I caught this yesterday via Gary Gross at LFR -Kevin Hassett, chair of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, addressing every liberal’s favorite canard, the notion that Trump inherited a booming economy.
You can watch the whole 45 minute thing…:
…or you can check out the actual charts Hasset references
And they make some good reading. If perception is reality, then the perception of the economy in reality took a bit of a jump around the time you-know-who got elected:
Presidents have little to do with driving the economy, although this one is giving it his best shot with tariffs and his mouth.
Apparently Emery believes that we can have the worst president that can be imagined, bad in trade, bad in spending, with completely misplaced priorities, alienate our trade partners, be a global laughing stock, and top of that be an evil, incompetent, self-dealing mad man in thrall to our nation’s enemies, and yet the American economy can still thrive.
Emery and reason parted company long, long ago.
It’s amazing that people who have resources to invest in growing the economy have faith that they’ll get to keep what they earn stop trying to find ways to hide them and start finding ways to grow.
Apparently Emery is ignorant as to the effects regulations have on business activity. And he apparently doesn’t understand that Presidents have some impact on what regulations and policies are passed by the Congress, depending on whether he signs the laws or not, how he enforces the policies and formulates regulations, etc.
But other than those minor details, Emery understands things.
The Trump budget is also a massive debt run up.
Trump: “Millions in tax cuts for me, no 2% raise for you. Budget deficits, you know.”
Those tax cuts for the rich aren’t going to pay for themselves.
You are pitiful, Emery.
Yup, Emery, continue the Trump trend for another ten years, and the deficits, assuming CBO projections, will be almost as high as they were under Obama in his first term. At least until you do the numbers as percentage of GDP and scale for inflation, of course, in which case you’d need a few more years with (most likely) pessimistic economic and revenue projections.
Oh, that wasn’t the comparison you were fishing for? Sorry.
Woolly: There is an angry ignorance in your comment that is not pleasant.
BB: Thanks to extremely loose monetary policy, the past decade has been one of the best ever, at least for the wealthy and well connected (who ultimately steer politics for better and worse).
Only those without assets and reliant on wage income have suffered. Today’s social and political unrest simply reflects the growing awareness of this and the desire for fundamental reform. The real issues weren’t addressed, so we’re seeing all sorts of alternatives from across the political spectrum — this will continue until the average person feels secure economically and can see that the system is working for everyone, not just the asset rich.
Don’t take it personal, Emery.
When I realize that my model of the world is not accurate, I change the model, I don’t assume that any time now the old model will start working & this will all be remembered as just a bad dream.
Woolly: There is an angry ignorance in your comment that is not pleasant.
If that isnt that pot calling the kettle black… sheesh
Surely you can come up with better material — report to your Supervisor!
It’s a new day in America. Trolls can do stuff now — heck, they can be elected President!
Poverty did not cause today’s social and political unrest. Greed caused it, and continues to animate the socialists.
Radix malorum est cupiditas.
As in detective stories, “follow the money” is a useful guideline. Whatever financial companies say, they get richer and others get poorer. If all the commenters on various platforms who vent over Trump, populism, globalism, etc directed more of their ire at those responsible for destroying the trust of people in honest institutions, banks and government, perhaps a better system could be built. And perhaps they would understand why a lot of people are so angry that their own futures are blighted that they choose to believe simplistic solutions: no other solution has been offered.
Angry Ignorance is the name of Emery’s garage band. (His mom’s garage, of course.)
You seem to be the angriest guy commenter on this thread, Emery. Perhaps you would do better directing more of your ire at those responsible for destroying the trust of people in honest institutions, banks and government.
Drudge’s economy stories today:
Small-business optimism highest ever; Tops Reagan…
PEW: Middle Class Income Rises…
Job openings climb to record 6.9 million…
Plan Makes Tax Cuts Permanent…
Vegas booming again…
This is what economic ignorance looks like. From the Irish Times:
Even at €0.99, a book that has possibly taken you years to write, revise, edit and rewrite, that will take the reader hours or days to read and enjoy, cannot possibly be of less than half the economic value of a cup of scalding, relatively tasteless, mass-produced coffee from a machine in a motorway service station. That is an insanity of modern society that needs to be confronted.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/e-book-pricing-because-you-re-worth-it-1.3620532
The writer is talking about ebooks, and he is wrong. Get past the abstraction that a thing’s economic value is only what someone will exchange for it. The bad cup of machine-made coffee at a service station cost a finite and calculable amount of money to produce. When all the costs are factored in (supplies, floor space, energy, the lease price of the machine) the cost to produce the next cup of coffee (aka marginal cost) probably amount to a little less than the customer pays for the terrible cup of coffee. The cost to produce the next copy of an ebook approaches zero, and if you use a storefront like Amazon, the cost to you, the author, is zero.
An entirely different set of economic rules applies when the marginal cost approaches zero. People who try to compare the cost of physical goods or services with the cost of intellectual property are intentionally confusing you.
A legal code that protects property rights go back for millennia. The idea of legally enforced Intellectual property (copy right) rights only go back to John Locke (1632-1704). A physical book has intrinsic value. You can burn it for heat or use it for a door stop. An ebook has no intrinsic value. You can’t even resell it to a second hand book shop.
“Government borrowing soars despite robust economy”
No deficit clock?
man I have been commenting on SiTD for over 12 years and this is one of the nastiest comment sections on a post Ive ever seen
No deficit clock?
So deficits only matter when theres a Republican president Emery? Obama sent it skyrocketing and he never even had a mildly robust economy that could maybe justify the spending. Remember the stimulus that was just essentially a payoff to every group that got him elected? And those shovel ready jobs that were supposed to happen in 2009 or 2010 are finally happening, in 2018. And so much so that there are literally not enough skilled workers to fill them.
I’m sure you can find bad economic news, if you look for it, Emery.
Deficit spending is inevitable these days. I think that you or someone else posting as “Emery” admitted as much.
Deficit spending caused by tax cuts to consumers promotes growth because consumers don’t spend a dollar on things that they value less than a dollar.
Deficits produced by government spending do not produce growth because the government does not spend a dollar to get more than a dollar of value. It spends money for political reasons. To support old people, or build highways to nowhere, stuff like that.
And this is why in JM Keynes famous formula for calculating GDP change, consumer spending & investment have multipliers > 1.0, while government spending does not.
And, yes, I have been saying this for years, at SITD and other places.
The idea of a Keynesian stimulus is to put cash in the hands of consumers, so they can spend it and produce value. Democrats don’t like consumer choice, so they deficit spend to put money in the hands of consumers — but then tell them what to buy. Solar panels. Cash for clunkers.
A consumer won’t spend a dollar to get $0.80 worth of solar energy or energy saving insulation. But he will spend $0.75 to get $0.80 of solar energy if the government gives him $0.25 to do it. Net result: you’ve spent $1.00 of wealth on something worth $0.80. Congratulations, you have a negative multiplier. Thus they cleverly increase consumer spending w/o gaining the economic benefit of consumer spending.
Half of America is liberals who champion what they believe are Keynes’ economics without ever having read Keynes.
The other half is conservatives who champion the ideas of Adam Smith without ever having read Smith.
From Wikipedia:
“We are all Keynesians now” is a famous phrase coined by Milton Friedman and attributed to U.S. president Richard Nixon. It is popularly associated with the reluctant embrace in a time of financial crisis of Keynesian economics by individuals such as Nixon who had formerly favored less interventionist policies.”
MP, your average millenial wouldnt make it 2 sentences into that post without getting lost and crawling into their safe space. I wasnt even a econ major, Im just a capitalist.
Also generally Democrats dont like choices period, with the exception of killing unborn babies.
It’s good to see Liberals focus on the deficit. But that’s only part of the problem and the most easily solved. I’ll lay it out again for those who forgot the basic facts.
The “deficit” is how much the budget is short this year. We planned to spend 100, we took in 80, the deficit is 20. No problem, we borrow 20, budget balanced. Better still, we cut spending by 20. If all you’re worried about is the annual shortfall, slash entitlements and everything is cool.
The “debt” is how much we’ve borrowed to cover those annual deficits, year after year after year. The total debt is right around $21 Trillion dollars. There’s no plan to repay the debt because it cannot realistically be done. If you devoted 100% of all tax revenues to payments, it would take five years to pay off the debt and during that time we’d have no Congress, no Army, no food stamps, no college loans. Nobody would go for that nor would our enemies give us that much breathing room. Any smaller payment plan takes too long – the math theoretically works but the political willpower could never be sustained.
And those are the easy problems. The “debt” is the sum of all the loans we already took, it does not include the cost of covering promises we made such as future payments for Social Security. Your retirement plan doesn’t exist and everybody has known it for years.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnmauldin/2017/10/10/your-pension-is-a-lie-theres-210-trillion-of-liabilities-our-government-cant-fulfill/#2850a01065b1
There are three possibilities: America can cut spending by 50% and use the savings to pay off the debt over several generations; America can repudiate the debt and deal with the resulting global financial crisis; America can complain about Trump’s tweets and ignore the problem.
I guess we know the Liberal and RINO plan.
I’m headed to Fleet Farm to stock up on bullets.
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JD, all I know is I aint counting on the government for jack shit come when/if I retire.
I actually think #2 is more likely long term. With the next bubble things will get ugly and fast. And you better have some gold or silver because I dont believe its a sure thing that the american dollar will survive. As it stands now at least.
The crisis doesn’t come when you cannot pay your debt. It comes when you can no longer pay interest on your debt. If I could borrow a million dollars at 1%, I would do it and have a comfortable retirement, even though I was in debt to my ears with no hope of ever paying it back.
Praying that we will realize that pensions of any kind, including Mediscare and Socialist Insecurity, are “presuming upon the future” and ought to be ended. The sad reality is that we can only rely on a defined contribution, and then hope and pray that our contributions/investments bear fruit.
Note regarding the unfunded liabilities; it all hinges on actuarial assumptions that are themselves changed by our decisions. For example, how many people decided not to have children because Uncle Sam would take care of them? Judging by demographics, it’s quite a few. At any rate, a trillion per year unfunded liabilities, or three times that, is a huge disaster.
And POD, if the fit hits the shan, gold and silver are not the precious metals you’re interested in, but rather brass, copper clad lead, and ordinance steel, sad to say.
That reminds me, I really need to take a self defense firearms course…