Not A Merry Christmas?

 Financial FAQs

“Personal income increased $115.1 billion (0.4 percent at a monthly rate) in July, according to estimates released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Disposable personal income (DPI)—personal income less personal current taxes—increased $125.9 billion (0.5 percent), and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $36.3 billion (0.2 percent).” BEA.gov

 

BEA.gov

We are fast approaching the shopping season and there are growing worries about consumers ability to soldier on the rest of year with the sudden drop (-0.6%)in July retail sales. They seem to be running out of money. And we know what that means, since consumer spending powers most economic activity

The picture of declining consumer incomes in the BEA’s Personal Consumption Expenditures graph is disheartening, to say the least, and could precipitate a recession sooner rather than later. It’s not only because the job market is shrinking, but our working population as well.

The U.S. economy lost -23,000 payroll jobs this July after gaining just +20,000 jobs in July. It’s the picture of a labor market stuck in neutral; most employers are neither hiring nor firing.

Yet the unemployment rate has been stuck at a fairly low 4.2 percent for months. Why wouldn’t employers hire more workers? Because there’s not as much demand for consumer products, which powers most economic growth. And demand is declining, not only because of the soaring inflation—3.7 percent in the PCE report above—but fewer shoppers.

Population growth in the United States has slowed significantly with an increase of only 1.8 million, or 0.5%, between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025, according to the new Vintage 2025 population estimates released today by the U.S. CensusBureau.

And we know why.

“The slowdown in U.S. population growth is largely due to a historic decline in net international migration, which dropped from 2.7 million to 1.3 million in the period from July 2024 through June 2025,” said Christine Hartley, assistant division chief for Estimates and Projections at the Census Bureau.

Low population growth = slow economic growth = fewer jobs, in other words. The decline in “net international migration” is the culprit, to no one’s surprise. Trump is bragging about the tens of thousands of deportations in his single-minded assault on undocumented immigrants; many who have worked long enough in the U.S. to raise children who are citizens now serving in the military.

Those believing that inflation will decline as more companies adopt A.I. software to replace those workers and improve labor productivity will be sadly disappointed. The bond market selloff is the first warning that higher interest rates are here to stay—as long as higher tariffs and ongoing wars raise the risk factors that govern economic activity.

“Government bond yields are hitting multi-decade highs, reflecting anxiety about debt levels, deficits and inflation. The effects will extend to mortgages, business loans and other types of credit,” said the NYTimes at this writing.

Who will buy the products if there are fewer shoppers? That is Silicon Valley’s A.I. miscalculation. Consumers already know this, and their declining personal savings rate to 3 percent (in graph) highlights this fact. They have less to spend, period.

Harlan Green © 2026

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

Will Republicans Ever Learn?

 Financial FAQs

“The stakes are enormous if Republicans succeed in removing most of the estimated 11 million undocumented worker (only half of which are from Mexico and the Latin countries), and cut legal immigration in half, as they have promised to do. Economic growth will plummet, since it is mainly based on growth of the working age population, as well as labor productivity, which has also fallen since 2000.” Huffington Post

PEWResearch

Will Republicans ever learn that immigrants have always been the life blood of our economy?

The above quote is from a Huffington Post blog I wrote in 2017, the last time Trump Republicans tried to deport most or all of the 11 million undocumented immigrants.

Nobel economist Paul Krugman has said in a recent Substack blog that the latest unemployment report showed that since January 2025 the economy is estimated to have added 359,000 jobs, down almost 900,000 from job growth the previous year. This indicates that the job market is very close to complete stagnation.

And that means the whole economy could soon be in stagflation that economists have been so worried about—because inflation is still high despite slowing job growth.

Has anything changed in his second term? Yes, President Trump has doubled down on the deportation raids, which has so decimated the jobs market that it is in danger of destroying economic growth for most Americans as well.

Trump is using the lie that undocumented immigrants take jobs away from native-born Americans in ramping up the DHS/ICE assault against almost any immigrant of color, when in fact immigrants not only create more paying jobs, but more consumers that pay taxes as well.

And Trump knows he is lying. His White Christian nationalist-centered policies are tailored to capture most of the economic growth for his oligarchs who hope the $billions they are investing in AI will require fewer human beings. AI and robots don’t pay taxes or go shopping as do the workers that are being replaced.

Barron’s economist Megan Leonhardt highlighted this fact recently, citing the economic planning firm Implan that calculated reducing the immigration population by one million in 2025 reduced GDP by $103.9 billion and eliminated 741,500 potential jobs as compared to 2024 during President Biden’s last year.

“In January 2025, 53.3 million immigrants lived in the United States – the largest number ever recorded. In the ensuing months, however, more immigrants left the country or were deported than arrived. By June, the country’s foreign-born population had shrunk by more than a million people, marking its first decline since the 1960s,” said PEW.

The long-term historical average one-million immigrants per year entering the U.S. have been needed just to keep economic growth at its long-term annual 2 percent real GDP average. And Trump’s State Department has now stopped processing entry visas entirely from 75 countries.

Although the number of adults in the prime working ages of 25 to 64 – 173.2 million in 2015 – will rise to 183.2 million in 2035, according to Pew Research Center projections, the total growth of 10 million over two decades will be lower than the total in any single decade since the Baby Boomers began pouring into the workforce in the 1960s.

What will happen to them? AI means replacing humans with robots that don’t contribute to our retirement systems as well. A country needs to increase its workforce just to finance the retirement benefits for fast-aging population. It’s a truth Republicans have never learned as they continue to support an autocrat who places little value on human lives or the constitution.

And where is most of the economic damage to date? To the farm belt as well as cities in the blue states. Implans reports California, New York, and Texas are most affected, with California having already lost $13.4 billion in GDP and 86,650 fewer jobs. But job losses are occurring in the red states as well. 

Will Republicans ever learn? Immigrants have always been the new blood entering our workforce that has enabled the American economy to grow and renew itself.

Harlan Green © 2026

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

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

Second Quarter Growth No Big Deal

 Financial FAQs

“Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 3.0 percent in the second quarter of 2025 (April, May, and June), according to the advance estimate released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP decreased 0.5 percent.” BEA.gov

BEA.gov

The big jump in second quarter economic growth wasn’t a surprise. Consumers continued to shop but bought fewer imported goods because Trump's tariff wars were already raising prices. Imports are a subtraction in the GDP equation.

It might be a one time jump because consumers are saving more and buying less these days, as I’ve been saying, while waiting to see how much damage the Trump tax cuts and higher tariffs might wreak on the U.S. economy, especially to those it will harm the most.

The two-month GDP average was a 1.3% growth rate. The U.S. economy expanded at a 2.8% rate in 2024 and 2.9% in 2023 under President Biden, which was in large part because of the New Deal legislation that pumped $billions into economic growth and caused higher inflation.

The Fed then raised their interest rates to bring inflation back down to its present mid-2% range, and Republicans took over the congress. The result was Trump initiated his tariff wars and passage of the big beautiful big tax bill that will increase the federal debt by some $4 trillion.

But because at least some of the additional federal debt must be paid for to preserve the no longer great faith and credit of our economy, Trump has raised tariff rates to 15-20 percent, which means raising taxes on U.S. consumers and businesses.

And as any economist will tell you, taxes slow economic growth, regardless of what Trump and his cabinet cronies say. And our economy is slowing. The so-called final sales of consumers and businesses increased just 1.2 % in Q2, and there is no indication that it might pick up as the tariff agreements (i.e., taxes) are finalized.

Inflation has declined because of less spending. Consumers spending as measured by the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index in the Q2 GDP report increased just 2.1 percent, compared with an increase of 3.7 percent. Excluding food and energy prices, the PCE price index increased 2.5 percent, compared with an increase of 3.5 percent because consumers bought ahead of the price increases due to the April 2 tariff announcements.

What about those Federal Reserve interest rate cuts that Trump wants? Fed Chair Powell said at his latest press conference after the July FOMC meet that its twin mandates of price stability and maximum growth are still in balance, so there’s no reason to lower interest rates at this time.

The unemployment rate remains stuck at 4.1-4.2 percent because the mandates are in balance. Powell said the Fed would act to lower interest rates sooner—i.e., ease credit conditions--if the unemployment rate were to increase substantially.

The Trump administration’s agenda paints a sordid picture in following a very similar trajectory of the GW Bush administration—with its wars on terror (like Trump’s tariff wars), huge tax cuts for the wealthiest and less regulation (like Trump’s big beautiful bill) fueling what became the Great Recession.

Trump’s tariffs won’t help the very people in the red states that elected him but raise their prices. His cuts to social services harm those in red states in the most need. His DOGE cuts are not only endangering air travel, but disaster relief when the worst storms are also happening in mainly red state territories.

So, its not even the blue states that Trump wants most to harm, but his own MAGA supporters that will suffer the most. It’s what bullies do, prey on the weakest and most vulnerable, especially immigrants and minorities that are least able to protect themselves.

Harlan Green © 2025

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

Calkfornia Can't Be Bullied

 Popular Economics Weekly

Governor Gavin Newsom today announced that California has officially overtaken Japan to become the world’s fourth-largest economy, according to newly released data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). April, 2025

LATimes

The Trump administration’s efforts to bully California in the past week by sending in contingents of the California Coast Guard and active-duty Marines to ‘guard’ its ICE agents that are bent on rounding up as many undocumented workers in California as possible, is almost comical.

Would they try the same with Japan or Germany, who have economies that are basically the same size? Of course not, though Trump wants to pick on smaller Canada, and maybe Denmark’s Greenland.

Of the 850,000 farmworkers in California that are providing close to one-quarter of the agricultural produce of America, some 400,000 are seasonal workers (i.e., with permits) or undocumented, which is why President Trump has told ICE workers to stop rounding them up, for fear Americans will no longer have enough fresh (or canned) produce to eat.

It’s a sign of the Trump administration’s tremendous ignorance that their efforts to deport as many of the 11 million undocumented U.S. workers is looking worse than ridiculous, it is enraging the populous of those cities that depend on immigrants to work in the service and hospitality industries, as well as feed them.

If Trump also thinks he can humble California by attacking the University of California system (UC) as he is doing to Harvard, he is also mistaken.

The system's ten campuses presently have a combined student body of 299,407 students, 26,100 faculty members, 192,400 staff members, over 2.5 million living alumni, and $41.6 billion in annual operating revenues.

And as an alumnus, I can attest it teaches or promotes no particular ideology or political view, just the scientific and social science truths that are verified and tested empirically, not by rumor or conspiracy theories.

Trump and the Republican Party have succeeded in bullying the smaller red states they have dominated since the 1970s, making them the poorest states in income (many have no minimum wage), health care, social services and education.

Republican led red states are mostly dependent on the excess tax revenues passed on to them from blue states.

“In 2023, the federal government collected around $4.67 trillion from states and their residents through taxes on individuals and businesses and redistributed about $4.56 trillion back to states and residents through programs like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, and education grants, says USA Facts.

Virginia alone depended on $79 billion in transfer payments in 2023 to balance its budget from states like California and New York, who contributed $78B and $89B in 2023 to the federal kitty.

So why have Republicans gone to all this trouble that will do very little harm to the likes of UC and California’s economy? Their red states can’t do without the income coming from blue states.

Oh, their leaders want more tax cuts, which will continue to increase federal debt. Americans will find out soon enough that’s not how to stay in business.

Harlan Green © 2025

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

Immigrants Make a Difference

 Popular Economics Weekly

“Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 139,000 in May, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment continued to trend up in health care, leisure and hospitality, and social assistance. Federal government continued to lose jobs.” BLS

FREDnonfarmpayrolls

The above FRED graph is the best picture of where the jobs market has been headed over the past two years (May 23-May 25). It’s a slow downward trend that is averaging a monthly gain of 149,000 over the prior 12 months.

But since January 2025 and Donald Trump’s inauguration (last five bars in graph), job growth has averaged just 124,000 per month increases, and Trump’s anti-immigrant policies will continue to harm the job market and economic growth

It's becoming obvious that firms are hiring less because of rising uncertainty caused by the DOGE cuts and Trump’s tariffs. And don’t forget the immigration crackdown that is reducing the number of workers available for those jobs. The Trump administration has trumpeted the ‘removal’ of some 72,000 undocumented immigrants already, and intention to remove more than one million over the next year.

We know what that will do to our workforce. Some 625,000 working adults have dropped out of the adult workforce just in May, which means they stopped even looking for work.

So, it’s difficult to know if the immigration crackdown is causing more to simply stop working as well as the hiring slowdown. We know that immigrants, whether legal or undocumented, have become a major component of our job market with our declining population growth.

According to the Center for Migration Studies, a non-partisan think tank, an estimated 8.3 million unauthorized immigrants contribute to the economy, representing about 5% of all workers. This number has increased since 2019 but is like the 2007 figure. Lawful immigrants make up most of the immigrant workforce at 22.2 million, or 13% of all workers. Many work in construction (1.5 million) and restaurants (1 million), and fewer in Agriculture and farms.

Reducing the number of workers will hurt both our employment picture, as well as future growth, since if the normal one million plus annual influx of immigrants is reduced, it will impact GDP growth as well.

But in wanting so badly to feed red meat to his MAGA followers with the propaganda that immigrants are evil and criminals, employers cannot find the workers they need. There are still more than 7 million job vacancies, according to the Labor Department’s JOLTS report.

This didn’t have to happen, if Trump had allowed the bipartisan immigration bill to pass that Biden had negotiated, which gave a path to citizenship and allowed immigrants to obtain legal work permits.

But the Trump administration isn’t interested in economic growth as much as branding non-European whites as undesirables—even though our Hispanic population, mostly South and Central American, are of white European origin.

It's how autocrats stay in power. President Trump is dividing Americans in artificial ways—whether by economic class, or birth origins—any way he can think up to exacerbate the divisions.

And it will not only shrink the working population, but U.S. economic growth as well.

Harlan Green © 2025

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

White Patriarchy In Decline

 Answering Kennedy’s Call

“Born to a rich father who made him the beneficiary of his own highly lucrative investments, Trump received the equivalent of more than $500 million today via means that required no business expertise whatsoever.”

Random House

It may now seem hard to wrap our heads around what the future might be, but Donald Trump’s own history and as leader of the white Patriarchy’s attempts to hold onto power, is actually proof of its imminent decline

Those that support Patriarchic policies—white supremacists in the main—have picked Donald Trump, a Lucky Loser as described in Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig’s book, to weaken the federal government and pass more tax cuts for the wealthiest to consolidate their power. This is Donald Trump’s second attempt as President who has never really succeeded in anything he has done, if one looks behind the curtain.

Trump’s history includes three marriages, many adulteries, sexual assaults, and failed businesses well documented in Lucky Loser that has been mostly hidden from public view by his many bankruptcies (6) and lawsuits (4,000).

This president, who is attempting to strip the federal government of anything that protects Americans to protect himself, in a vain attempt to keep the Patriarchy in power a bit longer, found unqualified loyalists to fill most of his administration, such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Health and Human Services Secretary JFK, Jr., and FBI Director Kash Patel (who wants to weaken the FBI at a time of growing terrorist threats).

Women, above all, (but other minorities as well), have filled the gap of incompetence left by relying on the patriarchy to rule in our modern society and economy. The Patriarchy’s cult of white male superiority hasn’t benefited most Americans since at least the 1980s by increasing the federal debt to an unsustainable level as well as limiting workers’ right to collective bargain.

Hanna Rosin's The End of Men? perhaps said it best for the female minority. Fortune Magazine’s review of it wrote: “Men are losing their grip, patriarchy is crumbling and we are reaching “the end of 200,000 years of human history and the beginning of a new era” in which women — and womanly skills and traits — are on the rise.”

That is why Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs were developed to bring the best and the brightest women and minorities forward to fill the competence void—whether blacks, women, or Asians—that had been held back from competing fairly until then.

Vice President Vance evenIn  admitted in his semi-autobiography, Hillbilly Elegy, that at least 20 percent of the young white men he knew growing up in Appalachia (W. Virginia, Ohio) were lazy and not interested in working.

But the rationale Trump/Musk is using to eliminate DEI policies from government and the private sector is a huge lie. It’s policies that have actually improved the productivity and profits of U.S. companies.

McKinsey & Company in the fourth edition of Diversity Matters, drawing on the largest dataset yet—spanning 1,265 companies, 23 countries, and six global regions, plus multiple company interviews reported that DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) policies can positively impact productivity and profits in the workplace “by fostering a more inclusive environment that leads to better decision-making, increased innovation, and improved employee morale, thereby attracting top talent and boosting overall performance.”

“Companies in the top quartile for both gender and ethnic diversity in executive teams are on average 9 percent more likely to outperform their peers. (This gap has closed slightly since our previous report.) Meanwhile, those in the bottom quartile for both are 66 percent less likely to outperform financially on average, up from 27 percent in 2020, indicating that lack of diversity may be getting more expensive”.

The attempt to paste non-whites and immigrants as somehow inferior to native-born Americans is another huge lie.

Scientific studies have shown there is no inherent difference in the intelligence or abilities of different races and ethnicities, only from environmental differences—i.e., where they were raised, which refutes the central reason that Trump claims to want to eliminate DEI programs from the government—better efficiency?

Why would there be such differences, as anthropologists have proven we all came from the same Homo Sapiens stock in Africa that migrated to succeed Neanderthals approximately 70,000 years ago.

Looking at IQ studies also refutes the falsity that women and minorities have less inherent abilities. Wikipedia gives a summary of the IQ research.

A 1995 report from the American Psychological Association responded to the controversy, finding no conclusive explanation for the observed differences between average IQ scores of racial groups. More recent work by James Flynn, William Dickens and Richard Nisbett has highlighted the narrowing gap between racial groups in IQ test performance, along with other corroborating evidence that environmental rather than genetic factors are the cause of these differences.

Flynn also notes that "Our ancestors in 1900 were not mentally retarded. Their intelligence was anchored in everyday reality. We differ from them in that we can use abstractions and logic and the hypothetical to attack the formal problems that arise when science liberates thought from concrete situations. Since 1950, we have become more ingenious in going beyond previously learned rules to solve problems on the spot."

The knowledge imbedded in our constitution and laws that we are all inherently equal, is our hope for a future that will take us out of the class warfare in which racists and nationalists want to keep American citizens encased—the suspicion and paranoia of the ‘other’ that the Patriarchy promotes to keep it in power.

We must 'fight like hell’ to expose their lies and incompetence so that a government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Abraham Lincoln

Harlan Green © 2025

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

Are Consumers In Danger?

 The Mortgage Corner

Total consumer credit rose $40.8 billion in December, after a $5.4 billion decline in the prior month, the Federal Reserve said last Friday. In percentage terms, it is the biggest gain since June 2022.

FREDconsumercredit

Will consumers lose their mojo? They shopped until they dropped during the holidays, which is why retail sales were up 3.9 percent in December as well. To do this consumers were spending more than they were earning. The question now is when will consumers run out of savings, and stop shopping? That will in fact determine economic growth in the New Year.

Revolving credit, typically credit-card debt, made up most of the increase, rising at a 20.2% annual rate. That follows a 12.1% drop in the prior month. Nonrevolving credit, mainly auto and student loans, rose at a 5.8% rate after a 2.7% rise in the prior month.

That’s the fine line the Fed’s Chair Powell is attempting to walk at their semi-annual congressional update this week. He didn’t say outright that the tariffs that President Trump has announced will cause inflation to spike so they can’t drop interest rates any lower, in answering questions.

"We are in a pretty good place," Powell told the Senate committee - citing tariffs, immigration, fiscal and regulatory policy as the key variables the Fed will "try to make sense of".

Therefore we won’t actually know the future until we see that happens when the new tariffs on imports kick in and those countries retaliate with their own tariffs on U.S. exports.

So January will be another story as consumers must begin to spend less to replenish their savings. A sign of their hurt is that the delinquency rate has risen, with some 3.5% of card balances past due by 30 or more days and 1.8% of accounts delinquent. Both figures are more than double the post-pandemic lows recorded in 2021, said Bloomberg.

Another hint on future consumer behavior is how small businesses are feeling. The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index fell by 2.3 points in January to 102.8. This is the third consecutive month above the 51-year average of 98. The Uncertainty Index rose 14 points to 100 – the third highest recorded reading – after two months of decline.

“Overall, small business owners remain optimistic regarding future business conditions, but uncertainty is on the rise,” said NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg. “Hiring challenges continue to frustrate Main Street owners as they struggle to find qualified workers to fill their many open positions. Meanwhile, fewer plan capital investments as they prepare for the months ahead.”

Speaking of hiring challenges, Goldman Sachs put out a graph that shows just how important ‘unauthorized’ workers are to the U.S. economy. They make up approximately half of the jobs native-born Americans won’t take.

GoldmanSachs/MarketWatch

“The key risk is probably not a scenario in which annual deportations reach into the millions, but one where an immigration crackdown creates a climate where employers are afraid to employ unauthorized immigrants or unauthorized immigrants are afraid to go to work, potentially leading many to stay out of the workforce or even to leave the U.S. on their own,” said Goldman Sachs of their survey.

And we have just learned that inflation may be on the rise again, with the retail Consumer Price Index above 3 percent. The financial markets are reacting because of the news. It isn’t a good time to be imposing tariffs, in other words.

Harlan Green © 2025

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

 Answering Kennedy’s Call

Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris made a promise at this year’s Democratic Convention. She would create programs that give every American the opportunity to better themselves.

“I see an America where we hold fast to the fearless belief that built our nation and inspired the world. That here, in this country, anything is possible. That nothing is out of reach. An America where we care for one another, look out for one another and recognize that we have so much more in common than what separates us. That none of us — none of us has to fail for all of us to succeed.”

Equal opportunity hasn’t been available to many Americans, even though it is part of the American Dream—America is the land of opportunity that is taught in schools and heard by immigrants.

Why? Because it is also part of a larger truism that not all Americans have accepted: Equality Is Good for Everyone. It should be self-evident, a statement of common sense. The more equality of opportunity among us, the more we can better ourselves, become more productive citizens, which in turn increases our national wealth (and lowers budget deficits).

It was certainly the dream of immigrants, such as my mother, a British citizen born in Jamaica.

But there are times, such as today, when many Americans don’t believe it is possible, which is why we are living in another Gilded Age with the worst income inequality of the developed world. It is on a par with developing countries in Africa and has been the major cause of recessions, including the Great Recession.

Many have bought the counter narrative by those that don’t like equality, the privileged few at the top of the income ladder who want us to believe they are the most qualified to create greater wealth for the rest of us.

This Gilded Age was formed from supply-side, trickle-down economic policies, because enough Americans believed it, believed government was the problem and cutting taxes the solution, believed that equality is not good for everyone because we live in a zero-sum world with limited resources. What is given to one must be taken from another.

The conservative position espoused by 1970s Economist Arthur Okun, for instance, was that greater equality meant less market efficiencies to produce and so fewer incentives for greater wealth, since leveling the playing field meant leveling out the opportunity for large profits.

But that has never been the case. There has always been copious evidence that the opposite is true; that overly large profits have led to diminished household wealth.

One can measure inequality with such as the CIA’s World Factbook that ranks inequality among nations. Those with the greatest equality also have less violence, greater freedoms, greater health, and guaranteed vacations!

Richard Wilkinson’s TEDx lecture and book with Kate Pickett, “The Spirit Level” is one of the best studies of the dire effects of income inequality on the quality of life. The most important factor, and a sign of dire consequences when inequality has approached the level of the Great Depression, are the US violent crime and incarceration rates, which Wilkinson discusses at length. The U.S. is by far the most violent country in the world—worse than any other developed country with the highest incarceration rates.

Efforts to reverse such inequality have begun on the local levels, even if congressional conservatives have blocked raising the miniscule minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

I wrote in 2011 that the state of Massachusetts was the first to raise their minimum wage to $10 per hour, California is raising it to $8.25 over 2 years, with New Jersey and other states to follow. It was the beginning of a return to greater equality that has continued.

And there is an increasing awareness of the income disparities, such as the fact that corporate CEOs now earn more than 300 times the income of their employees, and certain hedge fund managers have reported an annual income of $1 billion.

The Center for American Progress launched the Washington Center For Equitable Growth, which aims to deepen the economic critique of inequality. It was set up by Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, among others, who is known with his partner Thomas Piketty as the first economists to historically research the history of income distribution over the past 100 years.

As the mission statement of the Center says:
"New research suggests that growing inequality in the United States may have broad social and economic effects -- by reducing stable demand for goods and services, dampening entrepreneurialism, undermining the inclusiveness and responsiveness of political and economic institutions, limiting access to education, and stunting individual development. Yet our understanding of how these mechanisms interact with the broader economy is limited."

Kamala Harris said as much in her acceptance speech: “opportunity is not available to everyone. That’s why we will create what I call an opportunity economy, an opportunity economy where everyone has the chance to compete and a chance to succeed.”

A majority of Americans and a majority of Electoral College votes must agree with her for this to happen in November.

Harlan Green © 2024

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