Popular Economics Weekly
"But nobody expects to see a lot of prominent Republicans declaring that rejecting Medicaid expansion is wrong, that caring for Americans in need is more important than scoring political points against the Obama administration. As I said, there's an extraordinary ugliness of spirit abroad in today's America, which health reform has brought out into the open." P Krugman
We are now seeing what happens when the Republican Party has adopted what I have called a bully mentality, a state of mind so fixed on domination rather than negotiation that it has inflicted massive damage to the U.S. economy and the American people with its hatred of a government that serves all Americans.
Donald Trump is the latest result of Republicans’ attempts to capture as much wealth as possible. They have dumbed down their party to such an extent that they now have a government dominated by the least educated and less talented that threatens to cause another recession.
And what can we do about it?
I quoted Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman on Republicans’ “ugly” behavior as long
ago as 2014 when Republicans opposed Obamacare. Such an ugly state of mind has never prevailed in this democracy that was founded by vanquishing the biggest bully at the time, King George III.
"...while supposed Obamacare horror stories keep on turning out to be false, it's already quite easy to find examples of people who died because their states refused to expand Medicaid. According to one recent study, the death toll from Medicaid rejection is likely to run between 7,000 and 17,000 Americans each year.”
The Republican Party since President Nixon’s resignation has been a record of economic failures. The 27 Republican-dominated red states are the poorest states, with the greatest income inequality, lowest life spans and highest birthrate mortalities. They require the most assistance from wealthy blue states to balance their budget deficits. And they have the highest death rates, including suicides, from drug and gun use.
It is the reason we are experiencing a second Gilded Age, almost a repeat of the turn of the 20th century that created the robber barons. The enormous wealth generated by the digital age has created an economy dominated by the ultra-wealthy with a massive tax burden born by all Americans.
$trillions have been siphoned away from wage earners to the owners of capital since 1980, which most economists consider the start of the second Gilded Age. The result was a series of recessions leading to the housing bubble and Great Recession during GW Bush’s reign.
And did they learn from it?
No, Republicans then elected another bully to two terms who continues to wreak havoc on the American economy with illegal tariffs and an another unending war. Donald Trump is a convicted felon who has always been a bully preying on the weakest. His many bankruptcies (5) and lawsuits (+3500) attest to his methods of defrauding investors and stiffing his workers that he could not dominate.
But perhaps the saddest example of Republicans’ transformation to a party is that they no longer protect the environment as they did when President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1972 by signing the Clear Air and Water Acts.
When will Americans finally wake up to the suffering inflicted from such ugly behavior in a party that only caters to the richest and persecutes the poorest in upcoming elections, before inflation becomes uncontrollable, the air unbreathable, and the Iran becomes another unending war like Iraq?
Will it take another Great Recession and loss of millions of jobs before Americans stand up to such a bully mentality once again to end this Gilded Age?
Harlan Green © 2026
Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen
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