The Too Dumb to Fail Party

 Financial FAQs

“In November 2021, (President Biden) signed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill. Then, in August 2022, he signed the CHIPS bill, which invests $280 billion in semiconductor manufacturing. Days later, he signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which invests $370 billion in clean energy and related infrastructure, along with provisions designed to reduce health care costs.” Washington Monthly

perseusbooks.com

How sad it is that the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation that abolished slavery, has become the party of a wannabe dictator Too Dumb to Fail in the words of author and journalist Matt Lewis, that imprisons immigrants of the wrong race and color.

It is a party that has enabled Donald Trump to rely on mostly illegal executive orders, including the tariffs, instead of working with congress as did President Biden to pass his very successful ‘New, New Deal’ legislation that is modernizing the American economy for many years to come.

Trump’s inability to negotiate with congress had as much to do with the Republican Party that had already become the party of the wealthy who owned or stewarded America’s biggest businesses.

“In the run-up to the 2016 election, Trump listed his top 10 legislative priorities as part of his “Contract with the American Voter”, continued the Washington Monthly, which included repeal of the Affordable Care Act, infrastructure investment, harsher prison sentences for immigration violations, and full funding of a border wall to be reimbursed by Mexico. None of that reached his desk.”

That is because the Republican Party learned early they could only hold power if they succeeded in dumbing down their electorate; even before Ronald Reagan’s ‘trickle-down” economic schemes in 1980 that cut the taxes of the wealthiest and social benefits for the rest of Americans to pay for the budget deficits incurred by his tax cuts.

Journalist Matt Lewis said it in his 2016 best-seller, Too Dumb to Fail: “Somewhere between Ronald Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing” speech in support of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and the most recent government shutdown, the conservative movement became neither conservative nor a movement. Hijacked by the divisive and the dumb, it now finds itself hostage to emotions and irrational thinking.

“It became more personal and less principled — more flippant and less thoughtful. It became mean. It became lazy. It became its own worst enemy. Where once the movement drew strength from its desire to win the philosophical argument over its adversaries, it now wears its lost causes as badges of honor — expected, like Coriolanus, to show these battle scars as a means of vote mongering.”

I said in a 2015 Huffington Post blog that the result of one political party’s choice to replace scientific facts with conspiracy theories had begun to permeate the American educational system as well.

According to the National Research Council, only 28 percent of high school science teachers consistently follow the National Research Council guidelines on teaching evolution, and 13 percent of those teachers explicitly advocate creationism or “intelligent design,” said Psychology Today in a very damning 2014 article entitled, Anti-Intellectualism and the Dumbing Down of America:

“After leading the world for decades in 25-34 year olds with university degrees, the U.S. is now in 12th place,” said Psychology Today. “The World Economic Forum ranked the U.S. at 52nd among 139 nations in the quality of its university math and science instruction in 2010. Nearly 50 percent of all graduate students in the sciences in the U.S. are foreigners, most of whom are returning to their home countries.”

Even in 2015 Republican candidates were echoing the Republican platform that advocated the deportation of all illegal aliens, would abolish or cripple whole government agencies (including the Environmental Protection Agency and CDC), shut down the federal government over Planned Parenthood funding, and maintain that a fertilized egg is a viable human being that can’t be aborted.

Nothing has changed, in other words, except Republicans elected Donald Trump, a man who would be a king, who has suffered from what psychologists and psychiatrists have called a Narcissistic Personality Disorder his whole life, whose father had given him more than $400 million over the years to support his various business ventures, according to the NYTimes.

The results of his father’s wealth are well documented in the book titled, “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success,” written by NYTimes reporters Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner. Such largesse resulted in a string of business failures and seven bankruptcies.

Now Donald Trump and the Republican Party that supports him have taken the dumbing down of Americans to a whole new level by firing the best and brightest public officials and cutting their research budgets that protect Americans from future pestilences and environmental disasters.

History says the truth will out, eventually. A man and party that is too dumb to fail, that can only rule with lies and deception, must eventually fail. But when, and at what cost to Americans’ health and safety?

Harlan Green © 2025

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

No Art of the Trade Deal

 Financial FAQs

“The point is that Trump doesn’t feel bound by trade deals America has made in the past. Why should anyone expect him to honor any new deals he makes, or claims to make, now?

Huffington Post

“Obviously this behavior isn’t unique to tariffs. Many domestic institutions, from law firms to universities, have discovered that attempting to appease Trump buys you at best a few weeks’ respite before he comes back for more.” Paul Krugman

Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman won his Nobel Prize for his research in International Trade, so his remarks on Donald Trump’s behavior in negotiating trade deals is a good way to understand what Donald Trump has done his whole life—bullied people and institutions—because that’s all he knows how to do.

And Krugman fears it will mean Trump will continue his tariff wars, regardless of the outcomes. This certainly means some level of stagflation; higher inflation with slower economic growth, according to most economists and even Wall Streeters. Maybe not on the level of the 1970s stagflation induced by the OPEC Arab Oil Embargo.

It’s Trump’s paranoid personality if you can call it that. It’s the reason he is the con man who has lied and obfuscated his whole life and could only negotiate with lawsuits. He doesn’t really know how to negotiate so that both parties win, and therefore it is a stable relationship between parties. He only wants to overpower a perceived enemy, much like Putin or Xi, real dictators who torture and kill and their own people to maintain power.

I have written about Trump’s poor negotiating skills in past Huffington Post articles and elsewhere. Author Tony Schwarz was the first to seriously write about Trump in Trump: The Art of the Deal, his biography that created the myth that Trump was a skilled wheeler-dealer.

But it wasn’t real, Schwartz said later to New Yorker Magazine’s Jane Mayer in a famous 2016 interview.

“I put lipstick on a pig,” he said. “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.” He went on, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”

The just announced reciprocal tariffs on Japan and Korea area a good example, says Krugman. President Trump sent out tariff letters to U.S. trading partners on Monday as he had promised, starting with Japan and South Korea before targeting Malaysia, Indonesia and other countries.

He has labeled them “reciprocal” tariffs because of his perceived unfairness of their tariff policies, but Japan and South Korea charge little or no tariffs on U.S. imports because of long standing agreements, says Krugman, so have little to negotiate.

“How were the South Koreans supposed to end unfair trade practices that exist only in Trump’s imagination?” says Krugman?

Then why is Trump proposing tariffs on them anyway?

“The only possible out here would be a series of fake deals, in which countries pretend to have offered significant concessions and Trump claims to have won big victories. Some people still think that will happen — the new tariffs aren’t supposed to take effect until Aug. 1. But the tone of those letters and Trump’s clear obsession with tariffs make me doubt that he’ll call the tariffs off, in part because of my last observation: Attempts to mollify Trump always end up emboldening him to demand more.”

Then why does Trump do it and cause what will be more huge financial market dips with the loss of more $trillions in equities, many trade disruptions, and alienation of our allies?

Being ‘reciprocal’ has nothing to do with it. Trump will charge at least a 10 percent tariff on the imports from all countries because he needs the import taxes to pay down the huge budget deficit that’s been generated by his Big Beautiful Bill that Congress has just passed.

Therefore his real objective, rather than fairness, is to extract as many concessions as possible from every other country in the world that is dependent on imports to the U.S, regardless of the economic consequences.

Isn’t that what he really wants, to pay for more tax cuts for Trump and the Oligarchs, which will mean the wholesale disruption of world trade, regardless of the possible destruction of our own economy burdened with an unsustainable national debt?

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan on Twitter: https://twittter.com/HarlanGreen

Donald Trump Is No Populist

 Answering Kennedy’s Call

An NBC News poll last April showed that Trump had a 26-point lead among voters who don’t follow political news. In contrast, voters who got their political news from newspapers, the most comprehensive form of daily news, supported Joe Biden by a vast margin, 70 percent to 21 percent. David French NYTimes

Mother Jones

It’s becoming clear what Donald Trump and Elon Musk have in common, when Musk has said he loves Trump 'As Much as A Straight Man Loves Another Man' on X. It is their unbridled greed that harms anyone on their way to greater fortunes.

Neither Trump nor Musk are populists. It is clear we are seeing two apex predators at work as the 2^nd Gilded Age is peaking. They are doing what the Oligarchs who support Trump have always done, preyed on the weakest and most ignorant.

That is why corporate profits are at a post-WWII high, 11.8 percent of GDP, when Trump Republicans want even more tax cuts with the federal budget now 120 percent of GDP. And people without college degrees die about eight years sooner than those with four-year degrees, according to NYTimes David Brooks.

This is why women with only a high school degree or less are five times as likely to have children out of wedlock or women with a college degree. And by the sixth grade, children of poor families are performing at four grade levels lower than the children of affluent families.

These sad statistics cited by David Brooks in a recent NYTimes op-ed are the result of years of tax cuts without paying for them by Republican administrations that has made the red states they govern the poorest states. and resulted in the record federal debt we now have.

Worsening the harm to ordinary Americans, Trump and Musk want to root out DEI personnel and programs that promote greater opportunity and replace them with even less competent personnel, such as Pete Hegseth, JFK, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.

In just Donald Trump’s first week in office, it’s becoming obvious that the lies he promotes will be no different than during his first term as president. He is counting on the American electorate who voted for him to not believe what they are seeing, as I said recently—a worsening climate, worsening inflation, less healthcare services, military preparedness, and public education.

These disparities exist mostly in the red states, to no one’s surprise, where essential public services are less available. There is an enormous poverty gap between the red and blue states, and Republican administrations have done nothing to bridge it.

“Some of the chasms are sociological. People with only high school degrees or less are much more likely to say they have no close friends. They are more likely to live in towns where social capital is collapsing and the young are fleeing.”

Why is it so many Americans don’t believe what they see? This is largely due to where they live—the red states.

Thom Hartman of the Hartman Report, a NYTimes best-selling author, says it’s because Republicans worship cheap labor — and having a steady and reliable supply of cheap labor requires widespread poverty.

It is what Trump’s electorate voted for, while:

— Blue states account for about 71 percent of America’s GDP, whereas Red states only produce 29 percent of our income and wealth.
— The median family income in Blue states is $74,243. In Red states it’s $63,553. Individual states highlight the disparity: New Jersey’s median income is $89,703, while Mississippi’s is $49,111.
— Counties that voted for Biden in 2020 are more diverse, being 35 percent nonwhite compared to 16 percent nonwhite populations in counties that voted for Trump.
— Counties that voted for Biden in 2020 are better educated, with 36 percent of their population having some college education compared to Trump’s counties at 25 percent.
— Residents of Blue states live 2.2 years longer, on average, than residents of Red states. Hartman lists many more disparities on his website.

Why don’t Trump believers follow political news; news readily available in most mass media? It is why red state economies have foundered, while Trump wants to govern as he did his real estate empire; with family and loyal friends, no checks and balances; which has largely been a failure.

It is why the 2^nd Gilded Age will end when Americans—particularly his populist supporters—realize this bromance of two ‘straight’ men will make all of US less safe, healthy, and wealthy.

Harlan Green © 2025

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

Inflation Is Back?

 Popular Economics Weekly

“Kentuckians can’t afford the high cost of Trump’s tariffs,” which could cost the average Kentucky resident $1,200 a year. “[P]reserving the long-term prosperity of American industry and workers requires working with our allies, not against them.” Senator Mitch McConnell

FREDconsumerpriceindex

Senator Mitch McConnell’s op-ed in the Louisville Courier Journal (thanks to Heather Cox Richardson) tells us why the former head of the Republican Senate voted against Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary and Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence. He considers their history of incompetence a threat to our national security.

And it looks like that will happen, if President Trump and his Oligarchs get their way with tariffs. But signs of higher inflation are beginning to appear in the New Year that may hinder their implementation of higher tariffs.

Senator McConnell had been the Democrat’s biggest thorn until now, including stonewalling Presidents Obama’s pick of Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court, but of late has been more concerned with the damage that President Trump may do to national security.

Most of the tariffs Trump has announced are targeting our closest allies, thereby weakening them economically. Our closest allies are also our largest trading partners, so they have the low-hanging fruit that Trump first wants to pick by collecting taxes on their exports.

This, of course, increases his wealth and that of his supporters, almost all billionaires in their own right. But a budget battle is looming in March over annual expenditures and the debt ceiling that must be raised to pay for the tax cuts they want, and little room to maneuver with Republicans’ thin House majority.

This also endangers just how Republicans have increased their wealth exponentially since the 1980s while chiseling away at the benefits (such as Medicaid) that increase the wellbeing of the less wealthy—many of whom live in the red states they control.

It is unfortunate that President Trump’s wave of tariff announcements have occurred at the same time as inflation is beginning to rise again. This is incredibly bad timing when he said that he would bring down inflation on ‘Day 1’ of his presidency.

For instance, the retail Consumer Price Index for prices that directly affect consumers is back up to 3 percent y/y after hitting its low point of 2.4 percent last September. The rise in prices was mostly due to soaring food prices (eggs/bird flu) and energy prices (gas and oil)—probably because of the very cold winter.

McConnell’s main worry seemed to be how the tariffs would weaken relationships with our closest allies that help to protect us from the likes of Putin’s Russia or China’s Xi. Trump is using tariffs as a blunt weapon to bring down the budget deficit, while disregarding national security concerns that tariffs are supposed to enhance, which should be to increase the sourcing of strategic raw materials, such as steel and aluminum.

But we don’t really have a problem with aluminum and steel sourcing because our current alliances already supply what we need. That’s why we know Trump’s real reason is not to enhance national security, but to enhance his own financial security enriching himself and the billionaire class by taxing more imports to bridge the huge budget deficit gap.

So how in fact can we reduce the current inflation surge? We must reduce the demand side of the equation, which the Fed is helping to do by keeping short term interest rates slightly higher (4.25% to 4.50%) than current inflation. It makes credit more expensive for investments as well as consumer spending.

Reducing government investments will also reduce demand, because it flows into the private sector where it’s spent by consumers and businesses. But the Oligarchs want only to reduce the size of government expenditures that don’t directly benefit them, such as healthcare, environmental protection, and consumer protection by reducing regulations they don’t like that also reduce their profit margins.

Why otherwise fire so many Inspector Generals who monitor financial misbehavior? Or, why fire so many FBI agents who protect our national security, which is a sign they care little about our national security.

The problem is how to make government more efficient, but that also benefits the less wealthy? Everyone agrees there’s a lot of waste, but also necessary public investments that improve infrastructure, protect the climate, and national Research and Development that the private sector won’t do.

But Oligarchs want only to cut the benefits of everyone else.

Harlan Green © 2025

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

The Tariff Wars--Part II

 Financial FAQs

“Trump has called “tariff” the fourth most beautiful word in the dictionary behind “God”, “love” and “religion.” CNN

FREDdebt/GDP

On Saturday, President Trump, just 11 days into his second term, said he will impose a 25 percent tariff on Canadian and Mexican imports, and 10 percent on Chinese imports.

He has said it will raise revenue to correct the large trade imbalances with those countries, as well as induce Mexico and Canada to halt the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., and the flow of illegal immigration.

But immigration flows are already down to levels before even the Obama administration, while Mexico and Canada have already said they will work with Trump to stem the flow of illegal drugs.

So why is he doing what will badly harm the U.S. economy and that of our two best neighbors and trading partners? His real motivation is pure greed. He and his oligarch friends must decrease the massive budget deficit that has mushroomed to 121 percent of Gross Domestic Product (see graph), so that he can prolong the tax cuts that have transferred so much wealth from working adults to the wealthiest supporters and that has added $5 trillion to the national debt.

He must cut the huge budget deficit that has resulted because it is alarming bond investors and budget hawks.

Hedge fund manager Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, once the world’s largest hedge fund, has been sounding the alarm mostly recently in a Barron’s Magazine interview, in which he said our current budget deficit could give the world a “financial heart attack.”

“Think of the credit flow like the blood flow that carries nutrients through the system to the body. Credit creates debt that builds up like plaque in those arteries, and like plaque, it grows and crowds out the nutrients because debt service crowds out other spending,” , said Dalio

“When does the heart attack come? When the constriction is enough that it squeezes out other spending, which in increasingly happening, or when investors see that happening, which leads them to sell bonds,” said Dalio.

Tariffs had become Trump’s way of paying down the deficit by taxing imports. He has said collecting what he believes will be “billions” in taxes from the tariffs on imports will help pay down the huge budget deficit that he helped to generate from the 2017 tax cut bill (Tax Cuts and Jobs Act) in his first term.

But that tax cut was just the latest by Republican administrations that have caused the massive national debt, which is expressed as a ratio of debt-to-gdp in the above FRED graph dating from 1980, when Republicans first began increasing the budget deficit.

It has been Republicans’ huge tax cuts since President Reagan in 1980 that have created the largest national debt since World War Two, and the trickle-down economy ever since. And renewing Trump’s 2007 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act when it expires this year could add another $5 trillion to the budget deficit, according to non-partisan analysts.

So who will be hurt most by the tariffs? Workers in all countries at a time when inflation is still too high, and preventing the Fed from making fewer rate cuts this year due to higher inflation.

The NAFTA trade agree between Mexico and Canada has made North America the largest trade-free zone outside of the Eurozone, enabling each country to produce what it does best, such as autos where many auto parts are manufactured more cheaply and shipped into the U.S. where they are assembled.

Trump has repeatedly (and incorrectly) said that “the tariff sheriff” former President William McKinley, ushered in an era of American prosperity at the end of the 19^th century by going all-in in tariffs, said CNN.

No, it was the result of the industries created in the first Gilded Age by the Robber Barons of that era—the oil, railroad, and banking magnates of that era. And Trump, a convicted felon, believes he can be another robber baron in this Gilded Age.

Harlan Green © 2025

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

Trump, the Lucky Loser

 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

In just Donald Trump’s first week in office, it’s becoming obvious that the illusions he lives under will be no different than during his first term as president. He is counting on the American electorate to not believe what they are seeing.

For instance:

Climate change—"drill baby drill” for more fossil fuels when we are experiencing the worst climate disasters in history due to global warming—e.g., horrific wildfires, tornadoes and hurricanes.

Healthcare—Leaving WHOrg that monitors worldwide pandemics, and censoring the CDC and other government healthcare watchdogs’ research while releasing their results only after they have been vetted by his political appointees.

Military preparedness—now allowing military service members not to be vaccinated for COVID-19 and reinstating service members with full pay who were discharged for refusing vaccines.

Immigration—Saying he will deport millions of undocumented immigrants, when it will reduce badly needed workers in low-paying jobs that American citizens aren’t taking.

Tariffs—Asserting he would raise tariffs as high as 50 percent on nations with huge trade imbalances viz the U.S., when economists are saying it will be inflationary, and in Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman’s words, “make us poorer.”

Public education—Wants to abolish Department of Education that supports the 80 percent of students in public schools.

Tax cuts—Just extending his first term tax cut beyond 2025 when it is scheduled to expire and could add as much as $5trillion to the already bloated federal budget deficit, which could cause investors to lose faith in the US Dollar.

President Trump’s real intentions are already becoming clear in his second presidential term in office. He and his Oligarchs want to steal the US Government blind, as I said last week, by keeping Americans and the media as blind as possible to what he intends.

Why does Trump continue policies that will only harm more Americans while enriching himself and his oligarch supporters?

This was highlighted in Pulitzer Prize-winners Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig’s just released book, Lucky Loser that raises a bigger question in a Washington Post review by Bethany McLean about the ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ ethos of modern America. In a world that conflates the ‘trappings of wealth with expertise and ability,’ where ‘fame, detached from any other marketable talent or skill,’ is ‘a highly compensated vocation,’ does it even matter if you never actually make it?”

The outright distrust of truth is a propaganda tool used by autocrats that public media has normalized. This probably tells us best why he was able to take over the Republican Party that has drifted so far from conservative values and was once the environmental party when Republican President Nixon signed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency into law in 1970.

So 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.

He continues to throw bombs at the public media by announcing he will seek retribution from those prosecutors that sought his indictment for the various crimes he committed during his first term, such as January 6, withholding Top Secret documents at Mar-a-Lago and elsewhere, while hoping to erase the Grand Jury indictments in some way.

And he will eventually have to settle the $500 million in awards won by women he defamed. So it’s no wonder that he will use his immense power that is meant to protect U.S. citizens to protect himself instead, at their expense?

Harlan Green © 2025

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

Americans Still Fully Employed!

 Popular Economics Weekly

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 256,000 in December, and the unemployment rate changed little at 4.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment trended up in health care, government, and social assistance. Retail trade added jobs in December, following a job loss in November.

FREDunemployment

It was a tremendous employment report. Then why did stock and bond values tank on Friday? December’s unemployment report was certainly good for workers. Employment is maxed out, with employers unable to hire new workers other than replacements for those retiring or changing jobs. The Labor Department’s JOLTS report showed that employers reported 8.1 million open job positions in December.

The strong employment report has reignited fears that the Fed will halt their rates reductions because of inflation fears. Almost everyone is currently predicting strong fourth quarter economic growth and continued full employment that has prevailed since January 2022.

The inflation ‘culprit’ (f you want to call it that) is strong government spending for all the construction and climate change projects being funded from the various Bidenomics’ bills.

In fact, it is Bidonomics, the $5 trillion plus investments in the US economy over this decade, that is keeping Americans fully employed. And it is boosting employee wages, as well, which is why inflation is proving so difficult to tame.

We are joined in the age-old battle of workers vs. owners, employees vs. employers, over how to divide our national wealth. Wall Street investors want lower inflation because it doesn’t dilute their wealth, while workers want full employment because it increases their wages.

So who is really complaining about our fully employed economy? Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest Oligarch, for one. It is those that don’t like any inflation because it dilutes the value of their assets. Therefore the so-called efficiency experts led by Elon Musk want to shrink government spending without admitting it is the only thing keeping Americans fully employed.

Renown economist Mohamed El-Erian recently stated on CNBC’s After the Bell that the U.S. economy’s spectacular growth is the only thing keeping the world’s economies afloat, so why should we worry too much about higher inflation at this stage?

Well, it is triggering consumer worries about rising prices and has provided the propaganda tools that re-elected the party of oligarchs wanting to slash government programs that benefit wage earners most.

Expectations in the University of Michigan sentiment survey for inflation over the next year jumped to 3.3% in January from 2.8% in the prior month. It is the highest rate since May. Expectations for inflation over the next five years surged to 3.3% this month from 3% in December. That’s the highest since June 2008.

But consumers know how to adapt, especially with wages that are keeping ahead of inflation. They tend to look for more bargains when they see rising prices. So, shouldn’t our government main job be to keep workers fully employed and healthy rather than benefiting Elon Musk’s efficiency experts and Wall Street financiers?

Harlan Green © 2025

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

What's Next, Republicans?

 Financial FAQs

“What if conservatives succeeded in repealing Obamacare? “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.”

I wrote a Huffington Post piece in July 2017 during President Trump’s first term that could predict what we might look forward to with Republicans, and Donald Trump’s healthcare policy in his second go-around as president.

Huffington Post

The result for working Americans of Republicans’ repeated attempts to repeal Obama that I wrote about then is shown in the above graph. It compares the soaring death rates of 45-54 white American males with other developed countries (red USW line). Obamacare is the only American universal healthcare plan that covers workers with pre-existing conditions if no employer healthcare, and yet Republicans can be expected to again attempt to replace it with a “concept” in Trump’s words.

Americans had just avoided another health care disaster in voting down the Senate’s ‘skinny’ Obamacare Repeal and Replace bill in 2017. Even though maintaining most of the taxes to pay for the Medicaid portion, it would have made insurance coverage prohibitively expensive for those older and sicker users with the removal of the private and employer mandate requirements that would cause younger and healthier people to leave the insurance markets.

This is just the latest precipice that’s been avoided. Americans already have the worst health outcomes in the developed world, precisely because America is the only developed country—in fact, even of undeveloped countries—that doesn’t have universal coverage.

The result is one of the highest birth death rates, as well as diabetes, heart and other infectious disease rates—which are diseases usually associated with poorer, undeveloped countries.

The last time Republicans swept the presidential election in 2017, it was the very white, male Tea Party reacting to our first Black President. But they didn’t replace it with something new. They went back to their base of wealthy Oligarchs formed during the Reagan era, still fighting labor unions and resisting more social programs to help the less fortunate, as Trump’s MAGA nation has promised to do.

Trump’s electorate has been good at wanting to tear down the old institutions, but not good at replacing them with a newer, better system. And if Elon Musk becomes the efficiency czar in Trump’s new administration, and he continues to brag he can cut $2 trillion in waste from the federal budget, we know social programs and maybe much more will suffer in the name of reducing the national debt.

There is another, better way to replace what hasn’t worked for working Americans; but that must be based on science and new technologies that can come from our educated elite (rather than our political and wealthy elite).

If Republicans want to be part of that future, they can’t follow a con artist who doesn’t believe in the future, only the past.

Harlan Green © 2024

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

The Tariff Bomb

 Financial FAQs

Getty

Now that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is doing all he can to elect Donald Trump the next American President with his $Billions; because there are too many regulations (read environmental), which means he might never otherwise get to Mars; it’s time to ask what a Trumpian economy would look like if Elon succeeds in his quest.

It would be a big win for wealthy oligarchs such as Musk.

Trump’s biggest lie is that a 20 percent tariff on almost all imports is a tax paid by the exporter, not American users of those imports. Common sense tells us that we can only tax foreign products after they arrive on our soil, not in the country of origin.

Any tax on imports arriving in the U.S. is therefore an American tax, so that the product’s final price charged to American consumers includes the import tax added to whatever the exporter is charging for said product, a price increase.

The results would do horrendous damage to our economy just out of the worst pandemic in 100 years that killed one million Americans. In fact, it would precipitate another recession because past history has shown Americans the damage wrought by high inflation on the working classes that pay taxes on a larger proportion of their income, than the one percent of earners and corporations.

A recent report by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a serious non-partisan think tank, asserted that the labor shortages and higher tariffs on imports Trump proposes would return inflation to pandemic levels of 6 to 9 percent, not to mention the damage to employment and the USDollar if Trump exceeded in deporting immigrants, or hamstringing the Federal Reserve in its inflation fight.

“We find that all the policies examined could cause a loss of production and employment, especially in trade-exposed sectors such as manufacturing and agriculture.”

CPI consumer inflation rate reached the astronomical height of 14.6 percent during the 1981 and 1982 recessions, 5.5 percent during the Great Recession (2008-09), and rose as high as 9 percent in 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump’s tariff lie exposes an even larger lie beneath it. He can only pay for the tax cuts, such as were enacted in his Tax Cuts and Lobs Act (TCLA) on wealthy individuals and corporations, with a consumption tax that all Americans pay.

It lets corporations and the wealthiest off the hook on paying for the necessary programs that fund Medicare, Medicaid, and defense, which is what the TCLA did that is about to expire and was the only major legislation during his four years in office.

A Brookings Institute analysis of his TCLA was even more damaging, and he intends to renew it if elected: “The new law will reduce federal revenues by significant amounts, even after allowing for the impact on economic growth. It will make the distribution of after-tax income more unequal. If it is not financed with concurrent spending cuts or other tax increases, TCJA will raise federal debt and impose burdens on future generations.”

So, it’s also time to ask exactly what policies have made the U.S. economy the stronger than any other developed countries since the COVID-19 pandemic. Is it by Republicans or Democrats, since it’s become and election issue?

Former president Obama claimed in a recent Detroit campaign speech that it was his eight years—2008-2016, during the recovery from the Great Recession—that his administration was responsible for creating what became almost 11 years of positive GDP growth, longer even than President Clinton’s record recovery streak of 10 years.

That recovery continued into the Trump administration from 2016-2020 and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that briefly stopped all growth, but recovered quickly due to the government aid that flooded into the economy (before the supply-chains recovered) and inflation skyrocketed.

The Fed has finally tamed inflation and even more importantly, job growth returned to pre-pandemic unemployment levels. And that was due to President Biden’s Bidenomics policies that are modernizing the American economy for future generations.

Yet Trump has said climate change is hoax; so the increasingly frequent hurricanes and tornadoes must also be illusions. He has also said that he wants to eviscerate many of President Biden’s spending programs and policies, in the name of cutting the budget deficit, as well as once again attempt to repeal Obamacare, if elected.

It is what very wealthy oligarchs such as Elon Musk also say that they want.

Harlan Green © 2024

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