Half of Trump's policy - and his biggest legislative agenda - was the traditional Republican playbook -- increase government spending and cut taxes across the board, running up the deficit. (The median American got around $1000 from the cuts, but the top 1% got $50,000.)
Where he departs from traditional is in his trade wars and restricted immigration. The benefit of those to the average American is unclear. I don't have a strong opinion, and opinion from economists seems highly varied.
1) $1000 to a median is a much bigger boost than $50,000 to a 1%'er...
And I think the numbers are off. As I said before, I do my own taxes and mine was about $2000 difference and I am near the median with no kids. I'm guessing that wherever those numbers came from is using total taxes, not just federal.*
Because there was a fair amount of restructuring, there is a variance depending on who you are. But I've seen roughly this number from multiple sources. Here's one:
The Tax Policy Center estimates the 60% of Americans at the lower end of the income distribution will have federal tax savings of less than $1,000. Also, most people believe the tax cuts didn’t benefit people like them but only the very wealthy. They are right. Those in the top 1% save $51,000.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/teresaghilarducci/2019/04/09/five-good-reasons-it-doesnt-feel-like-the-trump-tax-cut-benefited-you/
cf also https://americansfortaxfairness.org/promise-will-middle-class-tax-cut/
They both come from the same source paper. The source paper brings up the fact that the bottom quint includes the people who don't file/do not pay any income tax...but I noticed neither article points that out because it doesn't fit the narrative of 'orange man bad'...
Speaking of which, did you really source something that used 'latinx' as a category and then made everything about race? I noticed that they included asians in the chart, but left them out of the discussion. Do you suppose that particular ethnic group might have skewed their imaging that no one but 'whitey' can succeed? I'm not even going to get into the outright lie when they say no business loopholes were closed.
By definition, people who aren't paying income tax, can't have it reduced...You do realize that including a large number of people who either didn't pay
any income tax before or else have their burden reduced to zero artificially reduces the 'per capita' tax break in that quint making it appear lower, right??
Do I need to set up some fractions or other advanced mathematical concepts to demonstrate that concept?
2) Restricted immigration raises wages by reducing the supply of workers. This can also raise prices but over the last 50 years the wage stagnation far outstrips any price increase that is due to reduced worker supply.
3) Trade wars and tariffs will cause similar effects, but again the fact that it is not true free trade has still caused prices to rise far faster than wages.
...Would you allow a US company to use slave labor inside the border? Setting aside the moral/ethical dilemma, economically it would give the company a significant advantage over competition. Then why is it considered 'free' trade when you allow importers to do it?
4) Economists are never in consensus. Everything is a series of trade-offs.
Regarding these - #2 and #3 are a piece of #4. Yes, I've seen similar arguments about immigration, but those seem simplistic. Many people picture that there are a fixed number of jobs from the overlords, so if you double the population - then half the people are out of work. But that's obviously false. More people means more domestic market -- building more homes, shopping more, and so forth. That creates more jobs. And more work can also create more jobs, like how new homes creates new service jobs. The balance between positive and negative effects depends on the details of how immigration is handled.
As for slavery - that is overwhelmingly a moral/ethical question, not an economic one. I would love it if we set trade limits based more on morality rather than convenience - but that wasn't what the recent trade wars were about. We're still close partners with Saudi Arabia and other repressive countries.
Point 4 was included specifically as reference to your comment about economists not having a consensus...and I specifically excluded the moral/ethical argument about slavery because we were discussing economics. Apparently fighting China in a trade war (for whatever reason) and reducing our energy dependence on countries like Saudi Arabia weren't enough for you. I'm glad Biden is going to do more to support your moral/ethical outlook than Trump tried to do. I bet ol' Joe really sticks it to the Chinese and the oppressive oil exporters. All he has to do is finish Keystone so we can get more oil from better world citizens like Canada...oh wait, he cancelled that didn't he? Oopsie!
2 & 3 aren't 'simplistic'. I specifically pointed out the good/bad duality. I assumed everyone on the board had enough economic education that they didn't need the paragraph long explanation of how everything moved along the curve in little steps to equilibrium. I'm not trying to pad a thesis here. I also notice you had nothing to say about my actual point, which was that the wage stagnation over the years has been so pronounced that they would rise faster than prices at this point...
1) At this point, the damage that will come from stimulus, QE, etc. is going to be pretty devastating.
(Hence, why the can keeps getting kicked down the road.)
2) Everybody below upper-middle-class will get hit very hard, but the elites try and hide it by manipulating the data.
(Inflation is a big factor at that end of the income spectrum. Notice which categories have been 'removed' from inflation rate calculations between 2000-2016.)
The only recent president who came close to balancing the budget was Bill Clinton, who had negative deficit for 1998 - 2001. Trump followed the exact same playbook as Bush - continue to raise the federal budget and give a bunch of tax breaks (mostly to the rich), while raising the deficit. Obama came in during the Great Recession, and he continued roughly the same Bush plan for dealing with it.
On the national debt, you point out that the elites are going to walk out of it and the middle and lower classes take the brunt. I agree that this is a distinct possibility. The Republican solution is to keep giving the elites more and more money through tax breaks. The Democratic solution is to undo the elite tax breaks so they pay a greater share.
*If* one's concern is that the middle and lower classes are taking undue burden for the national debt, then I would think that the Democratic solution makes more sense. I think the only way that the Republican deficit approach makes sense is if one believes in trickle-down theory, or "a rising tide lifts all boats".
OMG...You are actually going to bring Bill's 'budget surplus' into this discussion...now I know you aren't being serious...The 'federal budget' is a trojan horse because 2 of the top 3 outlays for federal dollars (SS and means-tested need *cough* welfare *cough* aren't included in the so called 'budget'...I mean I'd love to leave my house and car payments out of my personal budget but I don't think the credit agencies are gonna buy it.
3) They started raising the Interest Rate as soon as he got into office. But his policies still enabled the economy to expand and the rate was almost back into the 'range' that economists like, then the Wu-Flu destroyed the economy.
(He understood that Keynesian economics are not good long term, but he was trying to soften the blow as much as possible. If you look at his ideas as a whole they all lean in that direction.)
As much as I despise the use of Keynesian economics to generate wealth off of the back of a serf class, I think he was trying to get people out from under the establishment yoke without collapsing everything.
I don't see how you think his policies accomplished this. Yes, the economy expanded under his first three years, though the economy expanded under Obama's second term as well. And his response to the covid economic crisis was roughly the same as Bush and Obama to the Great Recession - stimulus money.
Yes, Trump raised the budget. You 'forgot' to note that the rising interest rates mean that the economy was doing significantly better than under either predecessor. That allows for the reduction of the stimulus over time which is moving in the right direction, at least compared to Bush and Obama.