Friday, June 16, 2017

Workers Beware! Under Trump, Reaganomics Is Back and Worse Than Ever @alternet

Workers Beware! Under Trump, Reaganomics Is Back and Worse Than Ever @alternet:

"Reaganomics was an abject failure as an economic program. Inflation came down but that was the only achievement. Growth returned but average wages, however measured, stopped growing altogether, whereas they had been growing steadily since the early 1950s. Income inequality started to rise rapidly from early in Reagan’s first term and didn’t stop. The greatest of ironies is that capital investment was tepid and the source of economic growth, productivity, grew only moderately, the opposite of the takeoff that was promised. George W. Bush reinstated the Reaganomics philosophy with his own major tax cuts, again mostly funneled to the wealthy. The recovery and expansion that followed created the fewest jobs of any expansion since World War II. What economic growth there was had been fueled by the speculation in residential housing that led to the crash of 2008, the year Bush left office. Trump’s proposed tax cuts are far more radical than those of Bush, and more on a par with Reagan’s. They would be another unjustifiable gift to the wealthy."