GDP Hits 4.1 %! In Second Quarter

[Muy Largo]

What does what you just posted have anything to do with what I posted? You confuse an entire state's behaviors with what I posted, it seems. Plus, you generalize and editorialize about those behaviors, I won't waste my time refuting your shallow generalizations. But I will say this: Has President Trump's repeated lying and ongoing misleading, hyperbole reinforced your confidence in him? He lies so frequently it's impossible to start pointing out the lies. His problem is that he's never really accountable. In my neck of the woods people who lie as frequently as Trump get run out of town. Or completely ignored. I think this is as true in rural Oregon and in rural Georgia and in rural Texas as it is in rural Minnesota. Honesty still matters to many people. Trump has never been known as an honest man. Never.

[lustylad]

Originally Posted by Tiny

LustyLad, As you already know - you’ve forgotten more about economics than I’ll ever know - the government spending as % of GDP you quoted, 20% to 25%, is federal spending. That number might climb towards 25% in a recession, as it did in 2009. Total government spending in the USA, including state and local government expenditures, as a % of GDP is currently around 38%. Just pointing this out for the benefit of those who think we should spend more on government.

I may be comparing apples to oranges though. Maybe some of the 38% would be expenditures that are double counted, say a social security payment that's spent again to buy goods and services? And so "G", after adjusting for that, is 20% to 25% of GDP and reflects all government expenditures (state, local, federal)?

Excellent question. And yes, you hinted at the answer. GDP counts actual spending on goods and services. Government transfer payments are therefore deducted from government spending to avoid double counting. Here is a link that explains it:

"Government spending on goods and services averages about 20 percent, or one fifth, of total GDP. The government takes in an amount equal to more than one fifth of GDP in taxes, but a portion of that money, equal to about 10 percent of GDP, goes to transfer payments rather than expenditures on goods and services. Transfer payments include Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, welfare programs, and subsidies. These are not included in GDP because they are not payments for goods or services, but rather means of allocating money to achieve social ends."

https://www.infoplease.com/homework-...ther-now-c-i-g

[lustylad]

Originally Posted by LexusLover

Hardly "nonsense"! But if it makes you feel "smarter," please continue to delude yourself. Gross National Product is based on PRODUCTION: services and commodities. That's why the use of the word "Product"!

Hmmm... so you're telling us the P in GNP stands for Product? Wow! Thank you so much for clarifying that! In my delusional state I would never have guessed!


My POINT (which you attempted to change) is not that it was wasteful (although some of it was, because it was handed out to friends of Obaminable who contributed to his campaign and election rather than being handed out based on merit), but that it is REFLECTED in the up tick of "PRODUCTION" in the U.S.

Well yes, I agree. C + I + G explicitly includes G.


To compare apples and apples the Government Assistance has to be extracted from the PRODUCTION, which means the productivity created by the injection of taxpayer money has to be deducted.

What apples and apples are you struggling to compare? Obama's GDP versus Trump's GDP? Both include a govt component and both are computed using the same national income methodology. So we're already looking at apples and apples. I suppose you could drop the govt component entirely and restate everyone's GDP numbers as C+I only. Is that what you are proposing?

Btw I think you mean "extra product" rather than "productivity". Productivity is output per manhour (or GDP/total hours worked by the employed labor force). It goes down during recessions and tends to increase during the early stages of a recovery.

What the fuck... I might even agree with your point if you knew how to express it coherently.

[lustylad]

Originally Posted by SpeedRacerXXX

Yes, Obama presided over a weak economy. That is what he was handed by Bush (for whom I voted -- twice)...

Obama was in office for 8 fucking years. Yes, he inherited an economy that was pretty much in free-fall in January 2009. Any honest economist will acknowledge that. By July 2009, the economy had bottomed out. From that point on what obama "presided over" - and therefore owns - was the weakest economic recovery in US postwar history!




Obama doesn't get a pass for 6-7 subsequent years of subpar growth just because his first 1-2 years could arguably be blamed on his predecessor. His policies of over-regulation, his anti-business bias ("you didn't build that!"), and his inept focus on healthcare while neglecting whatever was needed to create "shovel-ready" jobs, teed up the economy for Trump to come in and unleash it.

[lustylad]

Originally Posted by SpeedRacerXXX

Trump was handed an economy in good condition and has improved it. One quarter of excellent GDP growth is somewhat meaningless. As I said in an earlier post -- great work. Let's see what happens for the rest of the year.

Hey speedy, this was written for you!


It’s Trump’s Economy Now

Liberals want to keep crediting Obama—never mind their own 2016 predictions of disaster.

By Stephen Moore and Arthur Laffer
June 7, 2018 6:48 p.m. ET

Liberals have opposed virtually every move President Trump has taken on the economy, which makes it inconvenient for them that economic conditions are so universally positive. It is hard to find a single indicator that isn’t pointed in a bullish direction. That’s why the left is now forced to argue that Mr. Trump’s economic success is really the continuation of a trend that began under President Obama.

Take the new book by former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes, “The World as It Is.” Mr. Rhodes quotes President Obama as saying shortly after Mr. Trump’s victory: "I’ve got the economy set up well for him." That self-congratulatory line was repeated in the media seemingly 1,000 times after Friday’s blockbuster jobs report.

Is it true? Yes, but not in the way Mr. Obama and the Trump haters think. As advisers during the 2016 campaign, the two of us told Mr. Trump over and over that he could get America back on a path of 3% to 4% annual growth. After seven years of the weakest recovery since the Great Depression, we felt confident that simply turning the policy dials from antibusiness to pro-business would have an enormously stimulative effect. Mr. Trump agreed—and that’s precisely what he has done as president.

Mr. Obama might be justified in taking credit for today’s economy if his successor had adopted and carried on his policies. Instead, Mr. Trump has reversed nearly every Obama rule, edict and law that he can legally overturn. At its core, the Trump economic strategy wasn’t complicated: systematically repeal Mr. Obama’s “accomplishments” - the tax increases, the regulatory blitz on business, the welfare expansions, the war on American fossil fuels, and so on. As a result, the economy would pop like a cork pulled from a shaken champagne bottle.

Mr. Obama does deserve credit for the long and durable recovery. But it was a very shallow one that left much of the country behind. Our estimate of the “growth gap” - the difference between where the economy was in 2016 and where it should have been with a normal recovery - was an accumulated $2 trillion to $3 trillion in annual output. We felt confident Mr. Trump could recapture that lost output.

Don’t forget, too, that liberal economists were convinced the economy would crash and burn if voters picked Mr. Trump. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers lamented that “if he were elected, I would expect a protracted recession to begin within 18 months.” A month before the election, the Washington Post ran an editorial with the headline: “A President Trump Could Destroy the World Economy.”

Democratic financier Steve Rattner warned on MSNBC: “If the unlikely event happens and Trump wins, you will see a market crash of historic proportions.” In the wee hours after Election Day, with Mr. Trump the likely victor, Paul Krugman declared: “We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.”

The smart set argued that getting economic growth to 3% was virtually impossible. Yet 18 months into Mr. Trump’s tenure, the economy is already nearing that mark, with no recession in sight. It turns out that 3% growth seemed impossible to the left only because Mr. Obama’s Keynesian policy prescriptions failed to do the trick.

It’s a little rich that liberals who warned the economy would melt down under Mr. Trump are now insisting that growth was in the cards all along. If the economy and the stock market had crashed, it’s obvious they’d be sanctimoniously denouncing Trumponomics as a tragic failure.

Liberals’ original explanation for the big boost in 2017 was that Mr. Trump was riding an international growth wave. But now international growth has stalled (Europe is growing at 0.4%). Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has picked up steam, and the latest growth projections for the second quarter are above 4%.

A final reason to dismiss the idea that Mr. Obama deserves credit for the Trump boom is that the economy was decelerating, not accelerating, during 2016. The growth rate for Mr. Obama’s last year in office was an anemic 1.6%. But the economy turned on a dime the day after the election. Employers and investors realized that the Obama era was over, and they knew intuitively that good things were on the way. Consumer confidence, business confidence, and the stock market all soared. In June 2016 only 32% of Americans rated the economy as “good” or “excellent.” Today 62% do.

As one of us (Laffer) used to tell Ronald Reagan : “Sir, you were blessed by the incompetent economic policies of your predecessors— Nixon, Ford and Carter.” So it has been for Mr. Trump. Yes, it is early in his presidency, and he could still foul up. We worry deeply about the negative effects of his tariffs and trade policy. He’s reversing the one thing that President Obama got right!

But Mr. Obama’s approaches to taxes, energy and regulation were wrongheaded. In that sense, they really did set up President Trump for this big economic rally - by giving him bad policies to repeal.

Mr. Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a consultant with FreedomWorks. Mr. Laffer is chairman of Laffer Associates. Their book, “Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Get Our Economy Back on Track,” is forthcoming this fall from St. Martin’s Press.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-tru...now-1528411719

[The_Waco_Kid]

Originally Posted by lustylad

Hey speedy, this was written for you!


It’s Trump’s Economy Now

Liberals want to keep crediting Obama—never mind their own 2016 predictions of disaster.

By Stephen Moore and Arthur Laffer
June 7, 2018 6:48 p.m. ET

Liberals have opposed virtually every move President Trump has taken on the economy, which makes it inconvenient for them that economic conditions are so universally positive. It is hard to find a single indicator that isn’t pointed in a bullish direction. That’s why the left is now forced to argue that Mr. Trump’s economic success is really the continuation of a trend that began under President Obama.

Take the new book by former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes, “The World as It Is.” Mr. Rhodes quotes President Obama as saying shortly after Mr. Trump’s victory: "I’ve got the economy set up well for him." That self-congratulatory line was repeated in the media seemingly 1,000 times after Friday’s blockbuster jobs report.

Is it true? Yes, but not in the way Mr. Obama and the Trump haters think. As advisers during the 2016 campaign, the two of us told Mr. Trump over and over that he could get America back on a path of 3% to 4% annual growth. After seven years of the weakest recovery since the Great Depression, we felt confident that simply turning the policy dials from antibusiness to pro-business would have an enormously stimulative effect. Mr. Trump agreed—and that’s precisely what he has done as president.

Mr. Obama might be justified in taking credit for today’s economy if his successor had adopted and carried on his policies. Instead, Mr. Trump has reversed nearly every Obama rule, edict and law that he can legally overturn. At its core, the Trump economic strategy wasn’t complicated: systematically repeal Mr. Obama’s “accomplishments” - the tax increases, the regulatory blitz on business, the welfare expansions, the war on American fossil fuels, and so on. As a result, the economy would pop like a cork pulled from a shaken champagne bottle.

Mr. Obama does deserve credit for the long and durable recovery. But it was a very shallow one that left much of the country behind. Our estimate of the “growth gap” - the difference between where the economy was in 2016 and where it should have been with a normal recovery - was an accumulated $2 trillion to $3 trillion in annual output. We felt confident Mr. Trump could recapture that lost output.

Don’t forget, too, that liberal economists were convinced the economy would crash and burn if voters picked Mr. Trump. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers lamented that “if he were elected, I would expect a protracted recession to begin within 18 months.” A month before the election, the Washington Post ran an editorial with the headline: “A President Trump Could Destroy the World Economy.”

Democratic financier Steve Rattner warned on MSNBC: “If the unlikely event happens and Trump wins, you will see a market crash of historic proportions.” In the wee hours after Election Day, with Mr. Trump the likely victor, Paul Krugman declared: “We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.”

The smart set argued that getting economic growth to 3% was virtually impossible. Yet 18 months into Mr. Trump’s tenure, the economy is already nearing that mark, with no recession in sight. It turns out that 3% growth seemed impossible to the left only because Mr. Obama’s Keynesian policy prescriptions failed to do the trick.

It’s a little rich that liberals who warned the economy would melt down under Mr. Trump are now insisting that growth was in the cards all along. If the economy and the stock market had crashed, it’s obvious they’d be sanctimoniously denouncing Trumponomics as a tragic failure.

Liberals’ original explanation for the big boost in 2017 was that Mr. Trump was riding an international growth wave. But now international growth has stalled (Europe is growing at 0.4%). Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has picked up steam, and the latest growth projections for the second quarter are above 4%.

A final reason to dismiss the idea that Mr. Obama deserves credit for the Trump boom is that the economy was decelerating, not accelerating, during 2016. The growth rate for Mr. Obama’s last year in office was an anemic 1.6%. But the economy turned on a dime the day after the election. Employers and investors realized that the Obama era was over, and they knew intuitively that good things were on the way. Consumer confidence, business confidence, and the stock market all soared. In June 2016 only 32% of Americans rated the economy as “good” or “excellent.” Today 62% do.

As one of us (Laffer) used to tell Ronald Reagan : “Sir, you were blessed by the incompetent economic policies of your predecessors— Nixon, Ford and Carter.” So it has been for Mr. Trump. Yes, it is early in his presidency, and he could still foul up. We worry deeply about the negative effects of his tariffs and trade policy. He’s reversing the one thing that President Obama got right!

But Mr. Obama’s approaches to taxes, energy and regulation were wrongheaded. In that sense, they really did set up President Trump for this big economic rally - by giving him bad policies to repeal.

Mr. Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a consultant with FreedomWorks. Mr. Laffer is chairman of Laffer Associates. Their book, “Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Get Our Economy Back on Track,” is forthcoming this fall from St. Martin’s Press.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-tru...now-1528411719

FAKE NEWS! the WSJ knows nothing! SNICK!

sorry .. just had to get there before piglet did. bahahahahahaaaa

i recall on the news when ObamaCare was announced, a hispanic business owner in Forth Worth said that with 55 employees, it would be more profitable for him to lay off five people due to ObamaCare.

wanna bet he's hired ten people by now?

[Tiny]

I’m a huge fan of Stephen Moore and Art Laffer. They both strongly support free trade. Hopefully Trump will surprise some of us, and start listening again to them instead of people like Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon. An intelligent, coherent trade policy would help sustain higher GDP growth rates

[lustylad]

Originally Posted by Tiny

I’m a huge fan of Stephen Moore and Art Laffer. They both strongly support free trade. Hopefully Trump will surprise some of us, and start listening again to them instead of people like Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon. An intelligent, coherent trade policy would help sustain higher GDP growth rates.

They don't advise him directly. But hopefully he listens to Lawrence Kudlow, another free trader who chairs his Council of Economic Advisers.

[bambino]

Originally Posted by lustylad

They don't advise him directly. But hopefully he listens to Lawrence Kudlow, another free trader who chairs his Council of Economic Advisers.

I think Kudlow is listening to Trump. Trump doesn’t like Tarrifs, but he’s trying to fix decades of bad trade deals.

[SpeedRacerXXX]

Originally Posted by lustylad

Hey speedy, this was written for you!


It’s Trump’s Economy Now

Liberals want to keep crediting Obama—never mind their own 2016 predictions of disaster.

By Stephen Moore and Arthur Laffer
June 7, 2018 6:48 p.m. ET

Liberals have opposed virtually every move President Trump has taken on the economy, which makes it inconvenient for them that economic conditions are so universally positive. It is hard to find a single indicator that isn’t pointed in a bullish direction. That’s why the left is now forced to argue that Mr. Trump’s economic success is really the continuation of a trend that began under President Obama.

Take the new book by former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes, “The World as It Is.” Mr. Rhodes quotes President Obama as saying shortly after Mr. Trump’s victory: "I’ve got the economy set up well for him." That self-congratulatory line was repeated in the media seemingly 1,000 times after Friday’s blockbuster jobs report.

Is it true? Yes, but not in the way Mr. Obama and the Trump haters think. As advisers during the 2016 campaign, the two of us told Mr. Trump over and over that he could get America back on a path of 3% to 4% annual growth. After seven years of the weakest recovery since the Great Depression, we felt confident that simply turning the policy dials from antibusiness to pro-business would have an enormously stimulative effect. Mr. Trump agreed—and that’s precisely what he has done as president.

Mr. Obama might be justified in taking credit for today’s economy if his successor had adopted and carried on his policies. Instead, Mr. Trump has reversed nearly every Obama rule, edict and law that he can legally overturn. At its core, the Trump economic strategy wasn’t complicated: systematically repeal Mr. Obama’s “accomplishments” - the tax increases, the regulatory blitz on business, the welfare expansions, the war on American fossil fuels, and so on. As a result, the economy would pop like a cork pulled from a shaken champagne bottle.

Mr. Obama does deserve credit for the long and durable recovery. But it was a very shallow one that left much of the country behind. Our estimate of the “growth gap” - the difference between where the economy was in 2016 and where it should have been with a normal recovery - was an accumulated $2 trillion to $3 trillion in annual output. We felt confident Mr. Trump could recapture that lost output.

Don’t forget, too, that liberal economists were convinced the economy would crash and burn if voters picked Mr. Trump. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers lamented that “if he were elected, I would expect a protracted recession to begin within 18 months.” A month before the election, the Washington Post ran an editorial with the headline: “A President Trump Could Destroy the World Economy.”

Democratic financier Steve Rattner warned on MSNBC: “If the unlikely event happens and Trump wins, you will see a market crash of historic proportions.” In the wee hours after Election Day, with Mr. Trump the likely victor, Paul Krugman declared: “We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.”

The smart set argued that getting economic growth to 3% was virtually impossible. Yet 18 months into Mr. Trump’s tenure, the economy is already nearing that mark, with no recession in sight. It turns out that 3% growth seemed impossible to the left only because Mr. Obama’s Keynesian policy prescriptions failed to do the trick.

It’s a little rich that liberals who warned the economy would melt down under Mr. Trump are now insisting that growth was in the cards all along. If the economy and the stock market had crashed, it’s obvious they’d be sanctimoniously denouncing Trumponomics as a tragic failure.

Liberals’ original explanation for the big boost in 2017 was that Mr. Trump was riding an international growth wave. But now international growth has stalled (Europe is growing at 0.4%). Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has picked up steam, and the latest growth projections for the second quarter are above 4%.

A final reason to dismiss the idea that Mr. Obama deserves credit for the Trump boom is that the economy was decelerating, not accelerating, during 2016. The growth rate for Mr. Obama’s last year in office was an anemic 1.6%. But the economy turned on a dime the day after the election. Employers and investors realized that the Obama era was over, and they knew intuitively that good things were on the way. Consumer confidence, business confidence, and the stock market all soared. In June 2016 only 32% of Americans rated the economy as “good” or “excellent.” Today 62% do.

As one of us (Laffer) used to tell Ronald Reagan : “Sir, you were blessed by the incompetent economic policies of your predecessors— Nixon, Ford and Carter.” So it has been for Mr. Trump. Yes, it is early in his presidency, and he could still foul up. We worry deeply about the negative effects of his tariffs and trade policy. He’s reversing the one thing that President Obama got right!

But Mr. Obama’s approaches to taxes, energy and regulation were wrongheaded. In that sense, they really did set up President Trump for this big economic rally - by giving him bad policies to repeal.

Mr. Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a consultant with FreedomWorks. Mr. Laffer is chairman of Laffer Associates. Their book, “Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Get Our Economy Back on Track,” is forthcoming this fall from St. Martin’s Press.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-tru...now-1528411719

As I said, we shall see how the economy does in the future. One quarter of solid GDP growth is meaningless in the long run. Yes, when Trump was elected corporations were VERY happy because they knew a windfall was coming their way. The tax reform package has been a boon for corporations and the wealthy. The true middle class got peanuts. And the government is already borrowing billions to cover the deficit, which is now predicted to be much more than the previously estimated $1 trillion over the next 10 years.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...records-651929

So far, my net monthly income has increased a whopping $20.

If the tariffs proposed by Trump come to fruition and a trade war ensues, we are in deep trouble. The authors mentioned that.

I did very well financially during the Obama administration. How about you?

[LexusLover]

Originally Posted by lustylad

What the fuck... I might even agree with your point if you knew how to express it coherently.

So you were wrong. Thanks for being "coherent" and admitting what I posted was not "nonsense"!

By the way ... cost of goods and services may be a factor in determining the value of "product," but it's only one factor.

If that's not sufficiently "coherent," let me know.

[LexusLover]

Originally Posted by SpeedRacerXXX

Yes, when Trump was elected corporations were VERY happy because they knew a windfall was coming their way. The tax reform package has been a boon for corporations and the wealthy. The true middle class got peanuts.

I guess "peanuts" is a step up from "crumbs"?
(Pelosi is from California where they promote "lower class" illegal migration for their work force to hold down "costs"! So, she knows about "crumbs"!)

BTW: How are "corporations" happy? "Corporations" hire people who pay taxes and "corporations" pay taxes as well as provide part of the health care costs for employees.

And is there an "untrue middle class"?

Getting a job, an increase in wages, a bonus, and/or health coverage is good.

Is your opinion the "collective group thinking" in the Austin metro?

Please vote Democratic, change Congress to the Democrats, spend a year or so trying to impeach Trump, repeal the tax bill, reduce military spending, open the borders to anyone, and let China and Russia finish what they've started in the World (again!). Regain "Utopia"!

But ... since you are an avid reader of the Austin Rag ...

https://www.statesman.com/news/local...kTA7oSb8qDX1I/

"Jobs, not tacos, biggest Austin draw for millennials, bank study says"

Those "mean, ole, nasty corporations"! Hiring people!

The Austin "draw" used to be music and impairment. BTW: San Antonio has better tacos.

[rexdutchman]

Just damn - Two word I would NEVER put together in the same sentence """"HONEST & POLITICIAN """"""

[LexusLover]

Originally Posted by rexdutchman

Just damn - Two word I would NEVER put together in the same sentence """"HONEST & POLITICIAN """"""

There are some sentences that are appropriate and there are some honest politicians. Just because one doesn't agree with their opinions doesn't make them "dishonest" ..... btw ....

I heard this comment over the weekend regarding Trump's (a nonpolitician) alleged comment about not agreeing with the "U.S. intelligent community's" assessment of the Russian internet invasion .... in that it was essentially (rank and file) the same "U.S. intelligent community" that provided the "intel" to Bush II in the ramp up to the Iraqi invasion for which the LEFT and ANTI-BUSHERS accused Bush II of LYING! Bush was an alleged LIAR for following their intel and Trump, according to the same crowd, should be shot for treason for allegedly dismissing their intel. The "depolorables" understand their affliction.

[SpeedRacerXXX]

Originally Posted by LexusLover

I guess "peanuts" is a step up from "crumbs"?
(Pelosi is from California where they promote "lower class" illegal migration for their work force to hold down "costs"! So, she knows about "crumbs"!)

BTW: How are "corporations" happy? "Corporations" hire people who pay taxes and "corporations" pay taxes as well as provide part of the health care costs for employees.

And is there an "untrue middle class"?

Getting a job, an increase in wages, a bonus, and/or health coverage is good.

Is your opinion the "collective group thinking" in the Austin metro?

Please vote Democratic, change Congress to the Democrats, spend a year or so trying to impeach Trump, repeal the tax bill, reduce military spending, open the borders to anyone, and let China and Russia finish what they've started in the World (again!). Regain "Utopia"!

But ... since you are an avid reader of the Austin Rag ...

https://www.statesman.com/news/local...kTA7oSb8qDX1I/

Those "mean, ole, nasty corporations"! Hiring people!

The Austin "draw" used to be music and impairment. BTW: San Antonio has better tacos.

Corporations are out to make profits, as close to maximum as possible. I worked for one for 45+ years. So far the corporations, with all the added money to their bottom-line, have not given back to their employees as Trump expected. Wages are still stagnant. Capital investment has been stagnant for the most part. Hiring has not increased at the levels hoped for. A handful of companies did give their employees bonuses but that was few and far between.

"The tax cuts, which were supposed to stimulate hiring, wages, and capital investment, largely aren't. Trends expressing themselves are long-term. The economy won't get a tremendous boost and deficits increase, making the government less economically stable."


https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikshe.../#5b4bfa906dc8

Who made out well when the corporations benefited from their tax windfall?

"President Trump promised that corporate tax cuts would bring a $4,000 pay raise to the average American worker. So far, however, only about 4 percent of workers have received one-time bonuses, while approximately 1 percent of workers have received a raise at all, according to the ATF database.

This stinginess towards workers has left plenty of tax windfall still to be accounted for. Of the estimated $60.8 billion in tax cuts received by 126 companies, only $6.5 billion has gone toward pay raises and one-time bonuses (that may not be paid in full anyway). So where have the tax cut gains gone?

Not surprisingly, to stock buybacks. Through the process of repurchasing their own stocks, corporate executives can enrich shareholders and, plushly, feather their own nests (since CEO pay is often linked to increases in the value of the company’s shares). The practice, which has overtaken paying dividends as corporate America’s favorite way of dishing out profit, has gone into high gear thanks to the GOP tax law. Authorizations for stock buybacks have increased by $238 billion since the tax law was passed, and they don’t look to be stopping. JPMorgan Chase strategists estimated in March that share repurchase totals were on pace to reach a record $800 billion in 2018, up from $530 billion last year."

http://prospect.org/article/waiting-...ose-wage-hikes

When I say the true middle class I mean those in the middle of the middle class, with a family income of up to $75k. Average family income in the U.S. in 2017 was $59k.

Your statement:

"Please vote Democratic, change Congress to the Democrats, spend a year or so trying to impeach Trump, repeal the tax bill, reduce military spending, open the borders to anyone, and let China and Russia finish what they've started in the World (again!). Regain "Utopia"!"


I don't believe and have never said anything close to any of those statements. I urge everyone to vote for the candidate of their choice, whether it be for dog catcher or POTUS. 58% of eligible voters in this country voted in the 2016 election. Terrible. I have NEVER proposed that Trump be impeached. I have no problem with a tax bill, but when a family earning $75k sees their net income increase by something like 1.6% and a family earning $250k sees their net income increase by something like 4.3%, I cry foul. I do not support open borders but I also do not support Trump's immigration plan of merit-based. I have never commented on the military budget.

So please don't put words in my mouth that I've never said or even come close to implying.