Somebody needs to say it: The United States economy is a disaster in the making. When we collapse we will almost certainly take the civilized world down with us.

When Obama became president, the economy was in free-fall due almost entirely to the composite actions of the George Bush administration. Unemployment tanked at 10.2 percent, 4 million families lost their homes, stock prices were plummeting with 50 percent losses, banks were failing, and the worst recession since the Great Depression was spreading throughout the land and around the world. Obama, the Fed, and Americans of goodwill worked for the next 8 years in rebuilding and restoring our economy and our confidence.  Under dubious circumstances, we then elected a scatter-brained tyrant to replace Obama. Together, we authorized Donald Trump and the Republican Party control of all three branches of government. We were relatively free of scandal, at peace with most of the world that had also rebuilt its economies. Against this background of tranquility and prosperity, Trump nevertheless promised to “make America great again.”

Since January 2017 Trump et al. he has managed to restore most of the failed policies of the Bush administration. In addition, he has set about the tasks of destroying all the gains of the past 50 or 60 years in health care, climate change, education, immigration, energy, science, and diplomacy, while weakening all of our Western alliances. Moreover, Donald Trump personally has kissed up to Vladimir Putin and to Kim Jong Un with an intensity that should embarrass the rest of humanity—even if we were high on opioids. He has also put into place enough failed economic policies to bring on a recession that could be even worse than the Bush administration's fiasco.

“Elections have consequences” is an axiom, not a platitude. The actions of three branches of government acting in unison can be a force for immense good, or for devastation that could last a lifetime or longer. We are on the brink of learning the true lessons of what voting stupid really means. (At this writing our leaders still tell us we do not know if Russia's meddling was enough to swing the 2016 election to Trump.  Putin smiles knowingly at such ignorance).

The Trump “tax cut” bill that became law last year helped in a minor way to prolong a business cycle that was already nearly 90 months long. That is the immediate effect of putting a little more money into circulation. But on the negative side, this same law stopped taxing household wealth altogether. That means that $100 trillion dollars of unearned inherited income will never be taxed—unless that law is changed. That is great news for the Trump family with $5 to $10 billion of wealth waiting to be transferred to Ivanka, Donald Jr. and others. It also means that $100 trillion is free to grow to $3 quadrillion in the next 50 years. That number means that inequality will be 30 times worse than it is today. And those numbers guarantee that every economic and social problem in the US will grow nearly beyond imagination in that same time period. I am referring to all the components of poverty (hunger, unemployment, worsening health care, higher crime rates, suicide rates, imprisonment rates, illiteracy rates, mental health issues, and social immobility).

The immediate positive effects of that tax bill are already dwindling while the longer-term negative effects are just beginning. So far this year tax revenues to the Treasury have fallen by 21 percent. And in July, alone, they fell by 79 percent. It can only get worse. The $1.5 trillion shortfall to the budget forecast by the Congressional Budget Office in the next 10 years will likely become a grossly understated hope. It will put Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security at risk simply because they are easy targets to blame—even though none has contributed to our debt.

It’s fair to ask: Why does it take courage to point out that there Is a $100 trillion wealth heap extant that could help solve most of our social and economic problems? And we would only need to tap about 2 percent of it to solve most of them. By the way, that $100 trillion represents the combined efforts of all Americans, past and present. It is pure fiction to state—and sheer delusion to believe—that a handful of ultra-rich inheritors produced 90 percent America’s wealth.  

Here is another consequence of putting a tyrant in the White House: He is putting into effect a large number of tariff increases on imports—as if that will end our huge trade imbalance. But he has appointed only “loyalists” to all the top positions. And that means “Shut up. Go along or you're  fired.”

Well, apparently nobody told him that Europe and Asia can also raise their tariffs. And when world trade falls, everyone goes down. Surprise! Nobody told him what nearly every economist and historian alive knows about the Great Depression of the 1930s: It was greatly exacerbated and prolonged when nations tried to shut down trade with each other.

Donald Trump inherited about $30 million. In the past his father and the bankruptcy courts bailed him out of most of his major blunders when he was only king of his empire. But that was when he could only screw his employees, his contractors, his lenders, and the US Treasury out of what he owed them.

It does not require a degree in psychology, or criminology, or any other “ology” to know when someone is trying to kill you, whether he knows it or not. By his actions it is clear to this observer that Donald Trump has a lot of difficulty in dealing with reality; he is too slow or chooses not to learn; he is too self-centered; too greedy; too uncaring; too much of a liar and too ignorant to be in charge of anything. But now he is screwing all of us and most of the world. It is high-time that we stopped him. As Ronald Reagan used to say: “If not us, who? And if not now, when?”