01-04-2017, 02:16 PM
(01-04-2017, 11:52 AM)TeacherinExile Wrote: Trump's economic policies--as neoliberal as they may be--could indeed ignite a regeneracy of sorts. His proposed tax cuts and infrastructure investment can't help but stimulate the economy in the short run. But if his combination of tax cuts and infrastructure spending accrues largely to the benefit of crony capitalists and/or the top 1 percent of earners, then that stimulus may prove fleeting, especially if it does little to lift the incomes of the working-and middle class. In that case, the class resentment that Trump exploited to perfection in his campaign may reach a flashpoint.
Most likely, if somewhat successful initially, a capital-devouring bubble that creates an initial boom that denies long-term growth elsewhere, followed by a panic as in 1929 or 2008. With Donald Trump as President, any crash in which the solution of even bigger tax breaks to the rich and gutting of New Deal and Great Society, the economic consequences could be a more protracted downturn (both started with similar meltdowns) as the one beginning in 1929.
Quote:Not that I'm comparing Trump to Hitler (I'll let others try to make that weak case), but the Fuhrer was perceived as a Gray Champion, at home and abroad...at first. (Even made the cover of Time magazine, as did Trump last year). Through large-scale rearmament and infrastructure spending, Hitler succeeded in stimulating a very depressed German economy. But then he launched a world war, as we all know, and brought his Third Reich to utter ruin.
He's probably more like Juan Peron than like Adolf Hitler. His wife could be Evita.
Quote:The key questions for me, and there are so many imponderables where Trump is concerned, is this: Will he be any more successful than was Obama--and the Fed--in achieving "escape velocity" for the US economy, one that not only generates self-sustaining growth, but a widely shared prosperity as well? If America remains mired in "secular stagnation" after four years in office, how will our deeply divided country look then? Throw in another financial crisis--which I fully expect at the back end of Trump's term in office--and I have to wonder if he and his team of billionaires and generals will be able to resolve it without repression. I simply don't know, and neither does anyone else. That's why one expert labeled his potential presidency as the "terror of the unknown."
I expect Donald Trump to look out first and only for the Master Class, dedicating the government to facilitating the flow of wealth and power to economic elites at the expense of everyone else even if such creates mass suffering -- as do majorities in both Houses of Congress. I am reasonably certain that he and Congress will find ways to ensure that Republicans do not lose any elections that they do not wish to lose.
Democracy dies in America on January 20.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.