Who claimed it did ? You seem to have completely missed the entire point.
Upthread, I predicted that the MiddleClass part of the tax cut bill was WAAAAAY too small, and the vast overwhelming majority of the working class would not notice it. And here we are.
So the CBO recently forecast that the annual federal budget deficits will be well over a trillion dollars in each of the four years of this administration’s term. So what do we get for that besides the trillions going to the Rich & Corporate, and even greater inequality and concentration of income and wealth at the top ?
The GOP promised their tax bill would put money in every American’s pocket (a lie right out of the gate), which would result in them spending more, thereby creating more jobs, raising wages, and bringing in so much revenue there would not be any increase in the federal debt.
So how is this supposed to happen if the vast overwhelming majority of the people who are the drivers of the national economy haven’t even noticed they got a tax cut, not to mention the millions upon millions who got NO tax cut, and the millions upon millions who got a tax INCREASE ?
Wages doubled for just about everyone from 1950 to 1970.
Since then wages are mostly flat or up maybe ~20% for the bottom half but the top 5% has seen their wages grow a good ~75%.
So we have the precedent of 3 previous decades of wage growth above inflation for everyone and we have the fact that wage growth has continued to rise at a nice pace for the top 5%. Both make it fairly reasonable for the bottom half to expect wage growth better than inflation.
The majority of the GDP of the nation flowed to the Middle-Class and Working Poor then. America had economic mobility then, as countries like Sweden, Denmark, and others still do today.
You really have to leave the '70s out of these kinds of calculations, as there were a number of external oil shocks that completely warped the metrics and make it extremely difficult to contrast to other decades.
Starting with the massive tax cuts for the Rich & Corporate in the early '80s, the majority of the GDP since has flowed to the top and economic mobility has virtually disappeared, so the children of poor parents remain poor, and the children of wealthy parents remain wealthy.
There were some rather hopeful reversals during the two Clinton terms, with rising real wages, the lowest Poverty rates since the '60s, by far the best overall economy in the modern history of the country, and a lot more, but the massive tax cuts for the Rich & Corporate in the early 2000s killed all that.
Ray Dalio, of Bridgewater Associates (the world’s largest investment fund with $160 billion under management), says the probability of a recession before the 2020 presidential election is at 70%.
He suggests efforts to pump up the economy with massive tax cuts and surging spending could well backfire.
Dalio says that next downturn could be complicated by the widening gap between America’s rich and poor, relating that there’s one economy for the country’s top 40%, and another for the bottom 60%.
“I’m scared about a recession,” Dalio said, “mostly because there are these two economies that exist.”
In 2007, Dalio famously warned the Bush administration that many of the world’s largest banks could soon become insolvent.
After WWII most of the worlds industrial capacity was destroyed. Except for the United States. The United States industrial capacity was enhanced by the war. This lead to a “Golden Period” for the United States during the 50’s & 60’s where we supplied the equipment necessary to rebuild the war ravaged world. From the mid 70’s to today the United States has struggled to compete with the modern industrial equiptment we provided to the rest of the world. :
I guess it depends on the means by which productivity gains are achieved. For example, the internet has allowed much more efficient sharing and distribution of information, greatly enhancing productivity. Who has benefited from that?
In many ways, network effects from the internet have given rise to “superstar effects”, where a few talented people become very popular (and often very rich) as they are able to share their teaching lectures / video blogs / pictures of their asses / etc with the world’s population. With such easy availablility and access, why consume anything but the best online content? Efficiency is improved, but the ability of the average person to make a living doing these types of things is probably worse due to higher competition where only the best succeed.
That’s a long-ago debunked canard. Sure, many of our competitors were wiped out, but so were those markets we could sell to. They had no money.
Yes, we sponsored the Marshall Plan, but it was a lousy $13 billion. It was only meant to prevent people from dying in the streets, and an attempt to restore confidence.
The economic recovery in the then 17 European countries was led by their coal, steel, and other completely local industries.
You totally miss my point and provide support it at the same time. With limited financial support from the US the war ravaged world had to become efficient to be able to rebuild. As the US upgraded the industrial capability of the rest of the world, the rest of the world got lean and mean rebuilding. Enduring hardship to achieve their rebuild. The US had a almost monopoly providing machinery and industrial equipment. This easy money caused US companies to become inefficient, bloated and outdated. Selling most of the new manufacturing equipment overseas. Again, allowing most of the modern equipment be sold for profit. Providing bloated wages and benefits not sustainable once competition came back. Not realizing that this easy money was only to be for a limited time until the rest of the world recovered. The US is still affected by the lack of foresight and generosity of the previous generation corporate management.
You’re once again regurgitating a baseless canard. There is no substantiation for your revisionist history.
To who ?
They had NO MONEY, remember ? YOU posted “After WWII most of the worlds industrial capacity was destroyed”. You can’t have in both ways, their economies were destroyed, meaning they didn’t have the money to purchase our “manufacturing equipment”. Their recoveries were locally based.
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The U.S. had a very strong economy in the '50s and '60s for the same reason it had a strong economy in the '90s.
In the '50s and '60s, the top tax brackets were between 70% and 91%. The majority of the national GDP flowed to the Middle-Class and Working Poor. Prosperity ensued.
In the '90s, corporate tax rates were increased and tax rates on the wealthy were increased. The EITC was expanded and the Federal Minimum Wage was increased twice, the combo resulting in 4.3 million working Americans being lifted out of Poverty and into the Middle-Class. Prosperity ensued.
The lesson I draw from the “discussion” here is that socialist/communists and capitalists do not agree on very much.
PBS recently ran a multi-part documentary on the Vietnam war. I lived through that war as a adult. It was a very divisive war here at home in the USA.
But the PBS documentary brought out something I had not realized in real time. It highlighted over and over the extent to which those fighting us in the south were communist true believers. I had always thought it was more a “we’re fighting to defend our homeland” sort of resistance.
Communist true believers, who oftentimes prefer the progressive or liberal label, should NEVER be taken lightly . . . as the USA did during the Vietnam war much to our peril and loss. Communists HATE capitalism, and they are perfectly willing vigorously to re-educate you if you do not agree with their communist preferences. If that re-education process fails, they are perfectly willing to execute you.
Communism is alive everywhere in the world today, and certainly here inside the USA more than ever before.
He’s talking about the discussion “here” (in this thread) boiling it down to socialists/communists vs capitalism, then concluding that communists are everywhere taking the guise of liberals.
In other words he’s implying the people arguing here include socialists/communists calling themselves liberals, oh an that the so called “liberals” (who are just communists really) probably also want to execute people who we can’t turn.
Your use of the inclusive “we” there, jerosen, is duly noted. Revealing
And, yes, historical examples abound of communists executing (or torturing) those unable to be turned to their way of thinking. Let me tell you further:
I was alive during the entirety of the cold war, from its inception to the day President Reagan finally ended that war without firing a shot. Liberal “progressive” socialist/communist commentary today, including posts to this thread, sounds exactly like the propaganda coming out of the Soviet Union back then. Period.
All no shock really, I suppose. What the heck, “progressive” garbage is being taught in our primary and secondary schools today, and far too many of our colleges are hotbeds of communist indoctrination. All of which is to say nothing of the communist crapola coming out of Hollywood and the American mainstream media. Communists have today completely taken over one of our major political parties, and are well on their way toward taking control of the second.