Trump’s YMCA Dance Took Over The World!
Opinion by Bruce Yandle, Tribune News Service
“Here is the reality,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders in his analysis of Donald Trump’s strong electoral victory and support from some traditional Democrats: “The working class of this country is angry, and they have reason to be angry. We are living in an economy today where the people on top are doing phenomenally well while 60 percent of our people are living paycheck to paycheck.”
Household data spanning 2019-22 support Sanders’ argument. The Federal Reserve found substantial increases in average net worth for all income levels except the poorest 20% of families (though the Fed doesn’t adjust these figures for how much of the accompanying federal debt we’ll each bear). In any case, according to the senator, greed was the main culprit. I think a fair portion of the blame lies with misplaced generosity.
Greed is ever-present in human affairs, but those years included something unique: Massive government efforts to soften the blows of COVID-19. Paradoxically, this helped the rich get richer and contributed to the 2024 political climate.
The government’s stimulus program—much of which ended up as generous but perhaps unintended taxpayer gifts to the wealthy—and Fed interest rate cuts led to rising real estate prices and substantial gains in stock market values. More dollars in the economy meant each dollar was worth less as inflation took off. Higher-income households are less damaged by inflation than working-class people who spend most of their income on goods and services.
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Meanwhile, contrary to plans, federal programs disproportionately transferred billions to owners and managers of businesses across the nation rather than to hourly workers. On top of that, a lot of COVID-relief money, paid for in no small part by current or future working-class taxpayers, simply got wasted.
A review of the situation by Cecilia Rouse, Brookings Institution president and chair of the Council of Economic Advisors from 2021-23, offers a revealing and disturbing analysis. Rouse focuses on both the disastrous effects of the pandemic and assessing the massive $4.5 billion in stimulus packages delivered by the Trump and Biden administrations.
Though just four years ago, it bears mentioning that as President Joe Biden took office, some 460,000 Americans had been killed by the pandemic. Before the pandemic’s end, 1.2 million U.S. lives would be taken. The economy’s shutdown brought a devastating disruption to daily life. Rouse points out that in April 2020, “the number of Americans living under stay-at-home orders reached more than 300 million.” Weekly claims for unemployment compensation rose from a typical level of 207,000 in March 2020 to 6,137,000 in April.
Stimulus poured in, we learned to better protect ourselves and things quickly started improving. Employment recovered in record time. The nation dealt with one of the most severe, but thankfully short, disruptions in modern times.
But given the damaging bout with inflation that followed, was the stimulus too large? Was the waste, fraud and abuse too much? Did working class people get a fair share? Or was the system tilted so that higher-income people gained too much?
Rouse examines two specific programs. The $800 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) provided forgivable loans to small businesses and nonprofits to retain workers, meet payroll and insurance costs, and keep the doors open. The Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program provided larger loans payable over 30 years. Some 1 million firms received PPP loans and 3.9 million obtained EIDL loans.
Researchers show that two-thirds of the PPP’s forgivable loans went to business owners and shareholders, not to employees or wage earners. The General Accountability Office indicates that fraud totaled $64 billion out of the $800 billion. Estimates of fraud under the EIDL program indicate that $136 billion was siphoned off.
Other research indicates that PPP loans cost between $169,000 and $256,000 for each job saved, more than twice the annual wage of the workers affected. With owners and executives at the top siphoning off money, protecting workers was neither simple nor affordable.
Let us hope that our nation never faces another tragic pandemic. But if it does, let us also hope that our government doesn’t take actions that enable the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer in more ways than one. Should working-class voters be angry about greed, or at those who enabled it?
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Bruce Yandle is a distinguished adjunct fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, dean emeritus of Clemson University’s College of Business & Behavioral Science, and former executive director of the Federal Trade Commission. ©2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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It was neither of those, and not Bernie’s socialist answer either.
It was elitist disdain, followed by extravagant fraud, spending trillions of money, running up debt that can only be paid by the next generation. Greed is not the fault of working people. England expects every man to do his duty. The U.S.A. expects every man and woman to conduct his and her financial affairs with prudence and thrift. The financial system–call it Wall Street–conducts its affairs with anything but prudence or thrift. The U.S. has behaved as hypocrisy personified. Buccaneering Wall Street with GREED and imperious Washington have always conducted themselves as Don’t do as we do; do as we tell you.
Every single American is expected to live within his or her means and keep a balanced checkbook. The government doesn’t. A fact they flaunt in struggling Americans faces. Then that government has the nerve to call it price gouging and blame the people for this. We’re held to the letter of the law, better not step out of line or your whole life is ruined. The government openly thumbs their nose at the law, essentially daring us to do something about it.
Well… we did something. We elected Trump.
The Dems take the minority vote for granted. Dems support illegals but not citizens. They make lots of promises to the minorities and then like most of their promises they fail to deliver. Same thing with election cycles time after time and year after year. The minorities are tired of empty promises for the Dem elite who pursue their pet projects after the election. This is nothing new. The government has failed to enforce antitrust legislation for decades now. The fact so few people own so much of the economy is the real problem.
The American Promise is that if we go to school, work hard, and become a productive and faithful employee, we can then expect to support a family, raise and educate our children, enjoy a healthy and fulfilling life and retire with dignity. We weren’t supposed to have to win the lottery, or be a corporate executive to enjoy the American dream.
That was the vision of middle class Americans, who once modeled the image of what it was to be an American. The middle class is disappearing in direct proportion to the demise of the American union movement. After World War II, nearly 30 percent of our work force belonged to unions. Today, barely half of labor is organized. Today, only a few workers own the world’s resources while most live in poverty.
Low wages for blue collar thralls are common.
For most of these workers there is no health insurance or retirement plans. The result? Taxpayers across the United States are making up for what employers should be paying with public assistance programs. That’s corporate welfare. Why are wages so low?
Because that’s the easiest way to increase profitability. The result?
Today, the wealthiest one percent own as much of our nation as ninety percent of the rest of us. Corporate CEOs can earn 500 times the wages paid to their workers. As a billionaire, Trump’s part of the problem. This has been going on since 1980.
Unions like the UAW were one of the reasons for the rotten quality of Cars built by the Big Four (remember AMC?) and increasing prices of that rolling junk, and the buyers switched to Imports 40 years ago. The real problem was the disconnect between increasing automation, computerization and the increased productivity, and wages.
The US working class is the stupidest in the World – most don’t read like the Greatest Generation. It continues to vote for the very class of People who have been exploiting, frauding, and cheating them all of their lives Union Featherbedding and high wages for lower productivity is what doomed Private Unions in US manufacturing, moving to the low Union, Right to work states.
Trump is not Hitler, but we must pay attention to the history of autocrats | Letters
Phyllis Gobbell
Wed, November 20, 2024, at 8:02 AM EST
Pay attention and learn from history about autocrats
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I won’t suggest that America is becoming 1930s Germany, but I can’t help warning Americans to pay attention. We learn from history – if we let ourselves and accept truths we may not like to hear.
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My understanding of the dark path Germany followed nearly a century ago is that Hitler rose to power on the strength of three messages:
- White-skinned people are superior to other races and should dominate them
- The economy is dismal, and I alone can fix it
- I will get rid of the group that we can blame for all the country’s problems.
Does that sound familiar?
The Germans supported an authoritarian government without considering the ultimate cost. In the kind of country Hitler proposed, voters liked hearing that the group responsible for all their problems might suffer (and they did, 6 million of them). But the suffering didn’t stop there.
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You remember how that story ended – for Germany, and for the world – when the flawed, cruel strongman they elected did what he told them he would do.
I’m just asking you now, as an American, to be vigilant. If you are thinking you are getting the president and the country you voted for, please don’t just roll over and trust that the strongman you’ve elected will act in your best interests.
Begin with taking note of who Trump chooses for his inner circle. Are you comforted, believing the likes of Stephen Miller will care about you? Please, just pay attention.
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