Tag: GOP trickle down economics

The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%—And That’s Made the U.S. Less Secure

Like many of the virus’s hardest hit victims, the United States went into the COVID-19 pandemic wracked by preexisting conditions. A fraying public health infrastructure, inadequate medical supplies, an employer-based health insurance system perversely unsuited to the moment—these and other afflictions are surely contributing to the death toll. But in addressing the causes and consequences of this pandemic—and its cruelly uneven impact—the elephant in the room is extreme income inequality.

How big is this elephant? A staggering $50 trillion. That is how much the upward redistribution of income has cost American workers over the past several decades.

This is not some back-of-the-napkin approximation. According to a groundbreaking new working paper by Carter C. Price and Kathryn Edwards of the RAND Corporation, had the more equitable income distributions of the three decades following World War II (1945 through 1974) merely held steady, the aggregate annual income of Americans earning below the 90th percentile would have been $2.5 trillion higher in the year 2018 alone. That is an amount equal to nearly 12 percent of GDP—enough to more than double median income—enough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional $1,144 a month. Every month. Every single year. Continue reading.

New Data: Rich Got Richer, But Most Americans Fared Worse Under Trump

The first data showing how all Americans are faring under Donald Trump reveal the poor and working classes sinking slightly, the middle class treading water, the upper-middle class growing and the richest, well, luxuriating in rising rivers of greenbacks.

More than half of Americans had to make ends meet in 2018 on less money than in 2016, my analysis of new income and tax data shows.

The nearly 87 million taxpayers making less than $50,000 had to get by in 2018 on $307 less per household than in 2016, the year before Trump took office, I find. Continue reading.

‘Parasite’ paints a nightmarish picture of Korean inequality. The reality in America is even worse.

Washington Post logoKorean director Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” is a dark parable about the yawning gulf between the rich and the poor in South Korea. It’s a story of a society where the working class have no hope of attaining a better life, and instead squabble among themselves for the literal scraps of prosperity cast off by the wealthy as they move serenely through their charmed lives.

The film and its message have strongly resonated with American audiences, and last week’s best picture win means its stateside influence is only likely to grow. That’s probably not an accident: By any number of measures, inequality here in the States is much, much worse than in Bong’s South Korea.

Here’s one way to visualize Korean inequality: According to the World Inequality Database, an authoritative resource on income and wealth around the world, the top 1 percent of South Koreans own about 25 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom half of the population owns just under 2 percent. Continue reading.

Mnuchin Again Insists 2017 Tax Cuts Will ‘Pay For Themselves’

Trump administration officials continue to make wildly inaccurate statements about the economic impact of the Republican 2017 tax law. On Wednesday, contrary to all available evidence, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told the Senate Finance Committee that he stands by previous administration claims that the tax cuts “will pay for themselves.”

“This will be simple math,” Mnuchin testified under oath. “We measure this over 10 years. We got eight years left. I look forward to writing the committee a letter in eight years going through all the exact numbers.”

Mnuchin’s claim, flagged by American Bridge, a progressive opposition research organization, is widely disputed by experts, even experts who tout the benefits of the 2017 law. Continue reading.

Deficit spikes 25 percent through January

The Hill logoThe federal deficit through January climbed to $389 billion, a 25 percent spike over the same period last year, according to Treasury Department data released Wednesday.

The Treasury estimates the deficit will surpass $1 trillion this year for the first time since 2012.

Overall receipts were down since last year by $68 billion, largely due to a drop in individual corporate taxes. Spending, in the meantime, was up $147 billion, as outlays spiked on defense, health, veterans affairs and Social Security. Continue reading.

Trump’s Latest Budget Proposal Would Deepen the Student Debt Crisis

Center for American Progress logoBehind the scenes, the Trump administration has reportedly been fighting for months about how to devise a student debt plan that could compete with proposals from progressive leaders. It’s not clear yet whether it will achieve this. What is clear, however, is that the draconian cuts to higher education programs in the new White House budget proposal would heap debt on millions of students in this country.

The FY 2021 budget proposal, released Monday, would cut more than $2 billion in spending just next year in financial aid, the Federal Work-Study Program, and other forms of support, much of which is geared toward low-income students and students of color. It would saddle borrowers with an extra $70 billion in costs over a 10-year period by ending subsidized loans and eliminating Public Service Loan Forgiveness. And it would put college further out of reach for American families by allowing the value of the Pell Grant to decline. Like previous budgets, it also proposes some measures that could mitigate some student debt, such as a proposal that would seek to hold colleges accountable by sharing some of the risk in student loans. However, risk sharing has mixed support among members of Congress. There are other small, positive proposals such as restoring Pell Grant access for incarcerated students and automatically enrolling severely delinquent borrowers into income-driven repayment plans, but these are outweighed by the harm done with other moves.

This is no way to reject “the downsizing of America’s destiny,” as Trump claimed to be doing in his State of the Union address last week. This budget does quite the opposite. It is an overt bid for the higher education system to abandon any aspiration to offer access and equity to all students. Continue reading.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom Dings Trump’s $3 Trillion Pricetag For His ‘Booming’ Economy

The president is piling on debt for U.S. taxpayers, while California has a surplus, Newsom crows.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom stacked up his state’s financials against America’s and mocked Donald Trump for racking up an extra $3 trillion in debt for what the president characterizes as a “booming” national economy.

Trump promised to balance the budget when he was campaigning, but the national debt has now reached a record of more than $23 trillion. (“Who the hell cares about the budget?” Trump asked donors at a fundraiser last month.)

California, meanwhile, is reporting “record surpluses,” low unemployment and high job growth, the Democratic governor tweeted Thursday. “Progressive policies and economic growth DO go hand-in-hand.”

Deficit widens, economic growth slows in new CBO outlook

Repeal of health care taxes the largest driver of 10-year deficit increase, according to projections

The Congressional Budget Office projects higher deficits for this year and the coming decade, with a fiscal 2020 deficit of $1.015 trillion — $8 billion higher than the agency estimated last August.

The fiscal 2019 deficit was $984 billion, by comparison.

Over the next decade, the cumulative deficit outlined in the agency’s latest budget and economic outlook released Tuesday is estimated at $12.4 trillion, $160 billion more than the earlier projection. Continue reading.

Trump Opens Door to Cuts to Medicare and Other Entitlement Programs

New York Times logoThe president signaled a willingness to scale back Medicare, a shift from his 2016 platform of protecting entitlement programs.

WASHINGTON — President Trump suggested on Wednesday that he would be willing to consider cuts to social safety-net programs like Medicare to reduce the federal deficit if he wins a second term, an apparent shift from his 2016 campaign promise to protect funding for such entitlements.

The president made the comments on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Despite promises to reduce the federal budget deficit, it has ballooned under Mr. Trump’s watch as a result of sweeping tax cuts and additional government spending.

Asked in an interview with CNBC if cuts to entitlements would ever be on his plate, Mr. Trump answered yes. Continue reading.

NOTE:  We noted back with the passage of the Trump/GOP tax cut for the rich, that we’d be seeing this happen “because of the national debt” which has ballooned due to less taxes on corporations (many pay nothing) and the richest of the rich.

Trump Tax Cut Saved Billions For Banks That Cut US Jobs

Donald Trump promised the 2017 Republican tax law would create jobs and support the middle class. Instead, six big banks have pocketed an additional $32 billion in savings — while cutting more than 1,000 jobs — over the past couple of years as a result of that law, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

Bloomberg calculated the additional savings from the GOP tax law by looking at the tax rates banks paid before the 2017 law (30 percent) to the rates the banks paid after the law went into effect (between 18 percent and 20 percent). The banks saw an additional $14 billion in profits in 2018, then another $18 billion in additional profits in 2019.

In the meantime, the banks also cut their workforce by a combined 1,200 jobs by the end of 2019. Continue reading.