Why Make America Weak?

 

Financial FAQs

“This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Franklin Delano Rooselvelt

theguardian.com

The Democrat’s election sweep on November 2 is proving that American voters  heeded President Roosevelt’s famous warning at his first inaugural address, that the Democrats' paralysis after the loss to Trump II is over and fear, the greatest enemy of Democracy, can be conquered.

The November 2 elections showed just how illusory were those fears that Donald Trump and Republicans wanted Americans to believe, that the largest, most prosperous country in the world had grown weak. Americans were now in danger and only he and his oligarchs could save US.

In fact, Donald Trump and the Republican Party have been attempting to weaken everything that makes America the oldest constitutional democracy since his first day in office.

He began by slashing of essential government services via Elon Musk’s DOGE computer hackers (such as social security, Medicare, Medicare) that benefit all Americans, the attempt to eliminate the the Department of Education that supports our basic universal K-12 and early childhood educational systems, while picking the most unqualified to run the FBI, Department of Homeland Services, and Health and Human Services so that they are no longer fully functional. 

The brutal roundup of undocumented immigrants, whether they have a criminal record, are decimating the ranks of workers that fill agricultural, manufacturing, and service sector jobs needed to maintain economic growth.

The biggest financial threat to ordinary Americans are the rising prices on basic necessities that most Americans depend on due to tariff rates now at Great Depression levels, impoverishing the majority of Americans that live from paycheck-to-paycheck.

It’s become obvious that the Trump administration’s intent has been to instill as much fear as possible in the most vulnerable Americans that the federal government won’t work for them and only Trump and his oligarchs can same them.

But the recent election and huge protests at the last No Kings rallies are a sign that millions of Americans haven’t been cowed or paralyzed.

In fact, they have said, as did Howard Beale, the News Anchor in the movie Network, “I’m as mad as hell and not going to take this anymore!”

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Who Benefits From America's IOU's?

 Financial FAQs

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government’s gross national debt has surpassed $37 trillion, a record number that highlights the accelerating debt on America’s balance sheet and increased cost pressures on taxpayers. AP

FREDdebtGDP

Trump and his Republicans’ trade war and big, beautiful tax bill resemble a giant Ponzi scheme in several ways that has created the greatest wealth and income inequality in the developed world. 

It is in essence robbing Peter to pay Paul, by using the revenues from the highest tariff rates since the Great Depression, cutting $billions from Medicare, Medicare and Obamacare benefits, Doge-slashing important health and climate research departments as well as foreign aid spending, because Trump must pay down the record national debt that he has declared is a national emergency.

Yet it was generated by generations of mostly Republican tax cuts. President Reagan created the first major national debt in fighting the cold war and Central American contra wars, GW Bush created the first $trillion deficit with his war on terror largely based on fabricated intelligence, and Donald Trump will manage to add some $ 9 trillion to what is now a record $37 trillion from his trade war with almost no understanding or knowledge of foreign trade, as Nobelist Paul Krugman has pointed out several times.

And President Trump just fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics so that he could replace her with someone who will cook the books on inflation and real job numbers.

The history of deficits is portrayed in the above graph of U.S. national debt calculated as a percentage of GDP.

Tump’s original Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) had already added $5 trillion to the national debt that peaked at 132.8% as a percentage of GDP in Q1 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and it has since dropped to 120% because of the aid bills that the Trump and Biden administrations signed into law boosting economic growth to almost 3% annually.

The White House appeal to the foreign trade court to leave Trump’s tariff war in place is his attempt to keep the Ponzi scheme from imploding, rather than negotiating with congress that has the actual power to make foreign trade agreements.

Executive orders without congressional approval are illegal, unless there is a national emergency. And the soaring national debt could become one, if Trump succeeds in destroying the good faith and credit of the U.S. in renewing the TCJA.

On May 16, Moody’s Ratings downgraded the U.S. credit rating, citing an “inability of the nation to address large and growing deficits.” This downgrade means that for the first time ever, all three major credit ratings agencies have downgraded U.S. credit below their top AAA rating.

Trump is therefore begging an appeals court to allow the tariffs. It could lead to a “GREAT DEPRESSION” Trump said on social media, with Americans “forced from their homes” that will threaten social security and Medicare.

Yet the financial markets aren’t panicking this time, maybe for the wrong reasons, as I said in an earlier column. This is while the Final Demand Producer Price Index has jumped to 3.3% annually, the highest in three years since the COVID-19 induced supply shortages, lessening the chances of Federal Reserve rate cuts.

Wall Street’s over enthusiasm, which was first termed irrational exuberance by Fed Chair Alan Greenspan in the mid-1990s as a warning that stocks were overpriced, has created a new asset bubble much like the dot-com asset bubble, and housing bubble that led to the Great Recession.

And it has led to the greatest income inequality in the developed world which has impoverished Republican-led red states above all, whose citizens are most easily cowed by their policies.

And what will happen when foreign investors, mainly governments, realize a $37 trillion national debt isn’t sustainable indefinitely?

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

What Happened to the Budget?

 Popular Economics Weekly

“The House Republican budget passed today calls for massive cuts in health coverage, food assistance, and help paying for college, among some other areas, to pay for huge tax giveaways for wealthy households and businesses.” CBPP.org

CBPP.org

President Trump had to know that devoting a large part of his State of the Union speech insulting Democrats would make it much more difficult to forge a budget for the fiscal year that ends September 30, when they will need Democrats’ support because of their thin majorities.

It will make it all but impossible to ratify an annual budget that significantly reduces the budget deficit. It’s not a great way to negotiate, in other words, unless Republicans don’t believe they need Democrats to fund their tax cuts.

House Republicans have passed a purely Republican budget resolution that relies on massive cuts to federal programs that the Center For Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a nonpartisan research and policy organization, recently analyzed.

“The House budget would require the Energy and Commerce Committee to cut at least $880 billion; the Agriculture Committee to cut at least $230 billion; the Education and Workforce Committee to cut at least $330 billion; and other committees to also cut programs to reach a cumulative target of at least $1.5 trillion in cuts through 2034. The magnitude of these reductions would force congressional committees to make enormous cuts in Medicaid, SNAP, student loan assistance and other vital sources of support when they develop the “reconciliation” spending and tax bill that follows the budget resolution.” CBPP

Yet Republicans must compromise with Democrats to pass the annual budget that keeps the federal government open for business because of their paper-thin majorities in both the House and Senate, as I said. And the Democrats’ cooperation will require that some of their own budget priorities be included.

Trump must know by insulting Democrats he won’t get much of what he wants. He must believe there is a better way to narrow the budget deficit. Of course, he and Elon Musk have said so out loud—find some $2 billion in savings in the current budget that totals more than $4.2 trillion at last count.

Instead, Trump/Musk are firing federal employees and closing whole agencies with abandon to make their case that it will eliminate enough fraud and waste to bring down the deficit to justify their tax cuts. But it can’t happen without cuts to the sacred third rails as well—social security, Medicare and Medicaid.

They will be slowed down in their haste to downsize government because most of the DOGE work to date seems to be illegal, according to the many lawsuits that have been filed to stop the DOGE efficiency drive.

It will end up being a failed “Shock and Awe” campaign, according to Thomas Friedman, since their real intent is to cut government “down to the size where one could drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub,” to quote Grover Norquist, a Republican  strategist.

AtlantaFed

And we might already be seeing evidence of the damage; such as predictions of negative first quarter economic growth for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model of real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2025 is -2.4 percent on March 6, up from -2.8 percent on March 3.

Tariff fears are part of the problem, as importers are ordering as much as possible before tariffs kick in that will raise prices, and that subtracts from GDP growth. But consumer spending in the new year that powers 60 percent of economic growth has declined because of their exhausted savings.

Consumer spending could shrink even further as the federal job firings and layoffs accelerate. MarketWatch reports some 172,017 job cuts were unveiled in February by U.S.-based employers, according to the monthly report by the outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas. That’s the highest total since July 2020.

“It was chiefly because of a large reduction in government employees from actions by Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or ”DOGE,” purportedly to reduce bureaucracy,” said MarketWatch’s Jeffry Bartash.

Challenger put the federal job cuts at 62,242 last month, up from just 151 in January and February combined in 2024. Historically, very few federal employees lose their jobs annually. Retail and tech companies also announced sizable layoffs in February.

Economist Claudia Sahm said in a CNBC interview that such a massive number of workers losing their jobs at once has never happened before and will be flooding the job market.

I can’t imagine what such a large loss of jobs will do to our economy this year, even though federal jobs are a small part of the US workforce.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

No Art of the Deal--Part II

 Answering Kennedy’s Call

“It’s 100 days into the Trump Presidency and looking more and more like President Trump is no more effective at running the country than his business interests. His book, The Art of the Deal was meant to tout his negotiating skills, but the results were never very successful.”

Huffington Post

I wrote this piece for Huffington Post in 2017, after President Trump’s first 100 days as president.

“And neither are his legislative efforts; with no repeal of Obamacare, or tax reform, an immigration ban, new trade policy, and sanctuary city victories in the offing anytime soon because of poorly thought out strategies. Instead, he threatens judges, sanctuary cities, Congress, and even other countries when they don’t support his various executive orders,” I said then.

President Trump’s real intentions are becoming clear on just his second day of his second term in office. He and his Oligarchs want to steal the US Government blind, as the saying goes, by keeping Americans and the media as blind as possible to what he intends.

Will he be more successful in passing his promises in his second term? We should ignore some of his most nonsensical executive orders, such as attempting to amend the 14^th Amendment by decree that guarantees citizenship for anyone born in the U.S. 50 states and territories, which he knows can’t be done by decree or executive order.

But the furor that it and the immediate release of 1500 January 6 Capital attackers from prison, mostly convicted felons, will generate enough attention that it will cloak his real intention; reduce or eliminate as many government programs as possible that make life better for ordinary Americans, such as Medicaid, in order to fund more tax cuts.

He has already rescinded the Biden executive order to cap Medicaid spending on drugs that would save Medicaid $billions in costs.

“In reversing the executive order Biden signed in 2022, Trump halted an effort to cap the copayment for generic medications at $2 for Medicare beneficiaries, along with another program that would see Medicare pay less for drugs that receive accelerated approval from the Food and Drug Administration,” according to MarketWatch’s Jessica Hall.

And there is also the question of what Trump will do with regard to the prescription-drug provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, which would be substantially more consequential. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare can negotiate the prices of certain prescription drugs with the aim of making drugs more affordable for older adults and people with disabilities.

We can’t blame it just on Trump. Republicans have been trying to deprive Americans of affordable healthcare managed by the government for years. The efforts became serious in the more than 30 unsuccessful attempts to repeal Obamacare since it was passed during President Obama’s first two years in office. It became an obsession in Trump’s first term that I wrote about in Huffington Post at the time.

“What if conservatives succeeded in repealing Obamacare (ACA)? “Republicans' Obamacare repeal bill would leave 17 million more people uninsured next year, and 32 million more in 2026, the Congressional Budget Office said in an estimate Wednesday. It also said premiums would double by 2026. …By 2026, three quarters of the population would live in areas with no insurers participating in the non-group market, due to upward pressure on premiums and downward pressure on enrollment, the report found.”

The accrued savings in health care spending relative to their projected growth prior to the ACA are substantial: Medicare alone is now projected to spend $1 trillion less between 2010 and 2020.

The lobbies behind the Obamacare repeal effort have not succeeded in making more Americans ill. I don’t even want to imagine what the results would be if he and Republicas succeed in downsizing Medicaid benefits as well.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Why the Inflation Problem?

 Financial FAQs

Most of us remember when a gallon of gas was less the $2, or a quart of milk less than $1, or housing was last affordable in the 1970s. I remember the inflation surges in housing. What happened?

Shouldn’t we as voters understand inflation if a majority of voters were so angry about the soaring price of everything that the majority would find somebody to blame (President Biden), and elect somebody else (Donald Trump) who said he will make everything better, even though that didn’t happen during his first term?

It is a peculiar form of American amnesia that caused so many to vote against their own interests—in this case a majority of white women to vote for a sexual predator and abortion opponent, young working class males to support a con-artist who had stiffed or defrauded his own workers and filed bankruptcy multiple times to avoid paying them.

It has to be because everything is happening too fast in our high-Tech driven economy and culture (Internet?) that has left so many people still wanting to live in a world they remember or imagine.

This happened at least once before and signaled how difficult it is for Americans to face forward rather than look backward to a time that never was, even though they crave change. It was first noticed in Thomas Frank’s 2005 best-seller: What’s the Matter With Kansas; How Conservatives Won the Heart of American?

Such nostalgia enabled GW Bush to win a second term, although he started his wars on terror by lying about weapons of mass destruction after failing to anticipate 9/11.

To understand what happened with Trump’s false economic narrative—that Americans were better off financially in his first term—we should understand the complexity of our own economy.

The main priority of Republicans—tax cuts that Bush and Trump Republicans enacted were a giant scam that actually transferred more wealth to their supporters and imp0verished more working Americans, while adding $trillions to the national debt.

But enough Americans remembered an earlier, whiter America that had experienced a victorious, post-World War Two prosperity—until the 1970s and school integration, minorities wanting more rights (including women), the killings of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, Jr., and a Vietnam War tore our country apart.

It’s hard to imagine such a tumultuous history today several generations later.

Republicans have always favored tax cuts that enriched themselves, but not better healthcare for Americans—especially women and children.

CBPP.org

So how should voters understand the American economy? Firstly, we have been living in what has been called the second Gilded Age that has favored the wealthiest since the 1970s, and not ordinary workers whose household incomes have stagnated since then.

But most Americans probably understand it’s most basic tenet: The Law of Supply and Demand. It’s an economic term, but based on commone sense. The price of things depends on the supply of things. And when there is an abrupt shortage, such as oil and gas because of the Arab oil embargo that cut off OPEC (The Organization of Oil Exporting Countries) oil imports in the 1970s, gas prices soared. And that began the upward cycle of price fluctuations.

Meanwhile, more than 80 million baby boomers became consumers at the same time who wanted more of everything. And the housing industry couldn’t build enough dwellings to satisfy the increased demand.

This is as good a common sense explanation as any to understand inflation. Prices go up or down when they aren’t in equilibrium—i.e., too much supply lowers prices, while too much demand from consumers and businesses raises them.

The same thing happened with the COVID-19 pandemic that killed one million Americans. The worldwide shutdowns and shelter-in-place requirements to keep it from spreading caused massive shortages of everything, which caused the price hikes that infuriated so many.

Consumers couldn’t very well blame COVID-19, a virus like the flu though much more virulent, but they could blame who was supposed to protect Americans from it.

What is most remarkable is that prices had been rising rapidly since the 1970s, but Americans hadn’t reacted as angrily as they did after the COVID-19 pandemic—maybe because of the trauma from so many lives lost—whole families in some cases.

Inflation is like the frog in water that has been slowly coming to a boil. For whatever reason, we have only noticed it since the water (meaning our economy) has come to a boil from the pandemic’s aftereffects that have most hurt our working class, many of whom had lost jobs as globalization moved good paying manufacturing jobs overseas in the name of making everything cheaper.

Most of us remember when a gallon of gas was less the $2, or a quart of milk less than $1, or housing prices were last affordable in the 1970s, as I said. But there was no quick cure. The OPEC oil embargo jump-started the decade-long inflation surge in the 1970s, for instance.

What can be done to cure the current inflation surge? Republicans and Trump’s “Drill Baby Drill” promise can’t do much to lower oil prices because the U.S. already produces more oil than it uses, while adding more CO2 to the atmosphere that is accelerating global warming, that endangers whole parts of the country.

And higher proposed tariffs won’t increase the supply of anything and might lower demand, since it makes imports more expensive because it is a tax on imported goods.

There are two solutions that the Biden administration have implemented, but Republicans don’t like—federal funds to make construction of affordable housing cheaper, and the elimination of loopholes that encourage the profit-taking by cartel-size pharmaceutical corporations that took advantage of the pandemic shortages and continue to raise their prices.

And lastly, we need more comprehensive healthcare legislation that would increase productivity of our workforce because they become healthier. But Republicans have historically opposed that as well, having attempted to repeal Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, more than 30 times. It is the only private health insurance that insures more than 30 million Americans against preexisting conditions.

Republicans are even talking about downsizing Medicaid and Medicare in the name of increasing efficiency. That will also increase inflation, because M & M keep overall costs of healthcare lower with their power to control treatment and drug prices.

So it’s difficult to know if it was ideology and conspiracy theories triumphing common sense economics that enabled Republicans to win this election.

Inflation has returned to its historic norm, and the American economy is fully employed so everyone’s job is safe. Many voters want someone to blame for their myriad anxieties, as Kansans had done two decades earlier.

We will now have to worry if this Gilded Age will end as did the last one. So much wealth had been accumulated in too few hands that it caused the Great Depression and led to World War Two.

Harlan Green © 2024

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Trumpcare is Killing US!

Financial FAQs

It took 4 hours to coax Patricia Okoumou, a Congolese immigrant, down from the Statue of Liberty while wearing a t-shirt that said, “Trumpcare Makes Us Sick.” It was serendipitous timing. She was part of a group wanting the abolition of ICE, but her t-shirt also brought attention to Republican and Trump administration’s efforts to abolish Obamacare, when a just released HHS report states that  Obamacare is doing better than ever for those in most need of health insurance.

President Trump has to be aware that most Americans want to keep Obamacare, even with the latest Republican tax cut bill that also abolishes the Obamacare mandate in 2019 requiring Americans not covered to pay a penalty if they have no health care coverage. The result has been higher premiums for those above the federal poverty level not subsidized by the federal government.

The reason Obamacare is popular with a majority of Americans is that the alternative Trumpcare bills attempted by Republicans last year wouldn’t just make Americans sicker, they will kill more people. Approximately 17,000 people could have died if a House Republican health proposal endorsed by the Trump administration had become law in 2018, who otherwise would have lived. By 2026, the number of people killed by Trumpcare could have grown to approximately 29,000 in that year alone, according to ThinkProgress, progressive think tank.  It is backed up by a CBO estimate that 24 million more Americans could lose health insurance by 2026 under Trumpcare.

Trump’s assertion that he has “gutted” Obamacare in his attempt to sicken and kill more Americans simply isn’t true. In fact, those in most need of health care coverage, those earning less than the federal poverty line, $48,500 for an individual, and $100,400 for a family of four, are doing quite well, according to the latest assessment from the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services that administers Obamacare.

 

Overall, according to the figures released by the agency, 10.6 million Americans had signed up for ACA coverage by February and paid their first month’s premium, according to the Los Angeles Times. That was about 3 percent ahead of the 10.3-million enrollment at the same moment in 2017, the agency sai

Unsubsidized customers responded to the challenge of higher premiums by abandoning their health coverage in droves, HHS reported. The trend began in 2017, after Trump’s inauguration. That year, subsidized enrollments fell by about 223,000, or 3 percent. But unsubsidized enrollments fell by 1.3 million, or 20 percent.

This is while subsidized enrollment (those receiving Advanced Premium Tax Credits, or APTC) was 23 percent larger than unsubsidized (non-APTC) in 2014 and 32 percent larger in 2016 — and reached 61 percent in 2017.

Trump’s answer to the premium increases caused by his own policies has been to undercut the law even further by eliminating the consumer protections that make health insurance worth buying. These include requirements that all policies cover essential health benefits such as maternity care, hospitalization and prescription drugs, and opening the marketplace further to short-term junk insurance that carries lower premiums but offers substandard coverage.

We are not even mentioning Trump’s efforts to abolish the exemption for existing illnesses, and take away the federal payments meant to subsidize states’ Medicaid programs, which will result in even higher health insurance premiums for everyone.

Who are President Trump and his Republican synchophants really killing with their heartlessness?  Those now above the poverty line—the increasing number of unsubsidized in the middle class.  And they can and will vote, on what has become the number one issue for voters in November.

A new Pew Research Center survey reports 60 percent of Americans say the government should be responsible for ensuring health care coverage for all Americans, compared with 38 percent who say this should not be the government’s responsibility. The share saying it is the government’s responsibility has increased from 51 percent last year and now stands at its highest point in nearly a decade.

So, Trump and your Republican supporters of big business, please go right ahead and keep up your efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare if you want to become irrelevant.  Voters in November will know what this means.

Harlan Green © 2018

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Republican’s Tax Reform = U.S. Bankruptcy?

Popular Economics Weekly

We know most of the sordid details, by now. The Repubs’ about-to-be-approved tax bill will drive the U.S. into a defacto bankruptcy. It contains very little for the middle and lower income tax brackets that do the most to boost economic growth with their spending, and lots for the 1 percent that spend the least, including doubling the inheritance tax exemption and lowering both personal and corporate taxes.

This will not generate enough tax revenue to pay for the additional debt, so foreign governments and individuals will become more reluctant to invest in U.S. debt, as the deficit continues to grow and interest rates rise, crowding out other, important investments.

It also cuts Medicare and Medicaid benefits by approximately $1.5 trillion to pay for this huge tax cut. But that isn’t really paying for it, since this takes income away from those supported by our social programs.

How does that make sense, when financial markets are already flooded with cash, and all kinds of bubbles are popping up? Bond valuations are at all-time highs (meaning interest rates are still at historical lows), corporations are already making record profits, and stocks’ price-to earning levels resemble those of the 1929 market crash that led to the Great Depression.

Everything is already overvalued, in other words, yet the Republican congress wants to give even more money to the wealthiest, who plan to use it to boost their paychecks, and that of their stockholders.

There will be little money left to boost wages and salaries, according to CEOs that have been surveyed. And why should they boost their workers’ incomes? Most new jobs are low paying, warehouse jobs for the likes of Amazon.

Graph: Econoday

A lack of skilled workers is very likely a key factor why high levels of employment have not led to meaningful wage improvement, says Econoday. Inflation is not rising because real average hourly earnings are barely rising, which is why discounting is still prevalent.

So congress is really reducing tax revenues that are needed to pay for all that debt. This is what GW Bush tried to do in 2001-2 with his tax cuts, which led to the record budget deficit, bursting of the original housing bubble, and Great Recession. 

It fantastical thinking to believe otherwise, and the Republican Party could follow President Trump over the political cliff, once the general public understands their real motive in tax reform.  It's reverse Robin Hoodism, or robbing from the poor to give to the rich.

And it can happen again. The U.S. won’t declare bankruptcy, since it can print all the money in our own currency to pay for the inflated debt levels. But it will saddle future generations with an impossible debt load, and prevent much needed public and private investment that would increase productivity and boost growth.

Harlan Green © 2017

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Hillary Clinton, A New FDR?

Popular Economics Weekly

Even President Obama, among others, has said Hillary Clinton is one of the most qualified presidential candidates ever. And she has been advocating a new New Deal for America, including tuition-free public universities and colleges, paid maternity leave, child care, expanded social security and Medicare benefits, as well as more public investment at a time when the private sector has severely cut back on productive investment of any kind.

She would also be our first female president. So how should we compare her to FDR, our father figure during the Great Depression and WWII, at a time of economic suffering from the second worst depression we have just lived through?

What is little know is that the major New Deal programs created during the Great Depression, including Social Security, unemployment insurance, and the 40-yr work week, were designed and created by a female Labor Secretary, Francis Perkins, whom he had brought with him from his New York state governorship.

During her term as Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1946, Secretary Perkins created the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administration (WPA), and the labor portion of the National Recovery Industrial Act. With the Social Security Act, she established unemployment benefits and pensions for the many uncovered elderly Americans, and welfare for the poorest Americans. She pushed to reduce workplace accidents and helped craft laws against child labor. Through the Fair Labor Standards Act, she established the first minimum age and overtime laws for American workers, and defined the standard forty-hour work week.

Yes, Francis Perkins, a woman, was the real designer and implementer of most of the New Deal programs, without which we would not have weathered the Great Depression with enough economic strength to win WWII.

So might Hillary Clinton provide a similar vision for America during these divided times when so much of the rest of the world wants what we have? Her drive to provide tuition-free public colleges is a first step.

The now $1 trillion in student debt is holding back economic growth, for starters. It prevents students from investing in their future growth, such as a profession they prefer, rather than continuing to pay for the past investment in themselves. It has held back the number of college graduate that both earn higher salaries and are more fully employed than non-college graduates.

A recent NBER Working Paper by economist Enrico Moretti, showed a percentage point increase in the supply of college graduates raises high school drop-outs' wages by 1.9 percent, high school graduates' wages by 1.6 percent, and college graduates wages by 0.4 percent. The effect is larger for less educated groups, as predicted by a conventional demand and supply model. But even for college graduates, an increase in the supply of college graduates increases wages, as predicted by a model that includes conventional demand and supply factors as well as spillovers, said Dr. Moretti.

Graph: CAP

It is particularly important that the United States increases its investment in postsecondary education in the face of rising competition from its international peers, and having government take on the burden of public university debt is a first step. As recently as 1996, the United States had the second highest share of adults who had earned postsecondary education credentials and the highest share of adults with university degrees, in part because there was little or no tuition until the 1970s, when governments began to cut back on their share of state university funding, which was then taken up by rising tuition fees.

More recently, however, America’s level of achievement has fallen behind other nations. In 2012, the most recent year measured, the United States ranked fifth in the percentage of adults who had earned postsecondary education credentials, according to the Center for American Progress. Even more worrisome, the share of young Americans—those between the ages of 25 and 34—with postsecondary credentials has dropped to 12th relative to other nations, while those possessing university degrees fell to 14th.

Why is Hillary so qualified? President Roosevelt had a history of public service, first as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, then New York Governor, before serving as our President from 1932-45. Hillary has had 30 years of service, including as a State Senator, Secretary of State, and First Lady. And such a broad record of service is what it will take to even begin to heal our fractured society.

Harlan Green © 2016

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

The Bully Mentality

Popular Economics Weekly

Why does the USA have such a problem with bullies? Whether in the schools, in politics, or on Internet social media? The result has been teenage suicides, horrendous school shootings by students who felt bullied or belittled, and now a whole political party that opposes anything that smacks of aiding the poorest, seniors, and less educated.

Paul Ryan’s latest budget proposal, is one such example of Republican bullying tactics. It is a repeat of past years’ proposal that would cut $5 trillion from government spending, 69 percent of the cuts in the Ryan budget come from programs that benefit people with low or moderate incomes, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Why pick on the poor?

Economist Paul Krugman can’t understand it either. “…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.

“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.”

The “ugliness” is really a bully mentality. Bullies prey on those weaker than them, and so they have tried every trick in the book to oppose any programs that smack of aiding those most in need. Why? Because it would empower the less fortunate so they are not so easily bullied. The Republican-dominated red states are the best example of the bully mentality.

If Republicans can’t keep their constituents poor and less educated, then they would lose their hold over them, and so their power. Conservatives oppose expanding educational opportunities such as Head Start and pre-school aid because it would encourage rational thinking, and an appreciation of science. Their constituents would then begin to understand global warming, and maybe evolution.

Republicans opposition to expanding voters’ rights; even social security and Medicare; is because Repubs fear being outvoted by those very same immigrants, minorities and seniors that depend on those services to improve their circumstances, and would enhance economic growth, by the way. Republicans only answer is to restrict voting hours and pass draconian voter ID laws in the red states. It is restricting citizens’ voting rights, even though sacrosanct and protected by the constitution.

In fact, the bully mentality requires such ignorance of facts about economic growth as well. The slow recovery from the Great Recession has mainly been because private businesses have been reluctant to hire due to slack demand, and governments have been unable to spend more on public services. Yet Republicans have opposed any form of government stimulus spending, even on badly outmoded infrastructure that will only cost more to repair and replace in the future.

Not all Republicans are bullies, and not all Democrats enlightened progressives, of course. But the bully mentality of House Speaker John Boehner’s “no compromise” tactics, or Senator Mitch McConnell’s filibustering of even the most innocuous Obama Administration appointments have been the reason recovery from the Great Recession hasn’t been stronger.

Fostering a culture of fear and ignorance is not the way to run a political party, or a country. Such tactics that attempt to suppress the rights of those that disagree, as well as the willful denial of scientific and economic facts are a danger to our democracy, not to speak of the US position as a leader of democratic nations. That is the ugliness that has crept into American politics. It is a complete denial of greater opportunity for all but Republicans’ most conservative constituents, and disregard for the most basic human rights.

Harlan Green © 2014

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