Tag: Reaganomics

Growth Has Lifted Counties That Voted for Trump. Mostly, It’s the Wealthy Ones.

The followoing article by Campbell Robertson and Jim Tankersley was posted on the New York Times website September 3, 2018:

President Trump’s economy has left the most distressed swaths of the country waiting for their share of the good times.

“You could feel things getting better and better,” said Tom Hughes, a homebuilder in St. Charles County, Mo., describing how his business began to rebound from the recession over the last few years.

ST. CHARLES, Mo. — The prosperity is apparent on the way into town: the 21-floor casino resort and spa on one side of the interstate, and on the other a freshly built retail quarter of boutiques, a brand-new Hilton hotel and a P.F. Chang’s. It unfolds from there along the highways heading west with more gleaming office parks and multiplying subdivisions.

This is not the Trump country of the popular imagination, the land of shuttered plants and the economically left behind. St. Charles County, in the suburbs northwest of St. Louis, has had the highest median household income in Missouri for several years.

But in 2016, Donald J. Trump won the county by 26 points, and he is still popular among people like Tom Hughes, a homebuilder whose business was rebounding from the recession before Mr. Trump took office.

View the complete article here.

Accountants warn tax reform could add up to April shock

The following article by Jim Spencer was posted on the Star Tribune website September 1, 2018:

Those who rely heavily on deductions could see a bill.

Every summer, Mike McClure looks at his income tax withholding. The Apple Valley man doesn’t want to give the government what he calls a “free loan” by having too much money withheld from his paycheck. He also doesn’t want to end up owing a bunch to the IRS when he files his taxes in April.

In the past, McClure’s system has led to little more than minor tweaks. This year, under the new federal tax law, he will owe the federal government $6,800 in April if he doesn’t radically alter his withholding for the remainder of the 2018 tax year.

“This whole tax-cut thing was sold to middle-class Americans as ‘we’re all going to get a tax cut,’ ” McClure said. “This wasn’t what I expected.”

View the complete post here.

REMINDER:  Rep. Erik Paulsen voted FOR this bill, which provides a large, permanent tax cut for corporation and a moderate one that expires for his constituents.  Most of that cut will be impacted by the other changes in the bill including a decrease in the allowed amount of property tax that can be deducted from personal taxes.

Help Wanted: Here’s Why America’s Labor Force Is Still Struggling — While Corporate Profits are Going Gangbusters

The following article by Jim Hightower was posted on the AlterNet website August 29, 2018:

The deeper issue is the overall lack of respect for workaday people.

Credit: Andreas Klinke Johannsen

Workers of America, rejoice!

As our nation of working stiffs celebrates Labor Day with backyard cookouts, an afternoon at the beach, rounds of golf, special sales at the mall or simply kicking back in a La-Z-Boy and doing several rounds of 12-ounce elbow bends, we can all take comfort in the happy news that our economy is whizzing! Yes, corporate economists exult that our US of A is enjoying the second-longest economic expansion on record; profits are off the charts; job creation continues to surge; wages are rising; and consumers are racking up record levels of purchases. What’s not to like about all that?

Two things. First, the economists’ claim about wage growth is a sham, covering up the shame that top corporate executives and major shareholders are grabbing nearly all of the economic gains produced by America’s entire workforce. The so-called nominal wage (i.e. the sum that workers see on their paychecks) has risen only 2.7 percent in the past year, a very mediocre result for the 82 percent of the labor force that is non-managerial worker bees.

View the complete article here.

Corporations Have Biggest Profit Gain In Six Years

Trump continues to build an economy focused on rewarding wealthy corporations at the expense of working families. The Trump tax law gave massive new tax breaks to big corporations and did nothing for workers. Now, while corporations just had their best profit gain in six years, real wages for workers continue to decline.

Corporations just had their best 12-month profit gain in six years largely thanks to the Trump tax law.

Wall Street Journal: “The Commerce Department said its broadest measure of profits across the U.S. economy rose 16.1% from the second quarter a year earlier, the largest year-over-year gain in six years. Taxes were a big part of the boost to the bottom line. Taxes paid by U.S. companies were down 33% from a year earlier, according to the new government data, or more than $100 billion at an annual rate.”

Continue reading “Corporations Have Biggest Profit Gain In Six Years”

Booming Economy May Be Little Felt as Voters Decide

The following articl by Ben Casselman and Jim Tankersley was posted on the New York Times website August 17, 2018:

Republicans are telling you that tax cuts and roaring economic growth are going to stop any “blue wave” in the midterm elections. Democrats say the lack of wage growth, even as corporate profits surge, will impel voters to change leadership in Congress.

It’s not that simple.

A new survey of nearly 10,000 American adults shows that the strong economy is rallying Republicans and maybe swaying some independents. But many voters still aren’t feeling the benefits of robust growth, and the tax overhaul passed last year looks as likely to hurt Republicans at the polls as help them.

View the complete article here.

‘Stuck in a belligerent doldrum’: Wages rise in the nation’s hottest job market — but so do costs

The following article by Todd C. Frankel was posted on the Washington Post website August 17, 2018:

Isabel Moctezuma works as a cook at Iowa State University during the school year and in the kitchen at Texas Roadhouse during the summer to support herself and her 8-year-old daughter, Mia. Credit: Rachel Mummey, The Washington Post

AMES, Iowa  — Isabel Moctezuma was cooking again. Now, at least, she was doing it at home, making salmon for dinner in her small apartment. Her daughter, Mia, 8, sliced carrots next to her. Moctezuma was just off the clock and still wearing her Texas Roadhouse work shirt, which on the back read, “I (heart) my job.” The slogan made her laugh.

Moctezuma, 39, worked this summer in the restaurant’s kitchen for $11.50 an hour — less than what she had made as a cook six years ago. The rest of the year she worked as a cook at Iowa State University, where the pay was a little better. But she had seen the “Help Wanted” signs all over town. She’d heard how the local economy was soaring. And she’d recently applied for a supervisor’s job. She wondered if this was her chance. It was only later, when dinner was over and with the dishes done and Mia watching TV, that she allowed herself to imagine what that might feel like.

“It would be nice to not have to worry so much,” she said.

View the complete post here.

No, Trump Voters, Your Wages Aren’t Going Up

The following article by David Cay Johnston was posted on the DCReport.org website August 15, 2018:

Unless You Were Already Making More than $1 Million a Year

We’ve got some disappointing news for all those people who voted for Donald Trump because he promised rising wages.

While Trump keeps saying wages are rising the official government data show that’s just not true.

Consider a worker paid the median wage, half make more and half less, of $600 a week in round numbers. If she got the average 2.8% raise on July 1, her gross pay rose by a bit under $17.

View the complete article here.

Public debt of the United States of America from July 2017 to July 2018, by month (in billion U.S. dollars)

The website Statista.com provides a month-by-month graph of the U.S. national debt.  Take a look at what has happened in the last year:

So much for Republican fiscal responsibility.  This is what has happened since they passed the Trump wealthcare bill.  As we move toward this November’s election, remember Rep. Erik Paulsen voted FOR the bill that caused this increase in debt.

Visit the site here.

In U.S., wage growth is being wiped out entirely by inflation

The following article by Heather Long was posted on the Washington Post website August 10, 2018:

Applicants chat with potential employers during a jobs fair at Minneapolis International Airport on July 17. Credit: David Zalubowsk, AP.

Rising prices have erased U.S. workers’ meager wage gains, the latest sign strong economic growth has not translated into greater prosperity for the middle and working classes.

Cost of living was up 2.9 percent from July 2017 to July 2018, the Labor Department reported Friday, an inflation rate that outstripped a 2.7 percent increase in wages over the same period. The average U.S. “real wage,” a federal measure of pay that takes inflation into account, fell to $10.76 an hour last month, 2 cents down from where it was a year ago.

The stagnation in pay defies U.S. growth, which has increased in the past year and topped 4 percent in the second quarter of 2018 — the highest rate since mid-2014.

View the complete post here.

Debt Piled On Your Children And Your Childrens’ Children

The following commentary by Stan Collender was posted on the DCReports.org website August, 2018:

Trump’s Deficits Will Cause Very Serious Challenges For Multiple Generations Of Americans

Trump displays his signature after signing the $1.5 trillion tax overhaul plan in the White House, Dec. 22, 2017.

The headline above is not partisan hyperbole or a rhetorical flourish: The $1 trillion-plus annual Trump budget deficits that are about to start will soon create huge policy challenges for future generations of Americans.

While presidents submit and Congress adopts one-year budgets (when they bother to do a budget at all, that is), the spending and taxing policies put in place in those budgets are more or less permanent.

This is certainly true with federal spending because most of it is “mandatory”‘ and will continue until Congress and the president change it. Given that most mandatory spending (Social Security, Medicare and many veterans benefits, for example) are growing in popularity, reductions aren’t likely any time soon…and maybe not at all.

View the complete article here.

NOTE:  Rep. Erik Paulsen voted for this tax bill.