Popular Economics Weekly
The results are already in on the current administrations tax and economic policies. They are carrying Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economy to an even lower level. Let’s call it the ‘Drip-Down Economy’, since none of the benefits will reach the bottom wage-earners. In fact, they will lose money and benefits with the latest economic policies enacted by the Trump administration and Republican congress.
This is when corporate America is expected to post its best quarter of profit growth in seven years, according to Marketwatch’s Ryan Vlastelica. Through 2016 “For the poorest American families, in the lowest fifth of wealth, their net worth shed 29 percent over that period (actually 2007-16). Drops of at least 20 percent were also seen in every income percentile for those in the 80-89.9 percentile, where the decline was a more modest 5 percent. The wealthiest decile, however, saw a jump of 27 percent, as seen in the above chart.”
Nobelist Paul Krugman has chimed in on the same growing inequality topic several times, since the recently passed record tax cuts that finally gave Republicans what they wanted—much lower corporate and small business tax cuts (including real estate LLCs like Trump’s) will further increase the record federal debt:
“Anything that increases the budget deficit should, other things being the same,” says Krugman, “lead to higher overall spending and a short-run bump in the economy (although there’s no indication of such a bump in the first-quarter numbers, which were underwhelming). But if you want to boost overall spending, you don’t have to give huge tax breaks to corporations. You could do lots of other things instead — say, spend money on fixing America’s crumbling infrastructure, an issue on which Trump keeps promising a plan but never delivers.”The main problem with the new tax bill is it allows an additional $1.5T added to the deficit over ten years, while cutting Medicare and Medicaid spending by almost as much. This is while most S&P 500 corporations have said it doesn’t change their overall spending plans (except for a few token raises).
To rub even more salt into the wounds of working adults, their incomes still aren’t rising above inflation, as has been mostly the case for the past 30 years.
“Average hourly earnings were expected to approach the 3 percent line two years ago when the unemployment rate first started to move below 5 percent, let alone the sub 4 percent rate where it is now,” says Econoday with the accompanying graph.
The tight labor market is especially evident in what’s often called the “real” unemployment rate. The so-called U6 rate includes people who can only find part-time work, and those who’ve gotten so discouraged stopped looking in the past 12 months. It fell to 7.8. percent in April to drop below 8 percent for the first time since 2006. The labor market almost back to normal, in other words, yet it hasn’t boosted the incomes of most working adults.
So why do we have even worse inequality today with nearly full employment, in which economic benefits are being taken away from not just the lowest income brackets with reduced health care and other benefits, but almost all of us?
All signs say we are nearing the end of the second-longest growth cycle since the Clinton era’s 10-year 1991-2001 boom years, as I said last week; and once again a huge amount of debt has accumulated that ultimately has to be paid for.
These are the conditions that ultimately led to both the Great Depression and Great Recession. Are we to have an even greater recession, or depression—God forbid?
Not unless something is done in the next congress to restore those benefits and rescind most of the tax cuts that are neither benefiting most of US, nor improving the record budget deficit.
Harlan Green © 2018
Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen
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