The non-existent Trump economic miracle.

POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Sunday, August 30, 2026 16:38
VIEWED: 7832
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JEWELSTAITEFAN

Saturday, October 17, 2020 1:36 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:

And he probably voted for Obama, so that he could have his healtjh care taken away.

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Saturday, October 17, 2020 1:40 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:

Goodbye Middle Class: Half Of All American Workers Made Less Than $34,248.45 Last Year

If you are making less than $3,000 a month, you have plenty of company, because about half of the country is in the exact same boat. The Social Security Administration just released new wage statistics for 2019, and they are pretty startling. To me, the most alarming thing in the entire report is the fact that the median yearly wage was just $34,248.45 last year. In other words, half of all American workers made less than $34,248.45 in 2019, and half of all American workers made more than $34,248.45. That isn’t a whole lot of money. In fact, when you divide $34,248.45 by 12 you get just $2,854.05. Needless to say, it is not easy to survive in America today on just $2,854.05 a month, and this may help to explain why we have been seeing so many people fall out of the middle class in recent years.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/goodbye-middle-class-half-
of-all-american-workers-made-less-than-34248-45-last-year

Now, that measure of central tendency - 'the median' - is only slightly less useless in a highly skewed distribution than 'the average'. The number one really wants to see would be 'the mode'. But nobody reports that because it would leave high-income earners out of the picture entirely and paint too accurate a picture of the American workers.

That linky crashes my browser, so it cannot be read.

f you are making less than $3,000 a month, you have plenty of company, because about half of the country is in the exact same boat. The Social Security Administration just released new wage statistics for 2019, and they are pretty startling. To me, the most alarming thing in the entire report is the fact that the median yearly wage was just $34,248.45 last year. In other words, half of all American workers made less than $34,248.45 in 2019, and half of all American workers made more than $34,248.45. That isn’t a whole lot of money. In fact, when you divide $34,248.45 by 12 you get just $2,854.05. Needless to say, it is not easy to survive in America today on just $2,854.05 a month, and this may help to explain why we have been seeing so many people fall out of the middle class in recent years.

And of course all of the figures that I am sharing with you in this article are just for 2019. This year, we have seen more than 63 million Americans file new claims for unemployment benefits as the U.S. economy has imploded during this pandemic, and so the final wage numbers for 2020 could be quite a bit worse than the numbers for 2019 were. Please keep that in mind as you go through the rest of this article.

Once upon a time in America, a single income could easily support a middle class household in most cases, but those days are long gone.

The cost of living has been rising far faster than our paychecks have, and as a result many Americans have been working themselves to the bone just to survive financially from month to month.

To give you an idea of just how bad things have gotten, I would like to share with you some key numbers from the report that the Social Security Administration just released…

-32.26 percent of American workers made less than $20,000 last year.

-44.79 percent of American workers made less than $30,000 last year.

-56.46 percent of American workers made less than $40,000 last year.

-65.91 percent of American workers made less than $50,000 last year.

Today, the poverty level for a household of five in the United States is $30,680.

That means that close to half of all workers in this country do not even make enough to get a family of five above the poverty level.

Wow.

There are tens of millions of Americans that are referred to as “the working poor” because they are living in poverty even though they are employed and are working extremely hard. Many of you that are reading this article know exactly what I am talking about. Some of you are working way more than 4

SECOND

Saturday, October 17, 2020 3:00 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
And he probably voted for Obama, so that he could have his health care taken away.

The story says Alec Smith was a Republican and a Trump voter.
www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/09/01/641615877/insulins-high-c
ost-leads-to-lethal-rationing

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SECOND

Saturday, October 17, 2020 3:21 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN
And the release:
https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2019
That table shows 169 million wage earners.

From the Social Security Administration table, 50.88% of wage earners will earn less than $35,000 per year. Let us look at only that 50.88%.

Why America is the World’s First Poor Rich Country
https://eand.co/why-america-is-the-worlds-first-poor-rich-country-17f5
a80e444a

The average American has a relatively high income, that of a person in a nominally rich country. Only his income does not go very far. Most of it is eaten up by attempting to afford the basics of life. We’ve already seen how steep healthcare costs are. But then there is education. There is transport. There is interest and rent. There is media and communications. There is childcare and elderly care. All these things reduce the average American to constantly living right at the edge of ruin — one paycheck away from penury, one emergency away from losing it all.

But this isn’t true for America’s peers. In Europe, Canada, and even Australia, society invests in all these things — and the costs of basic necessities societies don’t provide are regulated. For example, I pay $50 dollars for broadband and TV in London — but $200 for the same thing in New York — yet in London, I get vastly more and better media for my money (even including, yes, American junk like Ancient Aliens). That’s regulation at work. And when basic goods like healthcare or elderly care or education are provided and managed at a social scale, that is when they are cheapest, and often of the best quality, too. Hence, healthcare costs far less in London, Paris, or Geneva — and life expectancy is longer, too.

So if you are earning $50k in America, it is a very different thing than earning $50k in France, Germany, or Sweden — in America, you must pay steeply for the basics of life, for basic necessities. Thus, incomes stretch much further in other countries, which enjoy a vastly higher quality of life, even though people there earn roughly the same amount, because they pay vastly less for basic necessities. Americans are rich, but only nominally — their money doesn’t buy nearly as much as their peers does, where it matters and counts most, for the basics of life.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SIGNYM

Saturday, October 17, 2020 11:35 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:
Or, we could just have nationalized free healthcare like every other country in the 1st world.

https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/484301-22-studies-a
gree-medicare-for-all-saves-money

But that's not true. "every other country" does NOT have nationalized free healthcare.

Canada has single payer, where the government cuts out the insurers and pays (private) healthcare providers directly.

France's medical workers, OTOH, are a mixture of public (working for government) and private (paid by government). Public insurance is available to all, as is private insurance, but whether you choose public or private insurance, you MUST have insurance. It is mandatory.

Australia, too, has a mixture of public/private healthcare, paid for by government, but because public healthcare is more cost-effective the private entities are being swamped out.

In Britain, healthcare is funded by taxes, not insurance, and healthcare providers work directly for the government. That is the only truly "nationalized" healthcare system that I know of.

Germany has a system of what is called "Multipayer" system which includes both public and private insurers.

What seems like a simple statement of fact is not so simple after all.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

1KIKI

Saturday, October 17, 2020 1:23 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
But this has been going on for DECADES. Long before Trump, and even long before Obama.

The only thing that happened under Trump is the same thing that happened under Obama, GWB etc: NOTHING. NOTHING happened to reverse the trend.

That's what I'm saying. I'm not blaming Trump for the impoverishment of the average American. Over all the years and all the politicians, there's certainly plenty of blame to spread around for the fix we're in.

I'm just saying he didn't turn it around. Of course, being a domestic issue Trump has very little control over this. So I'm not even criticizing him for it either.

I'm just pointing out the pathway between Trump can do no wrong, and Trump can do no right.

SIGNYM

Saturday, October 17, 2020 4:46 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
But this has been going on for DECADES. Long before Trump, and even long before Obama.

The only thing that happened under Trump is the same thing that happened under Obama, GWB etc: NOTHING. NOTHING happened to reverse the trend.
That's what I'm saying. I'm not blaming Trump for the impoverishment of the average American. Over all the years and all the politicians, there's certainly plenty of blame to spread around for the fix we're in.

I'm just saying he didn't turn it around. Of course, being a domestic issue Trump has very little control over this. So I'm not even criticizing him for it either.

I'm just pointing out the pathway between Trump can do no wrong, and Trump can do no right.

Trump CANNOT create an economic miracle. I never expected him to.

Many Presidents, starting with Nixon and all the way thru Bush1, Clinton, Bush2 and Obama worked MIGHTY HARD to help industry offshore manufacturing jobs and convert the USA into a "financialist" center.

How can a President, over the course of four years, reverse decades of economoc treason? Seriously, what would it take to bring even 100,000 manuacturing jobs back to the USA?

Well, you can start by imposing tariffs on incoming goods to make "made in America" more cost competitive, and you can repatriate overseas money to come home by making USA corporate taxes more in line with international ones (like Ireland) but unless you can FORCE a company to .... say ... use that money to build a steel plant or a chemical plant or a cotton mill or aluminum refiner ... they will take all that
extra" money and use it to buy back stock.

This isn't a case of Trump, or any President, or even Congress not having the authority to do that, it would be stepping into a whole new world of nationalization, where you would have state-owned (or at least government-financed or government-mandated) enterprises, like China and its SOEs.

I think this is the conundrum FDR faced, because infrastructural spending goes only so far to stimulate the economy. Once you've paved the roads and electrified rural America and built railways and giant dams.... unless you have a thriving PRODUCTIVE economy, the roads and railways will be empty and the electricity will be unused. But then, there was the war and all of the sudden the govenment needed millions of tons of steel and copper and cotton and butter, and the actual PRODUCTIVE economy came to life because the government ordered it so.

So a President and a willing Congress would have to invoke something like a war measures act ... hopefully without an actual shooting war ... to mandate a production restart. And BTW you should forget about the USA "competing' on the world stage, elbowing aside such cheap-labor environmental miscreants like China and India. USA goods will always be non-competitive against those nations if we want to have a decent stadard of living at home, so the best we can hope for is self reliance. Of course, transational capitalists would be unsatisfied with not making "maximal" profit (whch they can do overseas) so this is where the heavy hand of government comes in.

I don't see any way around nationaliation of major industries ... or at least direct government loans for production restart ... for that economic miracle to happen. If you can think of another way, let me know.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

1KIKI

Saturday, October 17, 2020 5:30 PM

To get back to Trump/ republicans v Obama/ democrats ...

Various administrations have had an active hand in securing corporate maximal profits, from Kennecott Copper and Anaconda in Chile in the 1920's to a hundred years later with Apple in China ... and IP, outsourcing, and free trade agreements in between. I'm just pointing out that the destruction of US manufacturing wasn't entirely due to corporations; the government expended resources and adopted policies, agreements, and laws to make it so. Perhaps without the government's involvement, the process would have been slower.

SECOND

Saturday, October 17, 2020 7:38 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Trump CANNOT create an economic miracle. I never expected him to.

I expected him to. It is easy to do so when Congress cooperates with the President and the result was that Trump did produce a miracle.

Remember the CARES Act? I do. That was the economic miracle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARES_Act

CARES was to be followed by a second miracle, the HEROES Act.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEROES_Act

Why is there no HEROES Act?
Because of Mitch McConnell. Since Mitch does not believe Trump will be reelected, Mitch will not help President Biden create a miracle similar to Trump's.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/521225-mcconnell-shoots-down-18-tr
illion-coronavirus-deal-breaking-with-trump

Signym, you might want to look closer at the economic miracle of WWII. That President's miracle was putting to work 16,112,566 Americans in the United States Armed Forces. Those Americans had active purposes and real goals to accomplish. In sharp contrast, Trump's miracle was to pay 30,000,000 Americans with no purpose other than waste time and do nothing until Covid-19 miraculously went away. To do more would have required government planning, but Trump doesn't know how to plan.
www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/cares-act-measures-strengthening-
unemployment-insurance-should-continue

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

REAVERFAN

Saturday, October 17, 2020 7:41 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:
Or, we could just have nationalized free healthcare like every other country in the 1st world.

https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/484301-22-studies-a
gree-medicare-for-all-saves-money

But that's not true. "every other country" does NOT have nationalized free healthcare.

Canada has single payer, where the government cuts out the insurers and pays (private) healthcare providers directly.

France's medical workers, OTOH, are a mixture of public (working for government) and private (paid by government). Public insurance is available to all, as is private insurance, but whether you choose public or private insurance, you MUST have insurance. It is mandatory.

Australia, too, has a mixture of public/private healthcare, paid for by government, but because public healthcare is more cost-effective the private entities are being swamped out.

In Britain, healthcare is funded by taxes, not insurance, and healthcare providers work directly for the government. That is the only truly "nationalized" healthcare system that I know of.

Germany has a system of what is called "Multipayer" system which includes both public and private insurers.

What seems like a simple statement of fact is not so simple after all.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

#WEARAMASK

You have it in Russia. Right, comrade?

God, you're stupid. Every fucking post. Pure stupid.

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