Despite Abundant Evidence, People Are Still Falling for the Lie Trump Would Be Better for the Economy
Democrats are just better for the economy. They always have been. The facts speak for themselves.
Twice in the past couple of weeks I have overheard people say or they have told me Donald Trump would be “better for the economy”.
Have you any experiences with people who make that claim?
Republicans have mastered the fine art of projection. They really want people to believe they are the stewards of the economy, the “fiscally responsible” party, despite facts to the contrary.
Never mind that it’s complete bovine excrement; as long as their billionaire-funded right-wing hate media keeps repeating it, there are always going to be the malinformed willing to swallow and regurgitate it.
The corporate media doesn’t help with its relentless obsession with trying to find for Democrats something comparable to the irresponsibility and undemocratic positions of today’s republican party. As a result, we’re fed constant sound bytes about “inflation,” but next to nothing about the corporate price gouging imposed during the pandemic that never returned to pre-pandemic levels.
There’s also virtually nothing about how the economy is actually doing in spite of the greed behind corporations’ record profits causing too many to have to dip deeper into their pockets, leaving a door open to blame the current administration, and republicans’ promises to return America to where it was…when?
So, are people right about Democrats destroying our economy. Would Trump actually be better?
According to most leading economists, the answer is a resounding “No”.
Check out a story in The Economist last week: “America’s economy is bigger and better than ever”.
And this one: “The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust”.
Last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained at the Council for Foreign Relations:
Our Administration has driven a historic economic recovery. U.S. GDP growth is strong, our unemployment rate is near historic lows, and inflation has declined significantly.
How strong is that GDP growth?
6.4%, up from 6.2% last year.
What is the current unemployment rate?
4.1% after we added 254,000 jobs last month. We haven’t seen unemployment this low in about half a century.
And the current inflation rate?
Down to its pre-pandemic 2.4%.
Considering it was up to 9% two years ago, that’s a pretty remarkable improvement to be proud of.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 have been ringing in record numbers for the sixth straight week.
Moody’s Analytics chief economist, Mark Zandi, explained:
In the 35 years I’ve been an economist, I’ve rarely seen an economy performing as well as it is. I’d give it an A+.
Yardeni Research rated the US economy “hot, hot, hot…resilient.”
Washington Post economics columnist Heather Long added:
[B]y just about every measure, the U.S. economy is in good shape...Many Americans are getting sizable pay raises, and middle-class wealth has surged to record levels.
The United States’ economy has recovered faster from the pandemic than any other major nation.
However, Mark Zandi also said, “The difference between the happy talk of economists and what people say has never been this wide”.
So how would the economic policies of the convicted felon running to keep himself out of prison fare compared to those of Vice President Kamala Harris?
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated Harris’s plans would add $3.5 trillion to the national debt.
Trump’s, on the other hand, would add $7.5 trillion if he were successful at extending the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”, the massive bill he signed at the end of his first year in the White House that handed a $1.5 trillion dollar permanent tax cut to the morbidly rich.
The adjudicated rapist is hinging his whole economic agenda on tariffs--a 10% to 20% on all imported goods and a 60% on Chinese-made products.
Sounds good to most people who have no idea what tariffs are. But tariffs are domestic taxes applied to consumer goods, not to importing countries as the “brilliant businessman” keeps insisting.
Tariffs are not inherently negative; they can be used to dissuade consumers from purchasing certain items the importing country produces itself. The Biden administration, for example, last month finalized a tariff plan on Chinese-made electric vehicles and batteries, solar panels, critical minerals, steel, aluminum, face masks, and ship-to-shore cranes. The intent is to motivate consumers and companies to purchase from American companies. Keeping our money here further boosts our economy.
These are targeted, not blanket tariffs the business fraud promotes, which would impose a 20% tax on everyday goods. Economists estimate this to cost average Americans an additional $4,000 more a year.
As Treasury Secretary Yellen explained:
Calls for walling America off with high tariffs on friends and competitors alike or by treating even our closest allies as transactional partners are deeply misguided. Sweeping, untargeted tariffs would raise prices for American families and make our businesses less competitive. And we cannot even hope to advance our economic and security interests — such as opposing Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine — if we go it alone. But the issues we face today, from broken supply chains, to climate change and global pandemic preparedness, to China’s industrial overcapacity, also mean we cannot simply draw from an old playbook.
And let’s talk about those “mass deportations” the former host of Celebrity Apprentice brags about.
Immigration is a serious issue, but if people believe deporting millions of “illegals” will somehow make us stronger, they ought to take a look at what history has taught about when happens when folks are rounded up and shipped off.
As historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote recently in her Substack newsletter Letters From an American:
The Peterson Institute for International Economics pointed out that the immigrants Trump is targeting are vital to a number of U.S. businesses. Their loss will cause dramatic cutbacks in those sectors. Taken together, the study concluded, Trump’s deportations, tariffs, and vow to take control of the Federal Reserve could make the country’s gross domestic product as much as 9.7% lower than it would be without those policies, employment could fall by as much as 9%, and inflation would climb by as much as 7.4%.
And Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic policies?
Her progressive economic policy promises to continue to build and expand on Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) President Biden signed two years ago and the American Rescue Plan Biden signed upon taking office in 2021.
Harris’ plan intends to incentivize builders with a tax break for constructing up to three million homes for first-time buyers. Local governments would receive a $40 billion fund to finance their housing crisis solutions.
Harris will also lean on Congress to pass the Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act, which seeks to prevent landlords from using price-fixing algorithms to increase rents; and the Stop Predatory Investing Act, which would limit tax breaks for large investors and private equity firms bulk buying single-family rental homes.
For those renters who have consistently paid their rent on time for at least two years, Harris wants to provide up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance. First-generation homeowners can expect more support.
Harris wants to improve on enhanced Child Tax Credit that three years ago gave millions of Americans $3,600 for children under age six and $3,000 per child for children between six and 17, and slashed monthly child poverty by 30%. Harris wants to give working- and middle-class families with children up to $3,600 per child. She also wants to extend a $6,000 tax cut to families with newborns. For those without children in lower-income jobs, Harris’ plan calls for an Earned Income Tax Credit of $1,500.
President Biden is the first president to take on the neo-liberal “trickle-down” economic policies started during the Reagan administration. The Inflation Reduction Act requires companies reporting more than $1 billion in profits to pay a 15% minimum corporate tax rate, and wealthy shareholders to pay a 1% tax on stock buybacks. It also requires Americans making over $400,000 to pay a little more in taxes. VP Harris is committed to perpetuating the Biden tax plan keeping those making under $400,000 a year from not seeing a penny in tax increases.
13 million families covered under the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) are seeing health insurance costs decrease by an average of $800 a year, and three million more Americans are now insured. This is a step closer to the Medicare-for-All single-payer universal healthcare we need and will eventually have.
Most “surprise billing” medical charges from out-of-network insurance providers are now banned under the “No Surprises Act”.
Medicare is negotiating for more affordable pharmaceutical drugs.
Insulin costs are capped at $35 per month for almost four million diabetic seniors on Medicare, and lower out-of-pocket cost of inhalers for tens of millions is in the works.
Harris also wants to raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips.
Between 1989 and July 2024, 50 million of the 51 million jobs added to the economy have been on Democratic presidents’ watches.
Yet a New York Times/Siena Poll of likely voters states 75% of respondents believe the economy is “fair” or “poor”.
A poll in The Guardian revealed that while VP Harris’s economic policies were more popular than those of the twice-impeached former resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. who tried to overthrow the government, 54% of a Gallup poll respondents said he would be better for the economy.
The media does a lot of talking about “inflation,” but since it doesn’t explain that what it is calling inflation is actually price gouging, or, more generously, corporate greed, people are left to do what they normally do when they complain about prices — blame the government.
Kamala Harris proposes working with Congress within her first 100 days in office to enact a federal ban on price gouging on groceries and other goods. This would require new enforcement authority for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general to include pursuing anti-monopoly standards to prevent food companies from merging, a major cause of skyrocketing prices.
Absent evidence, why do so many still claim republicans — and specifically the nut job running against Harris —are better for the economy?
Are we hardwired for “negativity bias”?
When it comes to politics, we are bombarded daily with snippets of reality, not the whole picture. If the corporate media’s bias is to ratings, what it is telling us is skewed toward the interests of the corporations that control the flow of information.
Is there anyone out there aside from progressive podcasters calling “inflation” what it actually is — corporate greed?
Nope.
Instead, we get “Thanks to Biden, You Are Getting an Incredible Shrinking Paycheck”, and “Biden’s Energy Policy Is Tailor-Made to Crush the Middle Class”.
When we the last time the media reported on the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”?
That might have something to do with why we’re expected to keep forking over more.
Speaking of tax cheats, when was the last time we heard about how much they, not “poor people on welfare,” are ripping us off?
Instead, out of fear of being called “liberal,” news anchors sit there and allow lawmakers to promulgate lies about “open borders” without seizing the opportunity to point out that not only is our border — always the southern one, never the one with Canada — ”open”; that lie gets amplified across social media and the internet in Mexico and Central America, leading to unassuming asylum seekers and those just taking advantage of our “free-trade” looking for work to believe Democratic administrations have “opened” the border to them when they haven’t.
No wonder so many think the wanna-be dictator would be better for the economy.
Democrats are just better for the economy. They always have been. The facts speak for themselves.
If we vote in the traitor again, we have no one but ourselves to blame for the social and economic fallout.