Monday, June 27, 2016

Donald Trump is P.T. Barnum


The snake-oil Donald Trump really is only one note. 

Trump brings people into his camp by promising that he’s going the help defend “them”, those who have been looked over or disenfranchised by the movement of the nation away from caring about the middle-class.  He says he’s self-funded and so “not for sale.” 

Now of course, he’s taking money from big money donors, so I guess the “not for sale thing” is gone.  He's also trying to separate small money donors from their cash.
Over his entire career, Trump is exactly the type of Wall Street elitist who was raised in opulence; and he has been advocating for the tax changes, trade changes, etc. that made it easy and profitable for the elites to move jobs away.  Even more importantly, his solution to “bring back” jobs it to reduce wages for manufacturing sector workers so that we can be “competitive” with workers in places where the standard of living is both far cheaper and FAR below what the workers in the US, including our parents, worked hard to attain and so enjoyed for decades and expected to pass on to us. 
 
The bottom line of the economics landscape of the past 35 years has been that the rich cut wages but didn’t cut prices and instead pocketed the difference.  Any class on Macro-Economics will tell you that is a recipe for disaster as consumption power will fall over time while the wealth at the top will create an “asset bubble” (e.g. the real estate bubble).  

Those bubbles historically ALWAYS burst, in boom / bust cycles, and the economy suffers disastrous periods of volatile and violent upheaval where jobs are lost by the millions and savings and other asset accumulation is destroyed.  It is a form of calculated wealth extraction, redistributing that wealth to the already-wealthy.

Trump has been all-too-happy to take advantage of those changes

H
e’s employed thousands of meagerly-paid workers in China to make his shirts, ties, and the like.  He seeks to hide behind lawsuits to avoid having it disclosed that he pays nearly nothing in taxes and gives LESS to charity in actual cash out ofhis pocket – in short, he’s been an advocate for the exact changes he now says he opposes and opposed the changes he now says he’d make.   


So, do you believe a guy who only has ever acted to enrich himself, including doing things which were allegedly illegal, when he says he stands for you?   

Even if you do, do you seriously think chasing wages down the rabbit hole and making our workers live on the same meager salaries that are paid in Indonesia is what you think of when you hear him say he will “Making America” great? 

Great for him I guess, but not for you.

Barnum was famously quoted as saying, "There's a sucker born every minute."  The question is, are you a sucker?  Do you buy the crap coming from this man, a man who has made a career of (over)promising solutions in which EVERYONE is going to win, only to have those promises prove hollow and the only one who won was Trump as he pocked his millions, walking away laughing, shielded by our favorable corporate bankruptcy laws.



There is no question the west needs to figure out how to better manage the transition toward a more global economy, there is no question that simply letting the rich keep prices high while slashing jobs and wages is not working and will not work, but there is also no question that slashing wages further (Trump’s solution) is no solution and that Donald Trump is selling disaster and a worse life for you.  

Are you a sucker, or do you understand the bearded lady is a fraud?

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