Billy Dursens of CrossDove Writer

The current talk coming out of Washington these days discusses the GDP (gross domestic product) being at 4.2%, which compared to the last 25 years looks to be outstanding – but is it?

According to the Financial Times, ‘the GDP may be anachronistic and misleading as it is designed to measure the physical production of goods in the market economy – it is not well suited to accounting for private- and public-sector services with no output that can be measured easily by counting the number of units produced’.

Much of this to a layman like myself is business language gibberish. I just want to know what the results are currently for the ‘normal joe’ American who goes to work 8-12 hours a day to keep food on the table, a roof over their head, clothes on their back and transportation to get to work each day and do it all over again.

We hear the current leader in the White House brag constantly about how smart he thinks he is when it comes to anything and everything, but were people really paying attention to his track record as a business person.

Do you remember him saying several times during interviews that he loves ‘debt’, that he is an expert about ‘debt’! I remember those comments and that is scary for me because of the number of businesses he has had where the debt grew and grew until he could get no more and then he filed for bankruptcy, which left so many honest working companies and people hanging out to dry for work they did.

Right now, the party in power at the Federal level claims the huge tax-cuts given in their budget proposal was to help re-kickstart our economy and help every American with as much as $4,000 in increased available money. Hogwash!!

The tax scam, or trickle down economics is simply doing what it has always done when tried (ask those of us that live in Kansas) – it is making for record shattering profits on Wall Street, massive pay-outs for the wealthiest of American, disgustingly large salaries for many CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of the largest companies, while leaving little or next-to-nothing for the working class, disabled or elderly all of whom are having to make ends meet on either stagnant or falling incomes.

The Center for American Progress reported recently that while the leader in the White House claims the U.S. economy is ‘stronger than ever before’ while pointing to his tax plan as the major reason – the truth is workers are NOT getting ahead with his style of economy. Recent data shows that workers’ wages are flat or even (in real terms) slightly down for each of his nearly two years in Washington.

Again, the Center for American Progress reports that while it’s not that wages haven’t ticked up at all because they have in part to due small increases in the minimum wage, but even with the slightly faster nominal wage growth – workers are losing ground because inflation has picked up a much higher percentage that the wage growth. That is NOT ACCEPTABLE!!

What concerns me more than ever is three-fold.

One – There is a fast growing disconnect between changes in economic output and the living standards for the majority of working Americans, just as there is a fast-growing gap between the workers and their companies’ chief administrators. Fifty years ago, the normal chief administrator for a company could be measured at making maybe 20-times the income of the lowest paid worker, but in today’s world many chief administrators for some of the largest companies in the economy are making anywhere from 300-times to as much as 5,000-times the lowest paid worker in the company. Again – NOT ACCEPTABLE!!

Two – The minimum wage is still stagnant having been stuck at $7.25 per hour since July of 2009. This is not enough to survive on without help from the Federal or state governments with food stamps, Medicaid and more. It seems lost on the people in power that what really makes the economy tick is whether or not the ‘normal joes’ of our grand country can afford to spend money on something besides the necessities like food, shelter, transportation and healthcare. EXACTLY!!

Three – The thinking that to cover the enormous deficit that the current administrations tax plan is causing, the blame and cost of it should be on those who need the help the most like the elderly, disabled, under insured and poor. These goofballs in Washington seemed to have forgotten that our Social Security is not an entitlement – it is something which hard working Americans have put away for in order to have something in retirement. In fact, Social Security is not part of the budget at all, it is totally separate, but not separate enough that the goofballs in Washington seem to think it is okay to keep borrowing from it without paying it back. THEY OWE US THE MONEY!!

I live in Kansas where the Brownback experiment that fickle trickle-down economics has nearly destroyed the states economy and support for those things we value most like public education and public infrastructure. This current play on fickle trickle-down economics at the Federal level will not work because those who build up the economy the best – the awesome American working force – are the ones losing out in the deal and without them being able to see the money, the countries economy will not see true financial growth, because you can not have one without the other!!

So, for now, I just gotta say – this is how I feel.

(Copyright@2018, CrossDove Writers – no part of this may be printed, copied or used without written permission by CrossDove Writers and Billy Dursens.)