No, Trump Did Not Inherit A Mess. We Have That To Look Forward To.

Since taking office, Trump has said on more than one occasion that he inherited a mess from President Obama. I have run across Trump supporters in comment sections repeating this absurd assertion, once again proving that Turmpland is a fact-free amusement park where you can believe any old thing you want. The earth is 6,000 year’s old? Sure. Dinosaurs and people coexisted? Okay. There’s no such thing as human-influenced climate change? You betcha. Barack Obama left Trump a country in the midst of economic ruin? Why not?

I am not a huge Obama fan, and I believe some of his decisions during his tenure were misguided and not in the best interests of America BUT, for Trump to claim Obama left him a mess simply flies in the face of reality. And let’s also try and be honest about President Obama’s tenure. During his eight years in the White House, the man was faced with a Republican congress that tried, and in many cases succeeded, in thwarting the President’s policy agenda at every turn. The fact that Obama got as much done as he did seems amazing based on his relentless opposition in congress. And the economic mess that George Bush left behind (remember 2008?) put Barack in a hole before he even started.

What Trump actually inherited is a country with an economic expansion that was the third longest on record; an economy that had been adding jobs every month for the past six years; and a federal deficit that had sharply declined from a high of 9.8 percent at the height of the last recession to 3.2 percent last year. In addition, worker wages have been climbing for the past four years and the median household income jumped 5.2 percent in 2014-2015 (the last years records are available).

This isn’t to say everything was rosy when Obama left Washington. Unemployment, income inequality and sluggish growth remained problematic, but has anyone heard from Trump solutions to these issues that don’t involve massive program cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy? No, the mess is currently underway and will only get worse over time. Trump’s plan for the economy will work just as well as Bush’s did, with huge, untenable deficits, declining jobs and wages falling further behind the rising cost of living.

The one who is going to inherit a mess is the president following Trump.

The Big Picture of the American Economy, and It's Not Pretty

Since 1978, the cost of:*

College tuition has increased by 1,120%

Medical care has increased by 601%

Food has increased by 244%

Shelter has gone up by 380%

Meanwhile, the pay of:

A typical worker rose by just 10%

Minimum wage workers fell by 5.5%

The average CEO increased by 937%

*Sources: EPI, Bloomberg, US Labor Department

Obama’s State of the Union Address: Inspiring Words Distract Us From the Ugly Reality

Last night Obama gave his final State of the Union Address. As usual, his words were inspiring, hopeful and eloquent but, as one Salon headline read this morning: “The depressing lesson of Obama’s final State of the Union Address: Everything’s still broken.”

It’s always been hard to dislike Obama. He’s smart, articulate and has a good sense of humor, and he has had some successes as President that were very hard fought against the Congressional Confederacy of Dunces. But for me, it’s as much about all of the things that Obama didn’t do as it is about his victories. The nightmarish legacy of George Bush lived on in the Obama years, even though Obama was elected on a promise to change direction.

War continues to engulf the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and we still play a major role in these conflicts. Although there are fewer boots on the ground in the region than during Bush’s tenure, we continue to stir the pot of violence with drone strikes, bombings and “advisors” pursuing American interests. As insane as it seems, we managed to pull Russia into the fray and we all teeter on the razor’s edge of a world war. This is hardly the peace and prosperity we hoped for from Obama.

The monster that Bush and Cheney built, the American Surveillance State, is alive and well on Obama’s watch. Seven years later we still live under the unconstitutional Patriot Act, and the CIA, NSA and all of the other spy shops are humming along nicely with Obama’s blessings. Not only did Obama fail to reign in Big Brother, he chose to focus his attention on prosecuting whistleblowers instead of the illegal activities of his surveillance agencies.

As for the economy yes, it has improved somewhat under Obama, but the larger economic picture in America today is very far from bright. Consider a few statistics:

• Most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. At this point, 62 percent of all Americans have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts, and 21 percent of Americans do not have any savings at all.
• It’s estimated that 43 percent of all American households spend more money than they make each month.
• The Pew Research Center found that median wealth for middle class households dropped by an astounding 28 percent between 2001 and 2013.
• According to the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.
• The U.S. ranks only 19^th in the world when it comes to median wealth per adult.
• For each of the past six years, more businesses have closed in the United States than have opened. Prior to 2008, this had never happened before in all of U.S. history.
• In 2007, about one in every eight children in America was on food stamps. Today, the number is one of every five.
• The top 0.1 percent of all American families have about as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of all American families combined.

 There are many more depressing economic statistics that could be added to this list, but the trend is clear — while some aspects of the economy have improved since the Bush years, we are stagnating or losing ground in many very important areas and the American economy is far from healthy. No one says Obama is totally to blame for this situation, but he has failed to even attempt to take the bold steps necessary to address income inequality, tax reform and the criminal activities of Wall Street and America’s largest banks.

I predict history will be kind to Obama and his legacy. Compared to Bush, he seems like the ideal Commander in Chief, but when you look past the man and his rhetoric, you see a President leaving behind a country that has devolved from a democracy to a full-fledged oligarchy where “the people” are growing poorer by the day and have almost no say in how the country is run. With Obama’s departure, the Deep State is more powerful than ever, and our first African American President has unfortunately been merely another puppet to amuse and distract a pliable populace.

Signs of our times

I live in Minneapolis and often drive up and down Highway 169, a major north/south artery just to the west of downtown. I don’t know how old the road is, but over the decades, numerous small to medium sized businesses grew up along 169, and its entire length is lined with buildings of various sizes intended for white color companies. On one of my last drives to the north end of the highway and back, I became aware of something that on prior trips had gone unnoticed. I was passing dozens and dozens of “For Lease” signs. I was taken aback by the number of signs on both sides of the road indicating that building space was empty and in need of tenants.

Over the past few months, we’ve had numerous reports from the mainstream media on the improving economy, often accompanied by photos of a smiling Obama. Unemployment is dropping, Wall Street is booming, and the economy is rebounding! The “For Lease” signs along 169 tell a different story, and many progressive writes are pointing out that while things appear to be getting better, it’s more wishful thinking than a reality for many Americans.

The economy is certainly booming for the one percent of people at the top of the ladder, those whose biggest worry is how to avoid paying taxes on the billions they make. For the rest of us, not so much. There is a revealing article from Alternet today that blows past the smoke and mirrors to reveal the dark side of our current economy. Here is just one statistic from the article:

The average U.S. household pays $400 to feed and clothe employees of Walmart, McDonalds, and other low-wage workers.

There are other dismal but important statistics cited in the article clearly showing that the American economy is not improving for the bottom 90 percent. Our government, and the media, are failing and fooling the majority of this nation’s citizens.

Killing off America’s middle class is economic suicide

My father was the son of Italian immigrants. Like many young men of his generation, he quit high school to fend for himself during the Great Depression. He became a self-taught auto mechanic and eventually co-owned a garage in Oakland, California. The third of three children, I came along in the early 1950s and grew up in a comfortable middle-class part of the city, enjoying the material benefits of the post-war boom in America. Our house was small but comfortable. He was the sole breadwinner, yet we could afford upper-end cars and took two-week vacations every summer.

We were not Ozzie and Harriet’s family, and we had our struggles and trials, but still, I was brought up living a modest, secure life even though my father never finished the eighth grade and worked with his hands. We were tried and true middle class Americans, a blue-collar family that could still afford nice things.

The point of my little trip down memory lane is to contrast a time when opportunity existed for a large portion of American society, as opposed to today, where opportunity exists for only a very small group at the top of the food chain. The middle class is dying or, more accurately, being killed off by the one percent. In an article on income inequality by Morgan Stanley, there are more than a few depressing graphs and charts illustrating the decline of America’s middle class, but one that stands out is a chart showing the U.S. leading the developed countries of the world in its share of low paying jobs. What does this mean? It means the gap between the tiny group of haves and the rest of us will continue to grow wider and wider.

And this is where I become confused. Doesn’t destroying America’s middle class mean destroying the customer base for many large retailers? If my wages are stagnant or declining while prices of goods rise, that means I’m not going to be able to afford a new model car or a new dishwasher or the latest phone. If I’m the CEO of Target or GM or Amana, why would I support policies or candidates who want to shrink my customer base? Doesn’t that seem self-defeating to you? Yet it’s exactly what’s happening. If the current trajectory doesn’t change, the average person won’t be able to afford to buy things we consider necessities now, like appliances or cars or insurance.

It could be that the richest of the rich simply don’t care. Their wealth places them beyond the concerns of mere mortals and the future of their families seems secure. Are they all as callous, greedy and heartless as the Koch brothers? Perhaps. How else to explain what is happening to our economy?

Ronald Reagan, the Great Eliminator (of the middle class)

I’m not an economist, I don’t play one on TV and numbers scare me, but I think everyone should have a basic understanding of why we find ourselves with such gaping income inequality in America today and an economy that is stuck in neutral. There’s a very accessible article in Truthout that explains in language I can grasp how having a middle class in a capitalist society is a conscious choice and not something that naturally flows from a free market economy.

Our economic troubles really began when Ronald Reagan took office in 1980 and started drastically cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Since then, the very wealthy have continued to accumulate money, their income has grown dramatically, while those once considered middle class realized stagnant or negative income growth, eventually plummeting to near poverty levels.

The article points out that the great economic growth and expansion of the middle class we experienced in the 1950s and 1960s was directly related to high taxes on the very rich, a tightly regulated economy and strong labor laws. That’s all gone by the wayside in the last 33 years, and the current Grand Canyon of income inequality is the result.

One point made in the article that I found very interesting was the idea that when you have a middle class, a large group of Americans who were relatively comfortable financially, people are able to focus their energy and attention on broader social issues (civil rights, the war in Vietnam, the environment) rather than the day-to-day struggle for survival. This, of course, scared the shit out of the conservative establishment, and their champion, Ronald Reagan, finally put a stop to all of that as president. Today, a large swath of America is right where conservatives want us to be, scraping to get by and beholden to our employers for letting us keep our jobs.