Trumponomics Is Almost as Cruel a Joke as Trickle-Down Economics

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook Page

17 September 16

onald Trump’s economic speech this morning to the Economic Club of New York was incoherent at best, nuts at worst. His “more detailed” economic plan would:

1. Explode the deficit. Trump still wants to reduce taxes, mostly on the wealthy and on corporations. He says his tax cut would cost $4.4 trillion over 10 years, and the money would come from economic growth. Yet he’d also spend like mad on the military and on infrastructure. His numbers are wildly out of whack. (I’m no deficit hawk, but I’m not a deficit humming bird. This is insane.)


2. Isolate the United States. He’d cut off much of trade with China, Mexico, and other current trading partners – thereby inviting trade retaliation, causing consumer prices to rise in the U.S., choke off growth in developing nations, and repeat the disastrous mistakes of Congressmen Smoot and Hawley who, in the 1930s, withdrew the U.S. from the global economy.


3. Scrap many environmental, health, and safety regulations in order to pursue economic growth. This is borderline insanity. Growth is not an end in itself. A higher standard of living is. If our air and water are unsafe, if we’re subject to more floods and draughts, if our workplaces are unsafe and unhealthy, and our food is unsafe, our standard of living drops.


4. And wouldn't even bring back manufacturing to the United States, as he asserts. Today’s factories are automated. Numerical-controlled machine tools and robots are replacing humans even in China.

Trumponomics is almost as cruel a joke as trickle-down economics.

What do you think?