Occam's Razor

In my last post, I discussed why the soaring stock market doesn’t mean a lot to most people. Roughly half of us don’t have the money to buy into the stock market, and most of us that do can only afford to do so through a retirement vehicle like a 401-K or an IRA. The principle value of a rise in stock prices is to inflate the wealth of those who bought stocks.

So the rich get richer while those who can’t afford them have to hope that their wage increases will exceed inflation. And so far, that hasn’t happened. Real wages, accounting for inflation, dropped .1% drop November through December 2019. Another sign it doesn’t mean much: the USA’s growth rate is 1.9%, at least as of the last quarter of 2019. This should suggest to most of us that markets are overvalued, and are due for a correction.

If Donald Trump is going to run on his greatest ever economy claim, then two percent growth must be outstanding. It’s not a recession but it suggests our real economy is anemic, just growing a bit while most of the rest of the world’s economy is starting to falter or is faltering. During his first campaign, Trump made it sound like 4% growth would be the absolute minimum that voters could expect. He’s failing at his own benchmark.

He’s been trying to juice up the economy with tax cuts. But as with the stock market, these tax cuts hardly affected the bulk of us and in some cases raised our taxes, such as the caps on state and local taxes that you can deduct from your federal taxes. The tax cuts definitely cut taxes on the rich and gave them a whole lot more money to do things like buy more stocks. One thing the rich aren’t doing is juicing the economy with all this new money by actually buying stuff. The trickle-down economy was never more than this: just a trickle of prosperity coming down to the rest of us from our betters.

Still, if 4% growth were a true goal, I can think of pretty easy ways to do it. So can Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. To start, we could take those tax cuts we gave to the rich and redirect them to the poor and middle class instead, who will almost certainly go out and spend it. This will cause the economy to grow, certainly by more than it has in our trickle-down economy, because the money will be used to actually buy goods and services.

Even better, we could redirect those trillions for the rich into service for the public good. Republicans clearly don’t want to address climate change, and certainly not with our tax dollars. It won’t stop climate change from happening anyhow. Trump’s trying to jumpstart the economy by stripping environmental protections clearly isn’t working either, but it is shortening our lifespans.

But it’s a sure bet that if that money were redirected to improving the environment, it would both cause the growth we want and put it to good use. We could use it to build the clean, green infrastructure we need to survive. That sounds like an excellent use of money. It will stimulate all sorts of jobs. The obvious ones will be in industries like the solar industry, but to go carbon neutral will require investment and ingenuity across our entire economy.

Moreover, if we tax carbon polluters, we can use that money to also build a green economy. I am already a beneficiary of a carbon credit. By putting solar panels on my roof in 2016, I allowed carbon polluters to claim credit for my clean and green energy. Being green paid me $1830 last year. This is real money in my pocket.

Such investments just compound. It stimulates industries like electric car manufacturing, wind energy, geothermal energy, green computing and the manufacture of more energy efficient products. By cleaning the air and water, we improve health. By removing carbon from our environment, we help address climate change.

All this growth in turn helps makes these industries profitable, so dollars start to follow them. Just as the space program brought us microelectronics and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funded the beginning of the Internet, these investments make a better future possible. And if we can do it sooner than other countries, we stand to gain a disproportionate economic advantage.

But even if you don’t think government should be spending money to do these things, you could still advocate for increases in the minimum wage. This will certainly put money in people’s pockets that can use it the most. As they earn a living wage, there is less need for them to use government services like Food Stamps. That saves the government money, grows the economy and also saves lives. If we were a nation that truly was pro-life, it would be an obvious thing to do.

In short, if Trump were a progressive and had worked for our interests instead of against it, he’d likely not be facing a trial in front of the Senate, wouldn’t need the help of Russia to get reelected and would probably have his election in the bag. Even Democrats like me might have voted for him. Instead, we get an egregious use of tax dollars for counterproductive purposes and the most corrupt president ever.

Let’s hope on November 3, voters act more enlightened.