Reich writes: "I finally found a Trump supporter - this morning when I went to buy coffee. (I noticed a Trump bumper sticker on his car.) 'Hi,' I said. 'Noticed your Trump bumper sticker.'"
Former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich. (photo: Steve Russell/Toronto Star)
My Coffee With a Trump Supporter
24 September 16
finally found a Trump supporter � this morning when I went to buy coffee. (I noticed a Trump bumper sticker on his car.)
�Hi,� I said. �Noticed your Trump bumper sticker.�
�Yup,� he said, a bit defensively.
�I hope you don�t mind my asking, but I�m curious. Why are you supporting him?�
�I know he�s a little bit much,� said the Trump supporter. �But he�s a successful businessman. And we need a successful businessman as president.�
�How do you know he�s a successful businessman?� I asked.
�Because he�s made a fortune.�
�Has he really?� I asked.
�Of course. Forbes magazine says he�s worth four and a half billion.�
�That doesn�t mean he�s been a success,� I said.
�In my book it does,� said the Trump supporter.
�You know, in 1976, when Trump was just starting his career, he said he was worth about $200 million,� I said. �Most of that was from his father.�
�That just proves my point,� said the Trump supporter. �He turned that $200 million into four and a half billion. Brilliant man.�
�But if he had just put that $200 million into an index fund and reinvested the dividends, he�d be worth twelve billion today,� I said.
The Trump supporter went silent.
"And he got about $850 million in tax subsidies, just in New York alone,� I said.
More silence.
�He�s not a businessman,� I said. �He�s a con man. "Hope you enjoy your coffee.�
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Who, among the US's highest regarded economists has not quietly approved of endless deficit spending for military adventurism around the globe, while aggressively restraining themselves from calling this horror show the global disaster that it is? Who among the US's highest regarded economists has loudly blown the whistle on the US economy's rapidly expanding ecological disaster while the narrowly defined "finance-centri c" economy rapidly expands from exploiting all of our natural and human resources, that financial expansion precisely due in every regard to that very same expanding ecological disaster?
As we have been far too patient and generous and restrained with our political elites, so we have been with our economic theory elites and our legal/judicial elites. Like the academics traditionally have increasingly become, those elites have allowed themselves to become too comfortable with & polite to others in their heartless "class" of elites to any longer imagine the urgently needed honesty and straight talk we all must practice for the planet to remain humanly inhabitable.
His support of deficit spending, against a tidal wave of opposition from the right, has been to increase job creation and reduce the impact of the recession on working stiffs.
This guy should not be the target of your criticism, although I agree that your criticism applies to most other "economic theory elites".
I think (but I don't know, of course) that most people wish the U.S. had never gone into Iraq in the first place, much less stayed there longer.
The world would be better off if the U.S. ruling class did not intervene wherever "U.S. interests (i.e., power and profit) were at stake.
Now the U.S. decries the lack of strong leadership among the "moderate" Islamic factions. If Saddam could see the U.S. stuck in the quicksand of the Middle East at present and likely continuing for decades to come, he'd be laughing his ass off.
Who are these "Most People" Kemo Sabi?
I never wanted us there in the fist place and do not want us going back.
And, why are you ignoring the Status of Forces Agreement in which the US HAD to leave Iraq when we did. (Signed by Geroge W)
My seat-of-the-pan ts is that inflation is way more than is pretended by the government. Their stats have not been trustable since Raygun. For one...they leave out everything that people with very little money buy almost exclusively...
Look at the high budget deficit after World War II ended, and how high employment not only drastically decreased it, but also expanded and enriched the U.S. middle class until the Chicago school economists took over under Nixon and then dominated under Reagan.
Deficit spending is the way out of an economic depression such as the one we are in, if it creates jobs (yes, government jobs as FDR created). Those newly-employed workers will then spend and pay taxes, which will bring down the deficit.
There is work to be done in repairing, rebuilding and modernizing our crumbling infrastructure; making our homes and businesses more energy efficient; expanding sustainable, non-greenhouse gas-emitting energy sources; and educating and hiring more teachers and doctors and nurses.
Neither major political party is interested in learning from the New Deal, because they have both been taken over by Wall Street and corporations.
But a Manhattan Project for sustainable, non-greenhouse gas-emitting, non-nuclear energy sources is what we need now, not wasting tens of billions of dollars bombing ISIS in Iraq and Syria to fulfill the neocon dream of regime change throughout the Middle East (except in Israel).
But if you take into account using debt as an instrument of investment, eventually you pay it off and make a profit; i.e., the return in tax revenues from a stimulated economy pays you back.
Given the current economic policies of the administration, the economy is unlikely to be restored in the near future. Nothing is being done to boost wages or create jobs for the chronically unemployed, who are not figured into the current official unemployment figure, which is way too low to be believable.
You seem to count on this worst-case scenario for your prognostication of doom. That covers only one of many possibilities, depending the next couple of elections and government action.