@JJJ37 - first, let me state that I appreciate your opinion and that you support Donald Trump. I might not agree with you, but that is part of what makes America a great country.
I’m American, born here, live here… and I’m not of the opinion that America is the greatest country, and despite his claims, I don’t think Trump really cares about making America great again… whatever the hell that means anyway. I tend to want to measure the greatness of countries by things like Literacy, Happiness, Education, Health Coverage, etc. Things that America aren’t even close to being the best at. There is no such thing as a perfect country, but there are things that make each country great… look at something like the World Happiness Index, has the US ever been on top of that list. Why not? Do we not care about it?
Now, before I get into disagreeing with your points below, let me say that I further believe that we have more in common than there are things that separate us. We both want a lot of the same things: a strong economy, a great educational system for our kids, low unemployment, etc., we just don’t always agree on how to achieve those things (or what order to prioritize them).
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING: You’re my punting bro, and despite our political disagreements, I truly respect your opinion and would still happily buy you a beer and hang out with you!
Before digging into the below, if you want to skip reading all this, basically I’m asking a simple question - Correlation or Causation? Are the results you call out below simply happening while he is in office or did he actually cause them? I have a hard time believing that either of us could prove it either way. In the end, History will be the ultimate arbiter on how “good“ Trump was, not our friendly little debate on here.
Okay, so onto your claims:
- The American economy is stronger…
By what measure? The numbers you cite below? I don’t believe that all of those are a result of anything that Trump has done. He inherited a great economy and has done little but grow our national debt through unnecessary tax cuts (something to be done during bad economic times, not during a growing economy).
- American workers are experiencing more opportunities…
How so? Unemployment numbers - which have been going steadily down since Oct of 2010 (when they peaked around 10.2%). Again, a straight line down basically and what EXACTLY has Trump done to create jobs? Wait, if he did do something to create jobs, isn’t that socialism? I thought Republicans believed that the government should stay out of peoples lives? I know the Keystone pipeline… more on that one later…
- confidence is soaring…
Assuming you mean consumer confidence, it actually isn’t, is has actually been going down since you wrote this, and is now hovering around 95, in the same general range since 2015, when someone else was in the White House… I can’t recall who that was…
Actually, if you look at Consumer Confidence, it’s been steadily increasing since 2009, and has hovered in the same basic range since 2015. Yes, it went up above it’s normal range a few times, but you attributing that to Trump is really misguided, as you’d have to say that now he is doing something to cause it to go down, are you ready to say that??
- and business is booming…
This one is hard to quantify and discuss. Do you mean corporate profits? IF so, I’d rather talk about wage growth for the entire population.
-GDP growth of more than 3% for two quarters in a row.
GDP growth has been in the same basic range since 2010, basically since we got out of the recession. As a side note, I’m not a fan of measuring the success of a country by it’s GDP, because it accounts equally for both creation & destruction. Wreck your car and spend money to get if fixed? That spend contributes to GDP. Natural disaster wipes out a neighborhood or town? The money spent to rebuild it contributes to GDP, so show me the purely creative side of that “growth” and we can talk! Oh, and there has been a lot of destruction in the last couple of years… Climate Change anyone?
It was actually 2.3% for 2017, and if GDP is important, then maybe we should replace Trump with Xi, the GDP in china has been more than double that of the US!
-The Dow has set record highs 70 times this year, rising 5,000 points in a year for the first time in history.
The dow has the same basic trajectory for the last 60 years. Up!
Yes, it’s gone up a lot under Trump, but what EXACTLY did he do to cause the rise in the market? And is he also responsible for the recent declines? The market has been on a tear since 2009 / 2010. Presidents don’t cause the markets to move, perception of the future of corporate profits do. Again, this has little to do with the person sitting the White House. The market goes up for both Republicans & Democrats. Also, the Dow is limited to just 30 companies… so that isn’t really a good representation of the US Economy. Heck, the Hang Seng Index is up YTD more than the DOW, so maybe we should replace Trump with Carrie Lam??
-Nearly 3 million jobs have been created since Trump took office.
Ugh. Two things here. First, we have some history to compare this to and you should go look at the President who presided over the greatest # of jobs created in history (Clinton, 18.6 million). Trump is now sitting on top of 4.7, which is impressive, however, let me ask again — what EXACTLY did he do to create those jobs? Show me how you can prove that he actually did something that caused those jobs to be created. Don’t say the Tax Cut & Jobs Act… that is bullshit. That was a gift for large companies. Some trickled down some bonuses to their employees, but for the most part that was a windfall for already wealthy people. Job creation has been growing steadily for nearly the last 9 years… to your next point…
-Low unemployment. The unemployment rate has dropped to 3.8, the lowest rate since April 2000, and job openings have reached 6.6 million, the highest level recorded. The number of people collecting unemployment benefits has continued to fall to a near 44-year low.
Again, this is a trend that began under Obama.
-304,000 manufacturing jobs have been created and manufacturing employment stands at its highest level since December 2008. & 337,000 construction jobs have been created and construction employment stands at its highest level since June 2008.
Yep, since the depth of the recession!
-The Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines are under construction. Jobs created: 42,000.
Great, more money being wasted on extending the fossil fuel industry! And there has been nothing to prove that this will have a long term benefit for the US (outside the short term job gains), this will enrich a small number of companies and has a long-term negative effect on the environment, which is why so many people opposed it!
-67 percent of Americans believe now is a good time to find a quality job, according to Gallup. Only Trump have more than 50 percent of Americans believed it is a good time to find a quality job since Gallup began asking the question 17 years ago.
Okay. Here is another statistic, the average Gallup approval rating for Presidents is 53%, and Trump is at 44% - near his high, which peaked at 45%. What does it say that “our” President has never had an approval rating of even 50%?
Let me cherry pick a few from here:
-American families received $3.2 trillion in gross tax cuts and saw the child tax credit double.
At what long term economic cost? Again, I thought you all cared about the debt & deficit? This was short term stimulus at a time when it wasn’t needed. This was like pouring lighter fluid on top of a already burning fire.
-The top corporate tax rate was lowered from 35 percent to 21 percent so American businesses could be more competitive globally.
Most companies aren’t even paying 21% currently due to loopholes. So who cares what the corporate tax rate is? Take GE as an example, they paid an effective rate of 7% in 2010! Regardless, I would be thrilled if companies actually paid 21%, if they actually paid what they owed!! And don’t try to sell me on the idea of Trickle Down economics, very simply the evidence doesn’t back up that those Voodoo economics work, it assumes that companies actually uses the money to hire workers, invest in companies, etc. which isn’t guaranteed. The people who have gotten wealthy over the the last few decades are corporate executives and Wall Street investors.
-Rolled back unnecessary job-killing regulations beyond expectations. Deregulation has spurred business confidence, economic activity and stock market growth. saving $8.1 billion in lifetime net regulatory costs.
What job killing regulations? These regulations are the laws that protect us, as citizens. Please cite some examples of regulations that actually kill jobs that aren’t harmful to the greater citizenry? Most of the regulations that business have to deal with are state level, and as someone who has been part of two businesses being started I can’t think of one regulation that prevented us from starting the business or hiring people — granted, I wasn’t dumping chemicals in rivers! LOL!!
-Launched a nationwide effort to fight the opioid crisis, which has devastated communities across America. The President’s Opioid Initiative seeks to reduce drug demand, cut off the flow of illicit drugs, and save lives by expanding treatment opportunities. Trump signed an omnibus spending bill which provides nearly $4 billion to address the opioid epidemic. The bill included $1 billion for grants focused on the hardest hit States and Tribes and provided funding for a public-private research partnership on pain and addiction.
Is this working?
And I’m not buying all this immigration talk… net immigration in this country has been going down for the last 20 years.
At the end of the day, we can both bend the numbers to help tell the story we want to believe.
I’m embarrassed having Trump as my President. I’m not even going to get into all the stuff about Russia, the investigations, the massive turnover in his cabinet (“we’re going to hire the best people”, yeah, right!), his reckless foreign policy, the racism, his fake emergency, shutting down the government, his lack of action on gun violence, etc., etc., etc.
Time will tell if his agenda is good for our country, but for now I’m not buying that he has been good for our country.
I welcome the debate here!
