, or into partnerships between users and the administration,” Widerquist argued. “Similarly online sales, streaming, and download services like Amazon, Netflix, Audible, Spotify, and Hulu should perhaps be partnerships between four stakeholders: users, content creates, the administration, and the workers. This may become essential to overcoming an enormous power imbalance developing in America.”

Wolff offered a different possibility when speaking to Salon — namely, that alternatives like worker cooperatives (where workers own a business and reap rewards for its financial success based on the extent of their contributions) should be considered, and that the types of reforms implemented by Roosevelt in the 1930s are not enough.

“Without basic system change, policies of reform either fail or else achieve victories,” Wolff explained, citing the New Deal as an example of something that worked well to reduce inequality but was slowly undone over the next half-century. Wolff advocated for a “basic system change” — specifically, “transition to a worker-coop based economic system whose democratic decision-making in each enterprise would never distribute income as unequally as capitalism normally does. That would the obviate the need for socially divisive redistributions.”

Trump’s opponent, Biden, is not advocating for such a systemic change, but rather a modest Keynesian stimulus akin to a smaller version of the New Deal. Specifically, Biden has advocated for stimulus legislation “a hell of a lot bigger” than the $2 trillion Congress initially spent in response to the recession, investing in a Pandemic Testing Board, creating a 100,000-plus worker Public Health Jobs Corps, passing new regulations on banks and the financial sector, requiring businesses to provide paid emergency sick leave, increasing Social Security checks by up to $200 a month and likewise increasing the size of the relief checks sent to families.

Yet politicians rarely follow through on all their promises, whether due to congressional pushback or a lack of political will. In any case, as America’s K-shaped recovery shows no signs of slowing, the gulf between rich and poor will continue to widen. The only question is how long Americans will stomach it.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-is-a-fraud-trade-deficit-soars-to-12-year-high-despite-the-presidents-promises/

==

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/mcconnells-refusal-to-help-state-and-local-governments-could-cause-us-economy-to-contract-by-3-and-result-in-over-4-million-job-losses-report/

420 mma

prosperity/GNP = life; bankruptcy is social darwin fail /death with invis hand culling out the unfit (like wolves of caribou?]

the strict fr allows co's to go out of biz vs coddle profligate or even sinful:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/its-time-to-reject-the-gods-of-commerce-america-is-a-society-not-an-economy/

david m

The “economy” does not exist. Human beings do. What nearly everyone understands, except Republican officials and economists on television, is that there is no singular, shared experience within one large-scale economic system. Leilani Jordan, a 27-year-old woman with a developmental disability, who worked as a grocery clerk at a satellite store of Giant Food — a chain throughout three states — died from the coronavirus infection she contracted when earning her final paycheck. That check was for $20.64. She worked without a facial mask, and lived in an entirely different universe than Nick Bertram, Giant’s CEO, who collects a salary in the high six figures.

The majority of Americans have less than $500 in savings. They simply do not experience the same “economy” as Rep. Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana, a Republican who described Americans dying as a result of “opening the economy” as the “lesser of two evils.” Hollingsworth is the 12th-richest member of Congress, with a net worth of $50.1 million, most of it coming from his father — the “silent partner” in Hollingsworth’s investment firm.

Americans as disparate as Trey Hollingsworth and Leilani Jordan, whose death the congressman would presumably regard as collateral damage, might not share an economy in any substantive sense, but they do share a society.

The ideological disease that cripples the United States is the belief that society does not exist beyond its commercial activity. President Calvin Coolidge famously remarked that “the business of America is business,” while Joel Millman, a formerreporter for the Wall Street Journal, once wrote, “America is not a nation … America is a market.”

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Millman was making a neutral, analytical observation, but a similar thesis has guided America’s long succession of disastrous policy decisions that treat the “economy” — meaning profits for corporations and their owners or shareholders — as sacred. An entire set of religious assumptions follow, most significantly that people like Jordan are martyrs for the God of profit. Their deaths are acceptable losses in the name of God and country, which mutate together into the bloodless idol of commerce.

Human sacrifices at the altar of the idol have become almost commonplace. Millions of children of color in the inner cities develop asthma and suffer from other respiratory problems because they breathe heavily polluted air; 26,000 Americans die every year because they lack health insurance; public health experts have concluded that poverty — and the lack of robust social services — causes tens of thousands of deaths a year.

The fatalities caused by environmental injustice, denial of health care and outright deprivation never provoke widespread scrutiny because, unlike the daily stock market report or reports of marginal GDP growth rates, they are largely out of sight and out of mind.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the United States to confront its market-based theology. Americans now must consider whether their country is anything more than an engine of commerce, and whether human life has value separate from a financial calculus. For the first time in most of our lifetimes, the question of priorities is direct and implicates almost everyone.

Public health experts, doctors, nurses and virologists have argued one position: Even though it is painful and costly, the United States must remain on lockdown, and its citizens must continue to practice social distancing. Otherwise, massive amounts of people will needlessly die. The good news is that, for the time being, the majority of Americans accept and support the adoption of public health protocols: 8 in 10, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll, favor “strict shelter in place guidelines.”

Republican politicians, Fox News hosts and a small but vociferous minority of the public propose a counterargument: The “cure is worse than the disease,” as President Trump once tweeted, and we must return to “normal” life, public health advice be damned, because the “economy” is too important. As one Republican commentator recently put it during a Chicago talk show on which I appeared: “A pandemic is much too serious a thing to leave to doctors.”

“American exceptionalism” emerges again, in especially ironic form. Other than Sweden’s attempt to reach “herd immunity,” no other country in the world is “debating” the efficacy of public health recommendations. The right wing has seized on Sweden’s example without mentioning that Swedes live alone at higher rates than any other population, and that they take for granted comprehensive health care coverage and excellent medical infrastructure accessible to everyone, regardless of income or employment status. (Or that, in fact, Sweden has the 10th-worst per capita death toll from the coronavirus in the world.)

The right wing also ignores the risks that surpass even the COVID-19 death count. As Sarah Dowd, a surgical nurse and member of the New York State Nurses Association, recently wrote, “Reopening the economy while the virus is still freely circulating will cost lives.… Without the shutdown, our already overburdened hospital system would have collapsed under the pressure of skyrocketing admissions.”

There is no question that ending the shutdown prematurely will cause many people to die. One measures the federal government could take to mitigate loss of life is using the Defense Production Act to order the mass manufacturing of masks and other personal protection equipment. Trump has refused to do that — but did use his presidential powers to order meat packing plants to remain open. It is likely that many of the workers in those plants, without masks and other protective gear, will become more human sacrifices to the gods of commerce.

American greed has culminated, in this pandemic, in confronting average people with a choice, using phrasing familiar to fans of 1950s crime movies: Your labor or your life.

A few of the more tactful ministers of human sacrifice attempt to couch their arguments in the language of compassion, pointing out that millions of people face financial devastation due to widespread unemployment and small business bankruptcy. Conspicuously absent from the conversation — save for the blasphemy from progressive heretics like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others — is an acknowledgement that death or poverty are not the only available choices in the current crisis. In Denmark, the government is covering 75 percent of laid-off workers’ salaries through the summer. Canada will provide unemployed workers with $2,000 a month for the next four months. The $1,200 that the U.S. is giving most adult citizens — complete with an unctuous letter from the psychopath-in-chief — will be gone, in most households, within a week or two.

As states like Georgia and Florida seek to return to business as usual, they not only risk a new wave of coronavirus infections, they will begin driving people off the unemployment rolls, treating workers concerned about a possible trip to the ICU as indolent bums who lack “personal responsibility.”

All this suffering is necessary, say Republican politicians and pundits, to save “the economy” — a term with no actionable meaning in the lives of people who would rather save their lives. Fearless defenders of the supposed rights of an unborn fetus continue to call themselves “pro-life,” even as they make cold calculations on which lives have value according to their own bizarre criteria of marketability. Popular right-wing “intellectual” Ben Shapiro recently said this to a typically blank-eyed Dave Rubin: “If grandma in a nursing home dies at 81, that’s tragic and terrible. Also, the life expectancy in the United States is 80.”

After all the years of feigning outrage over the nonexistent “death panels” that Barack Obama had supposedly proposed to ration health care, the right wing is suddenly comfortable with sacrificing the elderly for the sake of economic prosperity — a phenomenon, by the way, that is disproportionately concentrated among the top few percent of income earners.

Cavalier disregard for the lives of their elders reveals that self-proclaimed “conservatives” are anything but that. No political party can call themselves the keepers of tradition if they are not willing to make sacrifices to save the lives of the elderly. Prioritizing life over money would require the American right to accept that their country is more than an economy, and that their religion of corporate capitalism is modern-day idolatry.

For a measurement of the absurd lengths these anarchists masquerading as conservatives will go to protect their claims, consider Dennis Prager — a popular talk show host who often leads his listeners through his studies of the Torah and the Bible. In defiance of all known traditions of Jewish and Christian ethics, Prager actually wrote, “The lockdown is the greatest mistake in the history of humanity.”

If we want a Bible teacher with real wisdom, let’s look to former President Jimmy Carter. Until the lockdown, the 95-year-old Carter was still teaching a Bible study at his small church in Plains, Georgia. As president, he delivered the memorable “Crisis of Confidence” address to a national audience on July 15, 1979. It is the only moment in modern American history when a president has truthfully confronted the public about the psychic and spiritual sources of their problems:

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

After condemning American excess and isolation, Carter explained that the country found itself at a fork in the road:

We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves.

The United States overwhelmingly rejected Carter, of course, in the 1980 election. Voters instead chose Ronald Reagan, who provided political cover for the “greed is good” era of American life. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush, an obvious heir to Reagan, did not tell ordinary Americans they should volunteer for community service projects or consider other ways to forge solidarity with the weakest and most vulnerable. Instead, he told them what they could do to help the nation in its moment of existential crisis was “to go out shopping” and “keep the economy going.”

It might be too late for the United States to change direction and begin to find meaningful and substantive ways of acting on Carter’s prophetic advice. He offered Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy as examples of genuine leadership — a quality in short supply on the contemporary American scene. When a man as malevolent and ignorant as Donald Trump is somehow elected president, it is undeniable that millions of Americans equate freedom with the “right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others.”

The coronavirus pandemic is possibly the last chance for America to save itself. With commerce temporarily all but shut down, the American people should ignore the agents of destruction who hope to complete our transformation from a nation to a market, while sending Leilani Jordan, along with tens of thousands of other poor or vulnerable or elderly people, to their graves.

The United States of America is more than an economy. It is a society. Historian and philosopher James P. Carse defines society as “all that a people does under the veil of necessity.” There is nothing more necessary than enabling people to live.

ctr-pt: to covid bailout bill as dis cap'l NEW STORY? WE CAN SAVE $ AND PPL BY GOING GREEN

https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-crisis-economic-growth-2645724784.html

Every country around the world would see economic gains from combating the climate crisis and trying to keep global heating within the bounds of the Paris agreement, according to a new study published in Nature Communications.

The straw man argument against taking action on the climate crisis is that the cost of limiting emissions and investing in green infrastructure is too steep and would cripple economies. It turns out, according to the research, that the opposite is true.

In fact, the study found that if nations around the world fail to curtail greenhouse gas emissions within the bounds of the Paris agreement, the global economy will lose anywhere from $150 trillion to nearly $800 trillion by the year 2100, as CBS News reported. The upper end of the range is if countries fail to meet their current commitments, which are inadequate to meet the Paris agreement as they are expected to lead to 3 degrees Celsius in warming.

The study's authors, from the Beijing Institute of Technology and other Chinese institutions, billed their findings as a self-preservation strategy for government, according to The Guardian.GUK

The researchers calculated the potential benefits of emissions reductions by looking at the social welfare aspects of cutting greenhouse gases and its affect on economic growth. They found that the benefits from cutting emissions would provide the largest boost to developing countries with large populations of poor and vulnerable people, who are most likely to be negatively affected by droughts, floods, fires, storms and food shortages, as The Guardian reported.

While all countries would benefit in the long term, the most immediate benefits would go to developing countries with high emissions, such as India, Indonesia, Nigeria and China, according to The Guardian.

The Paris agreement is composed of voluntary commitments known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, made by each country in the accord. The main aspect of the commitments is to reduce greenhouse emissions by cutting the burning of fossil fuels, thus reducing global warming and the adverse impacts of warming. However, many countries are witnessing economic damage from the coronavirus lockdowns and are rethinking their commitment to their NDCs. Already, government bailouts for the fossil fuel industry and the airline industry are in the works, as well as a rollback of their carbon emission reductions, as CBS News reported.

"A number of studies have proved that current [NDCs] are not enough to achieve the global warming targets," said Biying Yu, from the Beijing Institute of Technology and a co-author of the study, as CBS News reported.

The research shows that the choice between climate action and economic growth is in fact a false dichotomy. The authors' work concludes that countries could reach their climate goals and at the same time see an increase in their net income.

According to CBS News, Yu and her team calculated ideal strategies for countries to improve their NDCs, minimize economic losses and maximize gains. They found that if nations are able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then the net global economic benefit would range between $127 trillion and $616 trillion by the end of the century.

"Early and quick action will provide a better chance to close the widening emissions gap, even though a large amount of abatement cost would occur in the short term," said the study.

"The literature overwhelmingly shows the economic benefits of serious mitigation efforts exceed the costs in the long run," said Noah Kaufman, a climate and energy economist from Columbia University, to CBS News.

However, Yu is concerned that governments will be short-sighted and balk at the upfront cost of investing in infrastructure to combat the climate crisis. She also sees that the climate emergency takes commitments from every country.

"Combating climate change is not a matter for one country. It requires collective action and cooperation from all countries around the world," Yu explained, as CBS News reported. "Let's work together and save ourselves"...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/market-patriotism-returns-and-asks-workers-for-a-blood-sacrifice/

no lnx many

Market patriotism returns — and asks workers for a blood sacrifice

Written by Salon April 4, 2020

In the days after the September 11th attacks, President Bush, Mayor Giuliani and a variety of other politicians sought to soothe the ailing American psyche. They spoke publicly with a mixture of mourning and resolve. “Even grief recedes with time and grace,” Bush told the nation in his State of the Union speech.

Shortly thereafter, the nation’s leaders turned their efforts toward soothing the ailing American stock market. In a September 23, 2001 Washington Post column, former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich noted the peculiarity of Vice President Dick Cheney’s plea for Americans to “stick their thumb in the eye of the terrorists and… not let what’s happened here in any way throw off their normal level of economic activity.” Reich dubbed this ideology “market patriotism”: the notion that “we demonstrate our resolve to the rest of the world by investing and consuming at least as much as we did before.” He noted the irony that during World War II, Americans had been asked to curb their consumption habits, but in 2001, “our patriotic duty seems to be to buy more and save less.”

Today, with the stock market once again devastated by a disaster, market patriotism is back. The social distancing rules prompted by the coronavirus pandemic have brought our economy to a standstill for two weeks now, and so the American consumer is once again being drafted into a rescue mission. President Trump briefly wanted the country “opened up and just raring to go by Easter,” despite the fact that lifting shelter-in-place and other social distancing measures would almost certainly contribute to hundreds of thousands of otherwise preventable deaths. Though Trump has more recently come to grips with the need to continue social distancing through April, it remains clear that the Right is still gearing up to send workers and consumers back into the fray before it is safe to do so.

Lloyd Blankfein, senior chairman of Goldman Sachs, tweeted that although efforts to flatten the curve are sensible “for a time,” “crushing the economy, jobs, and morale is also a health issue.” Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said on FOX News that “as a senior citizen,” he was “willing to take a chance” on his own survival in exchange for getting Americans back to work and saving the economy for his children and grandchildren. And Glen Beck said that he “would rather die than kill the country.”

It is worth noting, of course, that Trump on his own cannot order anyone back to work—state governments, civil society, and business owners are the ones making most of these decisions. Nonetheless, if Trump and his ilk have their way, we’ll all go back to work — and back to shopping and spending and pumping dollars into an economy that badly needs the revenue, or at least, badly needs enough revenue to convince investors to pump up stock prices again. If that happens, millions of Americans will die, and the GOP appears increasingly to be okay with that.

The September 11th attacks killed 2,605 Americans. Since that day, we’ve been told again and again that avoiding another 9/11 justifies almost any expense. No military misadventure or domestic security scheme has been too extreme or too costly.One study from Brown University put the cost of our wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan at over $6 trillion since 2001. All of this has been enacted in the name of 2,605 lives lost, and to resounding cries of “never again.”

As of April 1st, more Americans have already been lost to COVID-19 than died in the September 11th attacks. Yet many on the right Right have been cavalierly suggesting that the coronavirus has been overhyped because only two percent of those infected die from it. This was the claim made recently by Rush Limbaugh, though he did not acknowledge that such fatality rates would leave millions of Americans dead. After months of downplaying the threat posed by the virus, Trump himself is now saying that keeping the death toll below 100,000 would be “a very good job.” It seems unfathomable that the same country that so radically revamped its domestic security systems and that embarked on a doctrine of “preemptive war” around the world as a response to 2,605 American deaths could suddenly fail to care about the prospect of hundreds of thousands of American deaths (or more).

The simple answer is that our wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere were never about protecting Americans, as millions of protestors knew from the start. They were about oil. They were about a wounded sense of American innocence. They were about a kind of vengeance for America’s failure in Vietnam. They were about profiteering — disaster capitalism, as Naomi Klein has aptly diagnosed it. But they were not about protecting anyone.

The enormous stimulus bill, signed into law last week with the near-unanimous support of Republicans and Democrats in Congress, further illustrated these principles. Despite the fact that most reporting lists its price tag at a whopping $2 trillion, the real cost is likely to be closer to 6 trillion — the Federal Reserve is going to be able to lend an additional $4 trillion to major corporations, on top of the $500 billion or so in direct bailout funds that has been more widely reported on.

The effects of the bill will be devastating for workers, the middle class, and small businesses.According to critics like Matthew Stoller, this bill gives Wall Street the ability “to go shopping for businesses in trouble. We could see the mother of all roll-ups, as small and medium sized businesses desperately try to get whatever they can from deep-pocketed private equity investors and monopolists. If that happens, America could look like a very different country after this pandemic is over.”

And as David Dayen put it in The American Prospect, “this is a rubber-stamp on an unequal system that has brought terrible hardship to the majority of America. The people get a $1,200 means-tested payment and a little wage insurance for four months. Corporations get a transformative amount of play money to sustain their system and wipe out the competition.”

Market patriotism used to mean that average citizens were urged to keep spending during periods of uncertainty. Now it demands blood sacrifice. Our leaders want us back to work, getting sick, and if need be, dying to please the market. They want to throw us crumbs while further enabling the consolidation of the economy in the hands of an ever-smaller group of ever-larger corporations. Though the outsized influence of billionaires and big corporations was a source of heated discussion during the Democratic primaries, this bill is a triumph for the ultra-wealthy financiers who already control so much of American life.

In the end, Americans all know that we have suffered and sacrificed too much for the market already. It doesn’t have to be this way. Those who can continue to stay home must do so. But we must also stand in solidarity with those who don’t have a choice — we must refuse to order from Instacart and Amazon, whose workers are now on strike for better wages and working conditions, and support other labor actions in the future. We must do what we can to help each other, and to protect ourselves. Our leaders, and the market they serve, will certainly not protect us now. They never really have.

Timothy Recuber is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Smith College, and the author of the book “Consuming Catastrophe: Mass Culture in America’s Decade of Disaster.” His work focuses on the mass media’s representation of death and disaster, and his research has been published in journals such as New Media & Society, the American Behavioral Scientist, Research Ethics, and Contexts. Find him on Twitter @timr100.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/how-the-pandemic-pulled-back-the-curtain-on-the-flawed-global-economic-system/

no lnx

How the pandemic pulled back the curtain on the flawed global economic system

Written by Marshall Auerback, Jan Ritch-Frel April 2, 2020

When the wealthiest country in the world is unable to produce basic medical gear to cope with a rampaging pandemic, it is dealing with a strategic vulnerability by depending on multinational supply chains to produce manufactured goods. Absent sufficient redundancies and physical reserves of resources, “just-in-time” lean supply systems can’t cope with sudden disruptions. The global pandemic of 2020 is a case in point.

This pandemic continues to unfold, but it will serve as the D-Day equivalent of a new predominating economic model for the world, and which in many ways was beginning to take shape before COVID-19. At its core, developed and mixed market economies will factor in the health risk and growing military cost of sustaining international supply chains against investing in high-tech production closer to their markets, and increasingly export their goods to the rest of the world.

Dozens of economies that developed in the past 50 years by enmeshing themselves in the international supply chain on the basis of their labor price advantage will find themselves increasingly cut out of the new process. The contest for global power will increasingly pivot to the extraction and refinement of minerals and component materials that are critical to sustaining the high-tech economy model, away from carbon energy resources. We will be hearing much more about “national stockpiling” and “strategic reserves” beyond oil in the months and years ahead.

Not only has COVID-19 exposed potential health risks and costs involved (as globalized trade routes become vectors of contagion), but the champions of the offshoring phenomenon increasingly resort to myths and misconceptions that are irrelevant to a 21st-century economy. They are as obsolete as spending trillions annually on managing the supply and price of Middle East oil, which American foreign policy figures, including Martin Indyk, are beginning to openly say “isn’t worth it.”

Before we get into the details on thefuture economy, let’s quickly review how the U.S. saw a massive decline in its industrial capacity. Bad ideas and pernicious orthodoxies grew like barnacles over the decades on what was once the world’s leading manufacturer. First was the idea that offshoring is essential to preserving profitability. Often this assertion has been more apparent than real. As far as profitability goes, many companies have made choices to move manufacturing offshore despite continuing domestic profits on home shores. For example,the five North American plants that General Motors (GM) shut down in 2019 were still profitable, but the company, which had received a government bailout in 2009, chose to refocus on the higher-margin operations in China.

Of course, capitalism controlled by bankers and speculators gives free rein to companies to make profits on how they see fit.The consequences are that for decades, Detroit’s “Big Three” automakers have consistently underperformed their German and Japanese counterparts because of their decision to embrace a Wall Street-driven culture that has prioritized short-term quarterly earnings, massive dividend payouts and unprecedented spending on stock repurchases over productive investment in innovation. And as GM’s 2019 experience illustrates, the resultant profits did not go to spur domestic reinvestment, which in turn creates domestic employment, but abroad to expand China’s manufacturing base. GM is but one example of the hundreds of major corporate actors that have denuded the country’s industrial ecosystem, creating gaps in the U.S. workforce and shortages of vital skilled labor.

There are also multiple examples of companies acquiring smaller innovative companies “solely to discontinue the target’s innovation projects and preempt future competition,” according to researchers Colleen Cunningham, from London Business School, and Florian Ederer and Song Ma, both from Yale. A particularly poignant example of these “killer acquisitions,” given today’s ongoing ventilator shortage, is Covidien’s attempted 2012 purchase of California-based Newport Medical Instruments,  a smaller competing medical device company that had secured a contract from the federal government in 2010 to produce up to40,000 mobile ventilators.But as David Dayen of The American Prospect observed, the purported rationale for the acquisition was bogus: It had nothing to do with expanding Covidien’s product base and everything to do with destroying a competitor whose product “could cut into its existing profits.”

For years, the political economist Seymour Melman argued that companies that embraced the soft option of downsizing/offshoring labor would ultimately create grave production weaknesses in the U.S. economy and stifle innovation. Higher domestic wages, by contrast, would induce competent managers to compensate by using and investing in more and better machinery, which in turn would lead to a virtuous cycle of production: higher profits, which can lead to higher wages, leading to better machinery and organization of work.

While American companies may think they are improving their individual competitiveness in the short term by shifting operations to low-cost labor economies, the current pandemic illustrates that they collectively undermined America’s (and their own) competitiveness over the long haul.

Intuitively, Melman’s forecasts make sense. A modern manufacturing “ecosystem” makes it much easier to redeploy and pivot to new priorities when there are shortages in vital areas. China, for example, has a sufficiently deep and robust industrial infrastructure to adjust production lines quickly, even as the U.S. continues to struggle with ventilator shortages. And in Germany, a flagship company likeSiemens, for example, announced that it is “making its Additive Manufacturing (AM) Network along with its 3D printers, available to the global medical community to speed design and production of medical components … to enable faster and less complicated production of spare parts for machines like ventilators.”

The Next Economy

A combination of existing technologies and capacities that are already in business application and on the rise will enable the new era of production and global economic overhaul and develop in motion with Melman’s thinking. These include artificial intelligence computing, automated manufacturing and increasingly universal and portable manufacturing equipment, innovations in energy production and storage, high-speed data transfer, and nanotechnology. Some of these technologies are mature, profitable and business-ready. Others are still in an early phase but will be seen as more economically viable or worthy of state investment and subsidy in light of a growing awareness among policy planners that the consequences of running global supply chains are potentially more expensive.

All of these technologies are revolutionary. Their concomitant rise will create a new economic era dominated by the countries that fully integrate them into their economies:

AI computing has the capacity to introduce game-changing efficiencies in the production process, quality control in terms of production and blueprints for new models of production and consumption. It can handle huge volumes of administration and management of automated systems. This industry is estimated to be growing at an annual rate of over 45 percent.

Automated manufacturing can be expensive and requires skilled labor to maintain, but it can produce goods at precision levels beyond what people can make, as well as at increasing volumes. 3D manufacturing is a universalizing process: one machine capable of producing a dizzying number of products that already competes with some products from global supply chains. Many companies are locating back in deindustrialized New York and other U.S. cities on the back of 3D manufacturing.

Recent major advances in energy production—from solar and wind to geothermal and energy storage—are the holy grail of non-carbon energy sources, permitting solar and wind industries to compete on a 24-hour basis with carbon-based fuels, giving more weight for policy planners to minimize fuel imports and revisit dormant energy alternatives.

High-speed data transfer—enabled through satellites and huge server farms—is necessary for the multi-location management and logistical coordination of the segments of the new supply chain: the means of information transfer and the capacity of one hand to know what the other is doing.

The rise of nanotechnology—the capacity to engage in precision design and manufacture at a molecular scale—presents humanity with a new frontier of materials and products that have capabilities beyond what we currently know in terms of materials, products, medicines and much more. Products ranging from glass to suntan lotion are already vastly enhanced by nanotechnology production. Qualities of human-made materials such as those designed for fireproofing, bulletproofing, insulation and space travel are in the midst of being revolutionized. Medicines can be deployed through nanotechnology at the molecular level, vastly improving their effectiveness.

The collective strength of these technologies will diminish the appeal of finding cheaper labor outside a country’s borders or common market—and the costs they entail. Countries that are advanced along these lines and have access to the minerals required to engage in this form of production will prosper, plugging into their existing consumer market and building up a head of steam that will eventually lead to a new chain of international exports and imports. These trend lines will accelerate the decline of brick-and-mortar retail and service industries.

Export-led economies that grew on the back of a labor price advantage will find themselves in a role reversal of having the option of importing better goods from the markets they once exported to or paying intellectual property (IP) licensing fees to produce them domestically. The geopolitical advantages that went with offering a developing country a labor role in a global supply chain will be replaced with discounts on IP licenses or imports.

The past phases of industrialization saw an ongoing contest among wealthy countries for control of petroleum, minerals and shipping lanes, using all their available powers to obtain them. The historical pattern is that residents of the resource-rich and undeveloped countries suffer far more than prosper in the mineral extraction and export process to wealthy markets. Barring a major shift in attitudes to wealth distribution or successful political resistance to exploitation, the pattern will likely continue, with the wealthy countries’ preoccupations pivoting increasingly from carbon energy resources to the components of the new economy: cobalt, lithium and rare metals. Resources that sustain the present and future economies, like iron, copper and gold, will continue to retain their strategic value.

Much of Europe and Asian countries like China, South Korea and Japan are poised for the transition. Based on their traditions of rigid state-driven capitalism, these nations instinctively grasp how state capacity and direction can help drive further industrial development. It remains to be seen if the U.S. is fully capable of it. That is unlikely, if the prevailing neoliberal ideology persists, limiting the role of the U.S. government to be, at best, a neutral umpire that sustains efficient, rent-free markets able to supervise the delivery of an increasingly narrow set of public goods (as opposed to an active participant in industrial policy).

The U.S., with thousands of advanced research institutions, is certainly capable of the next stage of economic development. It has a developed market and a partial manufacturing base. But it also has a long history of wage-avoidance for its workforces and an utterly dysfunctional political process. You need nation-state competence and highly skilled labor in this new world, as well as a willingness to expand ownership and dividend models to workers and the governments that funded the research for this advanced economy.

The coronavirus pandemic will force the U.S. and other countries to stop making distinctions between low-tech business (supposedly fine to offshore) versus high value-added industry. Not only can production lines be altered to cope with shortages (as China is doing), but there is often a continuum in the industrial ecosystem.

Consider the case of surgical masks. Even though their production is ostensibly a low-tech commodified business, the critical inner filtration layer of a mask, which allows the wearer to breathe while reducing the inflow of possible infectious particles, is a high-end business: Costing “upward of [$4.23 million] apiece, the machine that creates this fabric melts down plastic material and blows it out in strands, like cotton candy, into flat sheets of melt-blown fabric for face masks and other filtration products. A similar line of machines can create a related kind of fabric, called spun-bond fabric, also used in face masks and in medical protection suits worn by health-care workers,” according to a report carried by National Public Radio.

The point is that there is a continuum. One creates the demand for the other. Eliminate one industry and another potentially dies, much like a biological ecosystem. We now know that when forests are cut down, at some point if the surviving forest is too small, the whole ecosystem collapses. The ecosystem has to be large enough to encompass all of the niches that make it work.

If the machine tool industry is allocated in one country, the textile industry in another, the steel industry in another, the whole thing becomes much more delicate and inefficient, depending on a greater range of variables to succeed. Crucially, the speed with which innovations can ricochet around the system decreases significantly. When Japanese auto manufacturers have access to Japanese machine tool makers, they can get at the machine tool advances before GM and Ford. Proximity becomes a competitive advantage.

All of which helps to explain why the distinction between offshoring hardware while retaining software is not only fatuous but damaging to long-term economic welfare.

Offshoring left the U.S. unprepared for COVID-19. It has also occasioned a widespread reassessment of globalization: What was once seen as the heretical refuge of economic nationalists has now become respectable again. Even without this pandemic, the foundations of America’s economic model were failing and becoming rapidly obsolete.

The question is: As the world moves to a post-carbon future, can the U.S. economy take away the primacy of rent-extracting sectors like finance, insurance and real estate; Hollywood films, smartphone apps, or increasingly irrelevant sectors like oil and natural gas exports, and join the leaders of the pack? Or is coronavirus merely the pandemic that presages a more terminal disease?

Marshall Auerback is a market analyst and commentator. Jan Ritch-Frel is the executive director of the Independent Media Institute.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/extreme-weather-could-spark-an-economic-recession-the-likes-of-which-weve-never-seen-before/

no lnx

Extreme weather could spark an economic crisis the ‘likes of which we’ve never seen before’

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams February 18, 2020

New research published Monday warns that extreme weather driven by the climate crisis could bring about an economic recession “the likes of which we’ve never seen before” if markets don’t do a better job assessing climate risks.

Paul Griffin, an accounting professor at the University of California, Davis Graduate School of Management, wrote in a paper for Nature Energy that financial markets have not sufficiently accounted for the major economic risks posed by the global climate crisis, even as extreme weather—from destructive hurricanes to prolonged drought—wreaks havoc across the globe.

“Unpriced risk was the main cause of the Great Recession in 2007-2008,” Griffin wrote. “Right now, energy companies shoulder much of that risk. The market needs to better assess risk, and factor a risk of extreme weather into securities prices… Without better knowledge of this risk, the average energy investor can only hope that the next extreme event will not trigger a sudden correction to the market values of energy firms.”

Griffin continued:

This past summer, the United States and Europe experienced record-breaking heat. Now linked reliably to climate change, excessive high temperature is among the deadliest of weather extremes. Not only can it disrupt agriculture, harm human health, and stunt economic growth, it can also overwhelm—and temporarily shut down—large parts of a state’s or a nation’s energy system, as in the case of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) in California.

Extreme heat events can create uncertain and longer duration power outages, threaten critical infrastructure, exacerbate energy supply and demand imbalances, and trigger significant legal liability for energy firms. Newer reports of an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, moreover, amplify those risks for energy firms.

Despite these obvious risks, investors and asset managers have been conspicuously slow to connect physical climate risk from extreme weather events to company market valuations.

Griffin is not the first financial expert to raise alarm about the potentially calamitous economic impacts of the climate crisis—which would come in addition to the emergency’s incalculable effects on humans, animals, plants, insects, and the planet as a whole.

The Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements warned in a 115-page report (pdf) last month that the “increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events could trigger non-linear and irreversible financial losses.”

“Climate change poses unprecedented challenges to human societies,” the report stated, “and our community of central banks and supervisors cannot consider itself immune to the risks ahead of us.”

220 cascade interactions between economic and climate collapse?

aha: recessions are periodic, fed no suffic buffer? trump keeps money free to goose stock mkt so can boast 401k; blew up fed deficit, houshold debt and student debt high; authoritarian growing everywhere, what effect of worldwide recession again? Greece?

what if we get hit by huge agw costs at the same time as worldwide recession?  how wd such costs affect economies?

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voodoo

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trumps-plan-to-unveil-next-round-of-tax-scam-just-before-2020-election-slammed-as-another-political-ploy/

trump fired janet y b/c she did not fit central casting

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https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/what-happens-fed-chair-jerome-powell-if-trump-gets-re-n1134796

220

Martha C. White

If President Donald Trump wins re-election in November, he could throw the economy into disarray with an assault on the Federal Reserve as he seeks to remake the central bank in his own image — and compliant with his whims.

"If Trump wins the election, he'll believe he has a mandate to fire" Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, said Mitchell Goldberg, president of ClientFirst Strategy.

Trump has threatened to dismiss Powell — whom he tapped in 2017 to head the Fed — but Powell has responded by saying that he believes he cannot be fired without cause and that he will not resign. Firing or demoting Powell would be legally fraught, and some suggest that Trump might not want to risk losing an almost inevitable court fight if he tried to fire Powell before his term as chairman is up in 2022.

"It would be very unpopular and difficult to fight in the courts, firing Powell. I think he would lean towards letting him finish out his term and pushing forward someone he has designated on the board to run it, with the hopes that he, as president, would have more influence on Fed policy going forward," said Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO and chief strategist of Quill Intelligence.

Some suggest that Trump loyalist Judy Shelton could be a chairwoman-in-waiting. Shelton, a former Trump campaign adviser and outspoken critic of the Fed, is scheduled to meet with the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday.

Shelton has stirred concern by questioning the need for the Fed's independence, a stance that would align her with Trump but put her at odds with mainstream economists.

"It is encouraging to see that some members of the Senate are voicing skepticism about Judy Shelton," said Kenneth Kuttner, an economics professor at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. "That's slightly reassuring."

Kuttner characterized central bank independence as a critical firewall that lets policymakers focus on economic rather than political goals.

"The Fed is the one bright spot ... thank goodness. It's structurally very independent," he said.

The policymaking Federal Reserve Board of Governors is a seven-member body; two seats are vacant. Trump has appointed four of the current five members, including Powell.

Kuttner pointed to previous attempts by Trump to install loyalists with little background in economics or monetary policy. Nominees Stephen Moore and Herman Cain withdrew their names from consideration once Senate approval looked unlikely.

"I think the problem goes beyond just the rift with Powell," Kuttner said.

Trump's goal for a more compliant Fed is both clear and very, very risky, experts say, given the president's often-stated desire for interest rates at — or even below — zero percent.

"I think that Trump's dream would be to get somebody to impose negative interest rates in this country," DiMartino Booth said, calling such a move a "step into the abyss."

Negative interest rates in Japan and some Eurozone countries have contributed to economic stagnation and have left policymakers with no clear path to return to normal.

"Where we've seen negative interest rates before, I can't point to one example where it's actually worked," said Mitchell Goldberg, president of ClientFirst Strategy.

"Trump's dream would be to get somebody to impose negative interest rates in this country," said one analyst. But negative interest rates abroad have contributed to economic stagnation.

"For one thing, it would absolutely hurt all kinds of lending — business lending, consumer lending. Banks need to make money by making loans, and if there's no access to credit, companies can't borrow today for the future," Goldberg said.

Negative interest rates also are terrible for ordinary people, said Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner of the consulting firm Federal Financial Analytics.

"I think negative interest rates are just about the worst things we could do for economic inequality, because they destroy savings, threaten retirements and evaporate pensions," Petrou said. "And if the economy is in a recession, which is blighting what Trump thinks of as his legacy, I think the results are far less predictable."

Goldberg said: "People will act based on what's in their best interest now, not in the long-term best interest of the U.S. economy."

"It could take a few years for poor policy decisions to be felt, but once they are felt, they could last for years, and then it's even harder to get things back on track," he said.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/9-of-the-last-10-us-recessions-began-with-a-gop-president-why-would-anyone-trust-a-republican-with-the-economy-again/

an 220

new government report finds Trump’s trade war is hurting American families’ incomes

Igor Derysh / Salon

President Donald Trump’s trade war is projected to reduce the average family’s real income by $1,277, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The CBO, a nonpartisan congressional…

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3 charts show how Trump’s ‘blue collar boom’ is more of a bust for US workers

The Conversation

Trump boasts of a boom — but there’s a simmering ‘economic crisis’ no one talks about: report

Alex Henderson

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https://theconversation.com/the-us-economy-produced-about-21-7-trillion-in-goods-and-services-in-2019-but-what-does-gdp-really-mean-130685

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but can't we just re-open the immigr spigot when we need to?

interesting long v short, me v we: limit immigrant will hurt economy

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trumps-most-lasting-legacy-analyst-reveals-the-presidents-worst-mistake-in-economic-policy/

...Admitting fewer immigrants generally means less economic growth, since labor force growth is an important element of economic growth,” Anderson explains. “It is economic growth that improves the standard of living in a nation. Using the public charge rule to reduce legal immigration means lower long-term economic growth may be Donald Trump’s most lasting legacy.”

Anderson backs up his assertions by citing data from Macroeconomic Advisers as well as economists at Oxford University. Macroeconomic Advisers’ Joel Prakken, Anderson notes, has estimated that cutting legal immigration in half in the U.S. would reduce the country’s rate of economic growth by about 12.5%. And Oxford economists, Anderson observes, have said that the majority of economic gains the U.S. enjoyed from 2011-2016 would have been wiped out without immigration

Anderson also points out that Ruchir Sharma, chief global strategist for Morgan Stanley, has cited immigration as an importance source of economic growth....

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/inequality-in-the-trump-economy-just-keeps-getting-worse/

CEOs make more in first week of January than an average salary. Here’s the solution

Tobore Okah-Avae, The Conversation

Nobody else, apart from CEOs, has enjoyed a similar rise in their fortunes since the 1980s.

no lnx

Inequality in the Trump economy just keeps getting worse

Written by Sher Watts Spooner / Daily Kos January 5, 2020

Every month when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its monthly jobs report, Donald Trump and Republicans crow about the economy and the low unemployment rate. And every month, too many Americans wonder when they’re going to start feeling the effects of that “great economy.”

A recent study on poverty and a new way of measuring the quality of jobs show the shallowness of GOP claims about the U.S. economy. Poverty went up in at least one county in every state, concentrated in rural areas and the South. And a new system of measurement called the Job Quality Index shows that, although there are jobs available, for the most part, they aren’t jobs that pay well and aren’t career jobs for the long term. Often, they don’t even employ workers for a full 40 hours a week.

Combine that with the disastrous effects of the Trump tariffs and the trade war with China, especially how that trade war hurt U.S. manufacturing; the surge in bankruptcies of small farmers; the fact that American consumers now have a record $14 trillion in debt; and the 2017 GOP tax reform scam that turned into a windfall for big companies instead of helping everyday Americans, and most of us don’t feel that we’re better off than before Trump became president—a benchmark used by challengers in nearly every election.

Don’t forget that, after the GOP House and Senate passed and Trump signed the tax overhaul in late 2017, Trump’s message to his rich cronies at Mar-a-Lago gathered for the Christmas holidays was, “You all just got a lot richer.”

That was not a message that trickled down to average Americans. The supposed tax savings didn’t do much trickling down for them, either. Since the country started coming out of the Great Recession in 2009, the overall U.S. poverty rate has decreased. But between 2016 and 2018, the poverty rate grew in 30% of counties across America, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

As a story from HuffPost put it:

The counties with the biggest jumps in poverty ranged across the political and demographic spectrum: from 97% white and solidly Republican-voting Carter County in Kentucky to black-majority, Democratic Bullock County in Alabama.

Most of the biggest increases were in areas both rural and Southern. Those areas generally had residents who lacked job training and skills and industries that suffered downturns.

Those industries included the coal industry in many of those poverty-stricken areas. Coal output has decreased by 27% in the last five years, and 50 coal power plants have closed across the country since Trump became president. That’s good news for the environment, but bad news for those counting on coal mining for a paycheck. It’s also a betrayal of one of Trump’s main promises in coal country.

But the unemployment rate is only 3.5%. That’s got to be great, right? Actually, considering the kinds of jobs available—and the fact that wage growth is fairly stagnant—not so much. And this isn’t a recent phenomenon.

The U.S. Private Sector Job Quality Index, or JQI, is a new economic indicator developed by academic economists that measures desirable higher-wage/higher-hour jobs versus lower-wage/lower-hour jobs. Job quality is defined as the weekly dollar-income a job generates for an employee. A paper defining the system and explaining why the detailed indicator is a more accurate reading of the economy is available at this link.

The paper’s conclusion reiterates the fact that U.S. manufacturing jobs have “declined dramatically in the last three decades,” and replacement jobs are poorer-paying, service-sector jobs with no guarantee of job stability or even a full work week. There also has been a “massive loss of market share, revenue, and jobs to foreign manufacturers.”

An important question surrounding the decline of manufacturing is whether those leaving manufacturing are transitioning into better or worse jobs. …

With other countries targeting what they see as high-value industries, the US is not just in danger of, but actually has been, forced into greater reliance on low-value, low-growth industries, offering lower-wage, lower-hours jobs. The success of superstar companies like Google or Apple or Pfizer should not blind us to the fact that today Leisure & Hospitality is our largest sector with 14.7 million non-management employees. It’s a sector that pays  such workers $16.58 an hour and the average worker works just  25.8 hours a week — resulting in average weekly income of $428. …

When all that a country has left is the domestic manufacture of processed foodstuffs, you end up with a lot of unhealthy and unwealthy workers who are in dire shortage of security, much less dignity. A republic that offers no better than this cannot long endure.

“When U.S. unemployment is at a 50-year low, why do so many people have trouble finding work with decent pay and adequate predictable hours?” asks a story from Forbes on the JQI. Answer: Few non-specialized good jobs are available.

Tens of millions of working-aged Americans are still not formally employed and have no apparent interest in sending out a resume. If the job market is so hot, why are so many people sitting on the sidelines? One frequently cited explanation is the growing proportion of older generation workers. Now we have another more important element. Workers don’t re-enter the workforce because many of the jobs themselves are rotten. …

Many looked to the category of jobs known as Professional and Technical Services as a path for the economy to “move to higher ground.” Professional and Technical Services were supposed to offer high pay, growth in employee numbers, and an opportunity to increase productivity. In fact, the JQI does report that employment is up 41% in this sector and the average weekly pay for non-managerial workers of $1,575 exceeds the pay of many other industries. But that’s not enough to rescue what the economy lost in manufacturing.

To recap:

Many of the jobs available are poorer, with stagnant wages and little job stability or full employment guarantees.

The tax bills of many big companies ended up being even smaller than what was anticipated in the GOP tax scam law. This has caused a ballooning federal deficit that could reach $1 trillion in 2020.

Trump’s trade war with China led to a loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs and higher prices. No matter what he claims about a new agreement, it’s not a done deal, and it’s only “Phase One” of a partial deal with few specifics released.

After Trump’s tariffs against China, China retaliated with tariffs that were devastating to U.S. farmers. Despite $28 billion in farm subsidies in the last two years (many of which went to large agriculture suppliers, some foreign-owned), farm bankruptcies surged, especially in the Midwest.

The record $14 trillion in debt that Americans owe is spread across mortgages, auto loans, credit cards, student loans, and other forms of debt. By themselves, student loans make up $1.5 trillion of the debt total. And medical costs are still growing faster than income—medical costs have gone up 33% since 2009.

It doesn’t matter if the stock market had its best annual gain in six years. When only those at the top are benefiting from those stock market gains—not every worker has a 401(k) or fat IRA account—then there’s no trickle down from a bloated stock market. Although 20 states and 26 cities and counties are raising the minimum wage in 2020, the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour hasn’t gone up since 2009.

This is a message that all Democratic candidates should be repeating over and over, whether they’re running for president, the House, the Senate, or a state office: The Trump economy isn’t helping most Americans.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-runs-the-country-just-like-his-bankrupted-businesses-the-national-debt-is-skyrocketing-while-economic-growth-lags-behind/

no lnx

Trump runs the country just like his bankrupted businesses: The national debt is skyrocketing while economic growth lags behind

Written byDC Report December 29, 2019

“How do you impeach a president who has created the greatest Economy in the history of our Country?” Donald Trump tweeted in September. Trump has repeatedly claimed big economic benefits from his presidency. And this claim undergirds a lot of Trump’s popular support.

But the truth is that Trump is a failure economically, both in his business career and in his actions as president. It is time to connect the dots of Trump’s economic failures—in a way that everyone understands.

A powerful way to communicate Trump’s true economic legacy is to brand him as “Bankrupter-in-Chief Trump.”  This is the real bottom line of Trump’s business career, and it is what he is actually doing to the country and to individual Americans. To drive home this message, “Bankrupter-in-Chief Trump” should be repeated after each new Trump claim, policy, action and report that illustrates this message—until most Americans understand this as Trump’s true legacy.

The country’s economic resources are being wasted, while its future economic health is endangered.

Trump campaigned on the promise of eliminating the federal debt within eight years, but what his economic policies have actually been doing is bankrupting the country.  The U.S. government’s budget deficit ballooned to almost $1 trillion in 2019, which is nearly a 50 percent increase during Trump’s time in office.

Debt to Top $4.1 Trillion

Trump’s overall contribution to the national debt, for the bills he has signed into law, is projected to top $4.1 trillion, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The largest portion of this increase is coming from Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, which are projected to boost the nation’s debt by $1.8 trillion, according to this group’s analysis.

Trump promised this his economic policies would lead to growth in the economy of between 3 and 4 percent per year, but the reality is that the economy has been growing at barely 2 percent over the past year. And the average economic growth since Trump took office has been a little more than 2.25 percent per year. The promised benefits from the massive tax cut have not materialized, and in fact the United States has now had two consecutive quarters of negative investment growth.

Not only are Trump’s tax cuts not boosting business investment as promised, but they are also bankrupting the country’s economic future. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that deficits will remain massive each year going forward until the total federal government debt reaches nearly 100 percent of the country’s GDP (gross domestic product): “Under current law, the federal government is projected to borrow an additional $13.6 trillion from the end of 2018 through 2029, boosting debt held by the public to $29.3 trillion.”

Squandered Stimulus

The country’s ability to weather economic downturns has also been compromised because the tools of economic stimulus needed to pull the country out of a recession have already been squandered at a time when they were not needed. The country’s economic resources are being wasted with minimal benefit, while its future economic health is endangered.

Another of Trump’s great promises was that he would eliminate the U.S. trade deficit.  Here again, Trump’s performance has been disastrous.  Far from declining, the U.S. trade deficit is now running some 40 percent above the level it was running when Trump first assumed office.

Trump points to the rise in stock prices as evidence that his economic policies are working.  But the truth is that stock prices have increased during Trump’s presidency at about half the pace that they increased during President Obama’s first three years in office.

Bankrupting Individual Americans

Trump administration policies are leading to bankruptcy for large numbers of Americans. Farmers have been hit especially hard. Farm bankruptcies grew to the highest level since 2011, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

“Farm debt in 2019 is projected to be a record-high $416 billion,” the Farm Bureau reported in October, while farm income is 29 percent lower than in the record year of 2013.

And this is happening despite the Trump administration directing nearly $30 billion to farmers in bailout programs, which, along with other disaster aid and insurance indemnities, now accounts for nearly 40 percent of farmers’ income. And a lot of that aid has yet to actually reach farmers.

Trump promised that his tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations would lead to more jobs and higher wages for all Americans. But here again, Trump has not delivered on his promises.

Tax Cuts an ‘Enormous Flop’

“From a purely economic standpoint, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 has been an enormous flop,” writes Michael Linden, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative. Average U.S. job creation per month has actually declined in the nearly two years since the law passed. And wage growth has been only a small fraction of what the White House promised.

During his campaign and in his inaugural address, Trump promised to protect the “forgotten man and woman.”  He has actually been doing just the opposite by systematically dismantling many protections for individual consumers, protections for individual investors, protections for people preparing for retirement and protections for other Americans.

“The Trump administration is probably the most anti-investor and consumer protection administration in decades, if not ever,” said Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of Better Markets, an investor and consumer watchdog group.

Not only have protections for individual Americans been stripped from regulations and policies, but enforcement of remaining laws and regulations has also plummeted.  The result, concludes Public Citizen, is that while Trump “once asserted that he was ‘not going to let Wall Street get away with murder,’ he now is allowing industry after industry to get away with just about anything.”  This, too, will cause bankruptcies for large numbers of individual Americans.

Trump also wants to take away access to health insurance for millions by undoing the Affordable Care Act. This would be especially damaging to those with pre-existing conditions, many of whom could not buy health insurance before that law took effect. And if Trump succeeds in undermining the Affordable Care Act, this would cause financial ruin to many more people, given that medical issues and costs are the number one reason Americans file for bankruptcy.

A Career of Business Bankruptcies

Trump cultivates a mythology that he has been tremendously successful in business. The reality is that public records show that six times Trump filed Chapter 11 bankruptcies for his companies. Yes, not once, not twice, but six times! And even in cases where Trump was able to avoid bankruptcy, there were many business failures. For example, “Trump defaulted on the debt of his airline, Trump Shuttle, turning it over to U.S. Airways.”...

Trump runs the country just like his bankrupted businesses: The national debt is skyrocketing while economic growth lags behind

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/increasingly-scandalous-paul-krugman-reveals-how-trumps-economic-policy-is-worse-than-predicted/

no lnx

‘Increasingly scandalous’: Paul Krugman reveals how Trump’s economic policy is worse than predicted

Image via Screengrab.

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story December 6, 2019

In a column celebrating the first anniversary of Donald Trump declaring himself “Tariff Man,” New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman attempted to explain the president’s love of tariffs and noted that the negative economic impact in the past year has surpassed even the worst expectations.

Wryly noting Trump self-identification as “Tariff Man” was a rare occasion of the president telling the truth, Krugman wrote, “At this point I’ve lost count of how many times markets have rallied in the belief that Trump was winding down his trade war, only to face announcements that a much-anticipated deal wasn’t happening or that tariffs were being slapped on a new set of products or countries.”

Before getting into Trump’s motivation for seemingly arbitrary economic meddling, Krugman took a look at the damaging economic impact.

“A peculiar aspect of the Trump economy is that while overall growth has been solid, the areas of weakness have come precisely in those things Trump tried to stimulate,” he wrote. “Remember, Trump’s only major legislative accomplishment was a huge tax cut for corporations that was supposed to lead to a surge in investment. Instead, corporations pocketed the money, and business investment has been falling.”

Pointing out that U.S. manufacturing is collapsing at the same time that the trade deficit is growing, the economist stated that the president’s critics’ worst fears have come true far beyond what they predicted.

“The truth is that even economists who opposed Trump’s tax cuts and tariffs are surprised by how badly they’re working out,” Krugman explained. “The most commonly given explanation for these bad results is that Trumpian tariff policy is creating a lot of uncertainty, which is giving businesses a strong incentive to postpone any plans they might have for building new factories and adding jobs.”

“So Trump’s trade war is losing, not gaining, support,” he continued, before asking, “Nevertheless, Trump persists. Why?”

Pointing out that Trump has never been one to let facts get in the way of his beliefs, the economist suggests the president is less interested in trade policy and more interested in flexing his muscles in an effort to not only show off how powerful he is but also to reward his friends.

“This system worked well for many years. It turned out, however, to be extremely vulnerable to someone like Trump, for whom everything is partisan and expertise is a four-letter word,” he wrote. “Trump’s tariff justifications have often been self-evidently absurd — seriously, who imagines that imports of Canadian steel threaten U.S. national security? But there’s no obvious way to stop him from imposing tariffs whenever he feels like it.”

“Tariff policy isn’t the only arena in which Trump can practice crony capitalism — federal contracting is looking increasingly scandalous — but tariffs are especially ripe for exploitation. So that’s why Trump is a Tariff Man: Tariffs let him exercise unconstrained power, rewarding his friends and punishing his enemies,” he concluded.

You can read more here.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/no-the-economy-isnt-working-well-for-all-americans-and-a-new-survey-proves-it/

no lnx

No, the economy isn’t working well for all Americans — and a new survey proves it

Written by Alex Henderson October 25, 2019

President Donald Trump has not hesitated to boast about the state of the U.S. economy, insisting that his policies have brought about an economic miracle (never mind the fact that unemployment was going way down during President Barack Obama’s second term). But two of the Democratic presidential primary candidates who are hoping to unseat Trump in 2020, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, have repeatedly stressed that big chunks of the U.S. population are not feeling the economic recovery — and a new survey by the personal finance website WalletHub bears that out.

The United States’ national unemployment rate, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures, was 3.7% in August and 3.5% in September. When Obama was a lame duck in December 2016, it was 4.7% compared to 10% in October 2009 during the worst of the Great Recession. So Trump inherited an economy that was in recovery under Obama; he didn’t create an economic miracle single-handedly, contrary to what one often hears on Fox News. Further, unemployment figures don’t tell the whole story, and WalletHub’s survey underscores the fact that millions of Americans are still struggling.

According to WalletHub’s survey, released this week, “78 million Americans” say their finances are a “horror show” — that includes 34% of Millennials and 16% of Baby Boomers. Moreover, 85% of Americans, WalletHub reports, plan on spending less this Halloween compared to Halloween 2018.

WalletHub CEO Odysseas Papadimitriou, in an official statement on the survey’s findings, explained, “A lot of people are indeed struggling financially right now. Just consider the fact that consumers currently owe more than $1 trillion to credit card companies. That’s expensive debt, and if we don’t start to pay it down in a meaningful way, the horror show will get a lot worse, unfortunately.”

WalletHub’s survey was not political in nature, but it points to some issues that Warren and Sanders have discussed extensively — including the United States’ horribly dysfunctional health care system and the high cost of housing. WalletHub asked Americans what types of expenses they were especially fearful of: 44% cited “medical bills,” while 29% said “mortgage/rent.”

Although the Affordable Care Act of 2010, a.k.a. Obamacare, has greatly increased the number of Americans who have health insurance, medical bankruptcy — as Warren and Sanders have emphasized — continues to be the main cause of bankruptcy in the United States. Warren and Sanders are proposing a government-operated Medicare-for-all system that would do away with most private health insurance, while centrist Democratic presidential hopefuls like former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Amy Klobuchar favor universal health care via more of a public/private approach that would include an aggressive expansion of Obamacare combined with a government-operated public health option.

Wages have not kept up with the exorbitant cost of housing in many parts of the U.S.— large urban centers especially — and the situation is so dire that Sanders has  proposed a national rent control law. Warren is proposing a major investment in subsidized housing, asserting that the alternative is persistant homelessness. Not surprisingly, developers are freaking out over Sanders’ national rent control proposal, although Americans sleeping in their cars or in homeless shelters because they can’t afford even a small studio apartment are more inclined to believe that the Vermont senator makes perfect sense.

Certainly, 3.5% unemployment is a major improvement over 10% in 2009, but as economists Paul Krugman and Robert Reich have often pointed out, many of the gains of the United States’ economic recovery have gone to people at the top. And having a job doesn’t necessary mean that one isn’t having a hard time keeping up with expenses like health care and housing. Liberal journalist Thom Hartmann has noted that in major urban areas in the U.S., it takes a six-figure income to have real financial security.

WalletHub also reports that “177 Million Americans” are fearful of a recession, although Papadimitriou doesn’t believe there is “any cause for immediate concern.”

In his official statement on the survey, the WalletHub CEO explained, “There’s a lot of surface-level noise creating uncertainty, sure. But the fundamentals are strong, and we should be in for another year of growth in 2020. But that does not mean people should get comfortable. Winter is coming, so to speak; so, everyone should make sure to squirrel away as much savings as they can now.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/manufacturing-slump-undercuts-trump-claims-of-economic-strength/

no lnx

Manufacturing slump undercuts Trump claims of economic strength

Of all the ridiculous arguments Donald Trump makes for his reelection, perhaps none is repeated more often than his claim that the U.S. economy is “the greatest economy in the history of our country.”

The claim is gibberish, of course, which is why the claim (or some variation thereof) continually rates three out of four Pinocchios from The Washington Post’s Fact Checker. And one of the reasons the claim is wrong is that the nation’s manufacturing sector is in a downward spiral.

The Institute of Supply Management’s manufacturing index dropped to 47.8 in September, down from 49.1 the previous month, the lowest number in more than a decade. Any number above 50 indicates manufacturing expansion. A number below 50 indicates that manufacturing is in recession territory.

Companies are blaming the slowdown on Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods, which have escalated into a full-blown trade war with China as that country retaliates with tariffs of its own. According to The Washington Post, “Manufacturing fell into a technical recession in the first half of the year, and the latest ISM data indicates the situation appears to be getting worse. Concerns are rising that the contraction in manufacturing could spill over into the rest of the U.S. economy.”

Even worse than a technical number from the index, numbers for manufacturing employment, new orders, backlogs, and production all fell in the Institute of Supply Management report. Because of Trump’s tariffs, parts cost more, so companies are ordering fewer of them, which also affects suppliers. In some cases, manufacturers worried about the future are laying off employees. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that the manufacturing unemployment rate went up six-tenths of a percentage point just since June, and the manufacturing sector lost 2,000 jobs in September. The official September numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that U.S. employers added only 136,000 jobs.

And guess where manufacturing job numbers are bad? In Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, three states Trump won narrowly in 2016. Republican losses in those three states could very well tip the election to a Democratic challenger in 2020.

A Bloomberg opinion piece points out that Trump’s trade policies are hurting both the farming and the manufacturing sectors. A 2016 manufacturing recession may have contributed to Trump’s slim win in those three states that Democrats were counting on as a “blue wall.”

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no lnx

The myth of the ‘Trump economy’ is going down in flames

Written by Cody Fenwick July 27, 2019

Even those who aren’t fans of President Donald Trump sometimes give him credit for the strength of the American economy. I’ve argued before that this is largely misguided because presidents’ impacts on the economy are hard to evaluate and are typically exaggerated.

But new data released Friday further undermined the claims of Trump’s economic prowess, deflating the myths around his administration’s supposedly growth-inducing tax cuts and deregulation.

The U.S. economy grew by only 2.1 percent in the second quarter of 2019, according to new data by U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

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“The deceleration in real GDP in the second quarter reflected downturns in inventory investment, exports, and nonresidential fixed investment,” the bureau found. In other words, business investment is lagging — which is exactly what the GOP’s 2017 tax cuts were supposed to stimulate. But there was never much evidence to suggest that the tax cut would actually supercharge growth — it was a vain hope of Republicans who see lower taxes as the solution to everything.

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At the same time, U.S. manufacturing is in a “technical recession.”

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Trump himself tired to blame the Federal Reserve for the unimpressive growth, calling it an “anchor wrapped around our neck.” (Of course, he appointed the Fed chair, said he couldn’t even skirt responsibility if the analysis is correct.)

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But others, such as Bloomberg’s Colin Wilhelm, noted that Trump’s aggressive trade policies may be a serious impediment to better growth.

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“Trade wars seem to be dulling business investment, which slows economic growth,” said Wilhelm. “Aside from domestic effects in the U.S. there’s also a chilling effect on economic growth overseas.”

Others agreed:

@NickTimiraos

The White House has blamed monetary policy for a slowdown but this is harder to square with strong consumer spending.

The corporate tax cut was supposed to boost capex, but instead capex turned negative last quarter. Businesses say trade, not rates, is the big worry today https://twitter.com/jimpethokoukis/status/1154732855936897024 …

James Pethokoukis

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@JimPethokoukis

Given some predictions of a 1-handle, Trump WH might be happy with 2.1% GDP for Q2. But the business investment number was negative, and the economic justification for the tax cut was to boost business investment. Hard to see that the trade wars are helping here.

Meanwhile, it seems government spending is actually helped keep the growth rate from falling more. The bureau noted that federal, state, and local government spending somewhat offset the decreases elsewhere, in addition to consumer spending.

Of course, one quarter’s growth is just one quarter’s growth. The first quarter of the year saw 3.1 percent growth, which is quite good; and the second quarter’s growth may even be revised upward (or, on the other hand, downward) in future reports.

Politico’s Victoria Guida, though, pointed out that the new data doesn’t isn’t just underwhelming now — it makes last year look worse.

“Seems pretty notable that the president can no longer claim even one year of 3+% growth, with last year’s GDP numbers revised down to 2.5%,” she said. “After all the tax cuts and deregulation, growth is still plugging along about where it was under Obama.”

CNBC’s John Harwood may have had the clearest summation of the situation:

@JohnJHarwood

need time for definitive conclusions

but data so far suggest:

1. economist warnings about 2017 tax-cut - it would balloon deficit w/out doing much for long-term growth/investment - were right

2. arguments from advocates - big investment boost, sustained 3%+ growth - were wrong https://twitter.com/carlquintanilla/status/1154772943240597504 …

Carl Quintanilla

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@carlquintanilla

Kudlow to @CNBC, July 2018: "We are getting 3 [percent GDP growth] and it may be 4 for a quarter or two."#GDP since:

* Q3 2018: 2.9%

* Q4 2018: 1.1%

* Q1 2019: 3.1%

* Q2 2019: 2.1%https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/18/trump-advisor-kudlow-says-economic-growth-could-top-4percent-for-a-quarter-.html …

And let’s be clear — we’re measuring the White House’s success by its own standards.

Carl Quintanilla of CNBC pointed out that, in July of 2018, Larry Kudlow, the director of the U.S. National Economic Council, said, “We are getting 3 [percent GDP growth], and it may be 4 for a quarter or two.” Growth for the last four quarters since that claim has topped out at 3.1 percent, with a low of 1.1 percent in the last quarter of 2018.

And here’s Trump himself from 2017:

@keithboykin

"The economy now has hit 3 percent. Nobody thought we'd be anywhere close. I think we can go to 4, 5, and maybe even 6 percent." - Donald Trump, Dec. 16, 2017

The Commerce Department announced today that GDP growth slowed to 2.1% in the second quarter.

And it’s notable that, whatever economic boosts the government has been giving the country seem to come from government spending, which the Republican Party used to abhor as a source of stimulus. The corporate tax cuts were supposed to be an alternative to direct stimulus — a way to bolster the economy not directly through spending, but by incentivizing greater investment. But we’re still waiting for that investment to emerge, even as the tax cuts blow a hole in the federal budget.

None of this is to say, of course, that the economy is a disaster. It’s not (though there are some ominous signs). And as I’ve argued in the past, the impact of the president on the economy is typically overstated. Teasing out the cause and effect of the wide range of policies enacted by the U.S. government and global forces is an exceptionally complex endeavor.

But we can conclusively say that if the economy isn’t soaring, then the president hasn’t caused the economy to soar. The president and his defenders have sold him as some sort of King Midas with the power to will economic prosperity into existence. And it’s just not true.

As Vox’s Matt Yglesias wrote:

[It’s] not exactly “bad news” that Obama-era growth has essentially just continued apace. But if you think there are significant downsides to Trump’s policies — like supercharging inequality or reversing decades of progress on air pollution or a rising uninsurance rate — none of this has brought us the faster growth we were promised. It’s just the same old same old.

Trump will keep selling himself as an economic wizard, of course, no matter what the numbers say. But anyone paying attention should be able to see through this self-puffery.

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nb fallback climate denial / kyoto

cannot take action on AGW if/ bc hurts economy

ucla prof michael storper sp rise and fall of urban economies (LA and SF)

replay/glitch

70/ 30% 2 do not insteresect

housing but does big macroeconomy/hist post wwii

https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-june-25-2019/

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NB lots of arts on AN 619 on economy not booming for all, bad signs [hmn]

Trump can’t stop coal’s death spiral, and his trade war may speed it up

JOE ROMM

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At least 11 million people now work in the renewable industry globally

"Governments are prioritizing renewables as a driver of low-carbon economic growth."

KYLA MANDEL

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prez steelworkers

Americans are not happy. And for good reason: They continue to suffer financial stress caused by decades of flat income. And every time they make the slightest peep of complaint about a system rigged against them, the rich and powerful tell them to shut up because it is all their fault.

One percenters instruct them to work harder, pull themselves up by their bootstraps and stop bellyaching. Just get a second college degree, a second skill, a second job. Just send the spouse to work, downsize, take a staycation instead of a real vacation. Or don’t take one at all, just work harder and longer and better.

The barrage of blaming has persuaded; workers believe they deserve censure. And that’s a big part of the reason they’re unhappy. If only, they think, they could work harder and longer and better, they would get ahead. They bear the shame. They don’t blame the system: the Supreme Court, the Congress, the president. And yet, it is the system, the American system, that has conspired to crush them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, unemployment is low and the stock market is high. But skyrocketing stocks benefit only the top 10 percent of wealthy Americans who own 84 percent of stocks. And while more people are employed now than during the Great Recession, the vast majority of Americans haven’t had a real raise since 1979.

It’s bad out there for American workers. Last month, their ranking dropped for the third year running in the World Happiness Report, produced by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a UN initiative.

These sad statistics reinforce those in a report released two years ago by two university professors. Reviewing data from the General Social Survey, administered routinely nationally, the professors found Americans’ assessment of their own happiness and family finances has, unambiguously, declined in recent years.

But if Americans would just work harder, everything would be dandy, right?

No. Not right. Americans work really, really hard. A third of Americans work a side hustle, driving an Uber or selling crafts on Etsy. American workers take fewer vacation days. They get 14, but typically take only 10. The highest number of workers in five years report they don’t expect to take a vacation at all this year. And Americans work longer hours than their counterparts in other countries.

Americans labor 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more than Brits, and 499 more than the French, according to the International Labor Organization.

And the longer hours aren’t because American workers are laggards on the job. They’re very productive. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates that the average American worker’s productivity has increased 400 percent since 1950.

If pay had kept pace with productivity, as it did in the three decades after the end of World War II, American workers would be making 400 percent more. But they’re not. Their wages have flatlined for four decades, adjusting for inflation.

That means stress. Forty percent of workers say they don’t have $400 for an unexpected expense. Twenty percent can’t pay all of their monthly bills. More than a quarter of adults skipped needed medical care last year because they couldn’t afford it. A quarter of adults have no retirement savings.

If only Americans would work harder. And longer. And better.

Despite right-wing attempts to pound that into Americans’ heads, it’s not the solution. Americans clearly are working harder and longer and better. The solution is to change the system, which is stacked against workers.

Workers are bearing on their backs tax breaks that benefited only the rich and corporations. They’re bearing overtime pay rules and minimum wage rates that haven’t been updated in more than a decade. They’re weighted down by U.S. Supreme Court decisions that hobbled unionization efforts and kneecapped workers’ rights to file class-action lawsuits. They’re struggling under U.S. Department of Labor rules defining them as independent contractors instead of staff members. They live in fear as corporations threaten to offshore their jobs—with the assistance of federal tax breaks.

Last year, the right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court handed a win to corporatists trying to obliterate workers’ right to organize and collectively bargain for better wages and conditions. The court ruled that public sector workers who choose not to join unions don’t have to pay a small fee to cover the cost of services that federal law requires the unions provide to them. This bankrupts labor unions. And there’s no doubt that right-wingers are gunning for private sector unions next.

This kind of relentless attack on labor unions since 1945 has withered membership. As it shrank, wages for both union and nonunion workers did too.

Also last year, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations can deny workers access to class-action arbitration. This compels workers, whom corporations forced to sign agreements to arbitrate rather than litigate, into individual arbitration cases, for which each worker must hire his or her own lawyer. Then, just last week, the right-wing majority on the court further curtailed workers’ rights to class-action suits.

In a minority opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that the court in recent years has routinely deployed the law to deny to employees and consumers “effective relief against powerful economic entities.”

No matter how hard Americans work, the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court has hobbled them in an already lopsided contest with gigantic corporations.

The administrative branch is no better. Just last week, the Trump Labor Department issued an advisory that workers for a gig-economy company are independent contractors, not employees. As a result, the workers, who clean homes after getting assignments on an app, will not qualify for federal minimum wage (low as it is) or overtime pay. Also, the corporation will not have to pay Social Security taxes for them. Though the decision was specific to one company, experts say it will affect the designation for other gig workers, such as drivers for Uber and Lyft.

Also, the Labor Department has proposed a stingy increase in the overtime pay threshold—that is, the salary amount under which corporations must pay workers time and a half for overtime. The current threshold of $23,660 has not been raised since 2004. The Obama administration had proposed doubling it to $47,476. But now, the Trump Labor Department has cut that back to $35,308. That means 8.2 million workers who would have benefited from the larger salary cap now will not be eligible for mandatory overtime pay.

It doesn’t matter how hard they work; they aren’t going to get the time-and-a-half pay they deserve.

Just like the administration and the Supreme Court, right-wingers in Congress grovel before corporations and the rich. Look at the tax break they gave one percenters in 2017. Corporations got the biggest cut in history, their rate sledgehammered down from 35 percent to 21 percent. The rich reap by far the largest benefit from those tax cuts through 2027, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center. And by then, 53 percent of Americans—that is, workers, not rich people—will pay more than they did in 2017 because tax breaks for workers expire.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers predicted the corporate tax cut would put an extra $4,000 in every worker’s pocket. They swore that corporations would use some of their tax cut money to hand out raises and bonuses to workers. That never happened. Workers got a measly 6 percent of corporations’ tax savings. In the first quarter after the tax cut took effect, workers on average received a big fat extra $6.21 in their paychecks, for an annual total of a whopping $233. Corporations spent their tax breaks on stock buybacks, a record $1 trillion worth, raising stock prices, which put more money in the pockets of rich CEOs and shareholders.

That’s continuing this year. Workers are never going to see that $4,000.

No wonder they’re unhappy. The system is working against them.

Leo W. Gerard is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/how-republican-administrations-always-lead-to-an-economic-meltdown-in-10-easy-steps/

The Neverending Story of Republican Economic Incompetence

Here’s the standard Republican Economic Playbook ever since Reagan took office in 1981:

Step 1: Republicans get into power and then cut taxes as much as possible on the rich and big corporations.

Step 2: Republicans brag about how the economy has improved on essentially borrowed money since reduced tax income means that more money must be borrowed to offset the loss in taxes. Interest will then have to be paid on that borrowed money for a long, long time, thus reducing the ability of the government to invest in people and programs.

Step 3: Republicans suddenly notice that less tax money is coming in, and cut government spending on programs for the poor and middle class.

Step 4: Republicans undermine unions as much as possible to try and help their corporate friends pay as little as possible in wages. Over the long term, this results in regular people having very little money. Republicans also resist raising the minimum wage and resist all wage increases as much as possible. This also results in the poor and middle class having little money over the long term. Income inequality expands. The well off get richer, and everyone else gets poorer.

Step 5: Republicans avoid much-needed infrastructure spending programs, which would help the nation by providing jobs, growing the economy, and increasing the amount of taxable income which could help pay off debt.  Republicans tend to avoid big infrastructure programs because they have convinced themselves that, in general, Government Spending Is Bad—except on certain things like expensive military weapons, in which case, they seem to believe that one can never spend too much.

Step 6:  Republicans watch in total surprise as businesses start collapsing, and more and more regular people start defaulting on their mortgages, bank loans, and credit cards. Since most businesses cater to the poor and middle class, when regular people do not have any money, most businesses end up with fewer customers, and thus, little money. Welcome to another Republican created recession.

Step 7: Republicans do little to fix the recession, since fixing the economy would involve reversing what the Republicans actually did while in office. Eventually, voters put Democrats back into power, hoping that the Democrats will be able to fix the bad economy. The Democrats increase Government spending with an infrastructure program to counteract the economic slowdown caused by the Republicans. Republicans scream bloody murder about how the Democrats are creating government debt with their spending. As Republicans do this,  they ignore the huge amount of government debt which was created by 1) Republican tax cuts, 2) the economic slowdown caused by Republican cuts in spending to pay for their tax cuts, and 3) the economic slowdown caused by Republicans fighting unions, fighting wage increases, and fighting all efforts to implement big infrastructure programs.

Step 8:  The economy slowly recovers due to measures which were both pushed for by Democrats and fought against by Republicans every step of the way.

Step 9: After years of economic improvement under Democratic leadership, Republicans spend countless millions of dollars trying to convince voters that they will do a better job with the economy than the Democrats did. [cu unlimited secret corp cash $ = speech] Voters eventually vote the Republicans into power.

Step 10: Go to Step 1.

AN

With unemployment near record lows, President Donald Trump deserves substantial credit for the strength of the economy, right?

This is a common refrain — and not just from Trump's allies. Many in the media point to the economy as a sign of Trump's strength, though these claims are often vague and unsupported.

And the voters seem to believe it, too, despite the GOP's poor performance in the 2018 midterm elections. According to new polling from Pew Research Center, the American public largely prefers Democrats' positions and views on national issues to Trump's views — except when it comes to jobs and the economy.

But there's a big problem with crediting the president with the success of the "Trump economy" — and it's that there's no such thing.

Critics of the president often argue, when this topic comes up, that the success of the Trump economy is actually the success of the Obama economy. President Barack Obama pulled us out of the Great Recession and put us on a path of steady job growth, they say, which has mostly continued apace under Trump.

There's some truth in this reply, but it concedes too much. There's no more an "Obama economy" than there is a "Trump economy." And despite their frequent abuse of these terms, many members of the media know this.

The president doesn't control the American economy. It's an obvious fact, but it's worth emphasizing because a great deal of discussion about presidential politics and administration policy takes as a given that the president doescontrol the economy.

Consider, for instance, a recent fact-check by the New York Times. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders made the ridiculous claim:

This president, since he took office, in the year and a half that he’s been here, has created 700,000 new jobs for African-Americans. That’s 700,000 African-Americans that are working now that weren’t working when this president took place. When President Obama left after eight years in office — eight years in office — he had only created 195,000 jobs for African-Americans. President Trump, in his first year and a half, has already tripled what President Obama did in eight years.

The Times dutifully noted that Sanders' numbers were off and that her representation of African-American employment trends under Obama was incorrect.

But the Times' entire fact-check completely neglects to mention the fact that, even if Sanders' employment data were correct, her statement would be wildly and ridiculously false because she says that Trump personally created 700,000 jobs for African Americans.

He didn't, he can't, he won't.

Republicans used to acknowledge this. They used to say explicitly, "Government does not create jobs." Now they say, without a hint of irony, not only does government create jobs, but Trump himself is personally responsible for every job created in the country.

The "government does not create jobs" line was always to strong a position to take and clearly false. But the larger point is that most jobs exist in the private sector and the business cycle of booms and busts is driven by a range of conditions distinct from government and party control in the White House.

Of course, the government does take steps to manage the economy. The Federal Reserve plays the largest direct role in this on a day-to-day basis, and the president appoints its leadership on a staggered schedule (though Trump, interestingly, currently despises his own Fed chair's policies!). Congress also passes laws that have significant impacts on the economy, such as the taxing, spending, and various forms of regulations. The administration implements those laws with various levels of discretion, and the president can veto laws and drive the legislative agenda, but the executive's role is largely downstream from Congress.

But much of these laws are already in place, and the president doesn't often have a massive role in directing the trajectory of the economy. Often, not blowing good economic conditions by doing something extremely reckless, will suffice.

In extreme circumstances, the government can play a crucial role. Evidence suggests, for example, that the 2009 stimulus package, passed under Obama and with his direction, did significantly help the economy pull out of the doldrums. Though, as economist Paul Krugman argued, it probably should have been much larger.

Events like this can lend credence to the view that Obama "deserved credit" for the success of the economy under his watch. But if we want to make such a claim, we have to answer certain counterfactual questions. Were the steps taken necessary to achieve the ends? Would anyone else have taken the same steps? And if the economy does poorly, was there anything a reasonable leader could have done to have improved it?

This is how we should think of the president's effect on the economy — relative to the baseline of what we can and should expect, given the current conditions. But assessing that is much more complicated than simply looking at what the unemployment rate happens to be.

For example, under Trump, we've seen the GOP pass a massive tax bill that gave away billions of dollars a year to corporations and the wealthy — and will add an estimated $1.5 trillion to the deficit over ten years. Some argue it's hard a mildly stimulative effect on the economy, though its effects are debatable.

But what is clear is that it wasn't necessary for the job growth we've seen. Average monthly job growth has been slightly lower, the overall on pace since Trump took office. And while there's little reason to think the deficit is a burden on the country right now, it could become an impediment in the future, especially because Republicans have already proven that they're will to use fears about government debt as an excuse for doing nothing in the face of financial calamity.

Trump and his allies have also pushed for weakening financial industry regulation under his watch. And this kind of move points to another reason why judging the "Trump economy" is so perilous. Weakening financial regulations can, in the short run, make the economy run hotter. But it also increases the long-term risks of serious financial downturns, which isn't taken into account in the current data.

The myth of the "Trump economy" will almost certainly persist, though, because it's an easy talking point for his defenders (until a recession hits) and a lazy argument to make as a political pundit. Some of this myth-making is self-reinforcing as well, because pundits insist that the economy will benefit the president because people will give him credit, an idea that is often conflated with the idea that they are correct in giving him this credit.

It shouldn't, though, be the political commentator's job to tell the people how they will react to a series of events. Instead, commentators should provide analysis and insight of politics and economics so the people have a better of idea of how they should react. This is, unfortunately, much harder, because it often involves weighing complex situations and, sometimes, admitting what we don't know. So much of the time, pundits lazily fall back into spouting and amplifying nonsensical myths.

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