The Donald Trump Etch-a-Sketch

Donald Trump has initiated his economic Etch-a-Sketch. Over the weekend he reduced his tax cuts by about $4 trillion. Exactly how he will do this is more than somewhat unclear. Meanwhile, the two parties, Particularly the Republicans, engage in fantasy economics. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders continues to indulge in proposals that are both impossible from a budgetary standpoint and politically. Even if some miracle produced a democratically controlled House of Representatives, it would not except Sanders proposals even were he to be president, which you will not be. Hillary Clinton is closer to the truth but she is only nibbling around the edges. She should concentrate on an infrastructure building program and the creation of an infrastructure bank. Each could use public and private partnerships.

As far as one can tell, the Republicans remain mired in deep deep fantasy. They pursue the notion that tax cuts solve all problems. Recall the budgets that Congressman Ryan proposed circa 2009 and in 2012. They proposed hey plan that would create growth in GDP approximately 5 to 7 times greater than historic information would suggest as possible. They appear to be variations on the Laffer curve theory that didn't work during the Reagan administration. He also proposed cuts in social welfare programs. The net effect of his proposals would reduce the amount of money going to people with high marginal consumption rates and provide more money to people and corporations that are already awash with cash. It won't work.

When I was young it was thought that technology would free people from repetitive drudgery. In fact that is occurring. We need less people to produce things. Also the effect of globalization has caused a structural element of unemployment. Finally there is demographics. The result of all this is that we have more work eligible people that our economy needs, at least on the private side. We also are increasingly becoming a service economy. The public and private spheres of our economy have always been complementary. They need to be so increasingly again. We need to get rid of nonsensical political ideological problems and address reality. Work needs to be spread around more. If private enterprise can't supply jobs, the government will have to Stepien. For political reasons that would be best if it were done with of like private partnerships. Government is not going to get smaller. It can't. But it can get better. One way or another, we have to put people to work. As it is apparent in our inner cities, the lack of jobs causes social breakdown and cascading personal and societal problems. It has got to be corrected.