The same government that says the economy is great, last year was the first
year (2018) that we had a brand new big fat tax cut for corporations and the
rich. Huge. And it was premised on the notion that it would get the economic
growth rate of the United States back to 3%, something it hadn't seen for a long
time which would be a great achievement. That achievement was not achieved. We are
at 2% and we're staying around 2% and 3% is not in the cards.
We gave an enormous tax cut to get something which did not materialize.
That's not a good sign. That's a bad sign. Number 2: Mr. Trump in order to look as
though he were defending America ,making America first and all of that, has
imposed tariffs virtually on the whole world, especially China but Europe and
Canada and Mexico too. That has disrupted the world economy and brought a
recession nearer. Poor Mr. Trump, trying to get votes by being Mr. tough
guy protecting, then produces a recession which will lose him the election if it
happens in the next 12 months. So he's trying to lower interest rates, he's
trying to keep telling us the economy is great, which if it were wouldn't need to
lower interest rates. The poor man is caught up in his own chaos. There's
really no other way to say it. But this is not good for the economy. Conditions in
Europe and Asia are deteriorating and that will come to the United States in a
world economy sooner or later. But we're not done. There's a statistic, very nice
one, how has the stock market done since Mr. Trump came to office? The
answer is as of mid-August 2019 that the stock market is up 29%.
That's very impressive in two ways. Number one, it's a way more of an
increase than wages have seen. In other words, the gap between the rich who own
the shares and the rest of us has gone wider. The inequality has become worse
over the last period since he was elected. But here's the number you might
also enjoy. Using the same 645 days of Trump and asking
how well did Mr. Obama's administration do in its first 645 days, whereas with
Mr. Trump the stock market is up 29%, in the first 645 days
of Obama it's up 46% . Mr. Obama was even better for corporate America than
Mr. Trump. In the 1960s the ratio between CEO pay an average worker pay was in the
neighborhood of 30:1. By the 1990s it had become the ratio of 100:1.
Since the year 2000 it has gone up to, ready, 250:1.
The gap between the people and the top of our corporations. Now
nobody in their right mind thinks they're that much better today as
leaders of a corporation and they were in the 60s and 70s. I might remind you that
in the 60s and 70s when CEO pay was only thirty times the average workers we had
a more rapid rate of growth than we've had ever since.
So more CEO [pay] hasn't helped the economy but it sure has helped the CEOs. And
here's another measure of how well we're doing. The Federal Reserve did a study
(every year it does this study) on the condition of American households. So the
results for 2018 are in and here's a statistic that jumped out at me. One in
four Americans during the year 2018 did without needed medical care because they
could not afford it. 25%. That includes millions who have medical
insurance but it still didn't cover something they needed and therefore they
did without it. That's not an economy that's doing great, no matter how you
slice it.