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Trump’s Tax Plan

Few Presidents ever get the chance to irretrievably wreck the economy in spite of themselves. Donald Trump’s tax plan could send the economy spiraling into the Great Abyss for 100 years or more. It’s that bad, that ill-conceived, and that stupid.

The economy tries to correct itself regardless of who occupies the White House. If that were not the case we would all be living in the rubble of a 35-year Depression beginning in 1981 with little chance of pulling out of it for decades. Still, the Clinton and Obama administrations have pulled the economy up, while the Bush and Reagan years have pulled it down.

Economic philosophies and principles matter. It is an undeniable fact that the economy performs substantially better under Democratic administrations than it does under Republican administrations. Here are the data for average annual real GDP since 1980:

Republicans + 2.2%; Democrats + 3.5%

That difference is huge. In today’s dollars that difference created nearly 2 million more jobs per year, higher tax revenues, lower budget deficits, and a smaller burden on the poor.

Trump would go back to approximately the same tax rates from the Bush and Reagan years that produced lower growth, lower employment, and higher deficits. He also plans to slash government spending for those programs that help sustain the poor because of lower GDP and higher budget deficits. That would be devastating to nearly 75 million residents. He would eliminate health care for the 13.3 million who have come under the Affordable Care Act. That’s a double whammy on the poor. And he would eliminate the inheritance tax, the final barrier that would open the floodgates to accelerated growth in wealth and incomes at the high end.

Now is the time for safer, saner economic policies to prevail. If Trump believes his plan would produce jobs and prosperity, he is too stupid to be President. If he knows it will produce much slower growth, fewer jobs, greater needs among the poor, while producing even greater inequality in the most unequal economy in the industrialized world, he is too cruel to be President. Either way, we need to dump Trump now. Indeed, we need to dump the entire slate of Republican candidates because they all adhere to the same economic policies that have failed us since 1981.