The Great Betrayal of Working Americans

 “Happy Labor Day!” Donald Trump

Donald Trump is all about looking good and sounding like he knows what’s best for us all. He is a businessman who has underperformed compared to others who started out with less or equal amounts of family money… or those self-made billionaires… who found most of his fame as a bullying-businessman reality television star. That he did well. That persona was his key to success. He never really cared about “ordinary” people… until they turned out to be the audience that made him famous.

They listened to him, hung on every word, admiring the success he claimed without questioning the thousands of legal cases surrounding him and his companies, the serial bankruptcies of some of his most visible endeavors or the trail of pain he left behind his misdirected economic ventures. He had a staggering male following that admired his bravado and envied his machismo, his wanton pursuit of sex with beautiful women regardless of the moral or financial cost.

They elected him. He continued to talk to them, making them promises… but he even had to create or “observe” problems that only he could solve. They continue to believe him even as he disrespects their military heroes and continues to hack away at their financial future while assuring them that this is only a temporary discomfort, a necessary precursor to the good times ahead. He remains a consummate liar, denigrating any faction or force that dares oppose his vision.

And boy does he know how to lie with statistics, pretending that “average” economic metrics – numbers which soar because the rich simply pull up the numbers as a whole – when 70% of American haven’t seen an increase in buying power in 40 years and 40% of Americans have faced a trough in their ability to pay bills when there just wasn’t enough at least once in the past year. See my August 30^th blog, The Weakest Economy with the Best Statistics, if you want more detail.

Just about every major Trump-GOP political appointment, every proposed and passed major legislation, most of his executive orders and most certainly his thrust toward financial and environmental de-regulation – with a few gestures for right-wing social conservatives to keep them in line – has exacerbated income inequality by making the rich richer while seriously slamming the vast majority of working Americans, particularly the main constituencies in his base. The great betrayal.

Food costs have risen. Healthcare costs are soaring. Fuel and housing costs have skyrocketed. And while pay has gone up, and the tax cut has benefited a few in the middle class (those who live in low-tax states), none of these realities has remotely kept up with the accelerating cost of living. The new jobs that have been created, except for some tiny pockets of lucky workers, have carried low pay and few benefits with little or no opportunity for advancement. Lots of part-time and gig work, though. But if you live at the top of the economic ladder, this may be the best of times… ever.

The well-off in the United States have faced the disappearance of upward mobility, the polarization of income extremes and the threats from those at the bottom of the economic pile with no hope, no money and few if any prospects, by circling the wagons. There is a stark realization that an increasing number of people at the bottom and the middle of this country are very angry at their helpless exclusion from what was once believed to be a universally-achievable American dream.

In the early 1980s, gated communities (not counting doormen in high rise luxury apartments in big cities) were rare in the United States. But as income inequality began to rise, so did the number of closed communities. “Across the United States, more than 10 million housing units are in gated communities, where access is ‘secured with walls or fences,’ according to 2009 Census Bureau data. Roughly 10 percent of the occupied homes in this country are in gated communities, though that figure is misleadingly low because it doesn’t include temporarily vacant homes or second homes. Between 2001 and 2009, the United States saw a 53 percent growth in occupied housing units nestled in gated communities.” Rich Benjamin writing an op ed in the New York Times (3/29/12). Since the Great Recession, the trend towards guarded and gated communities in the United States has soared.

Many of those left behind by the American dream turned to populist Donald Trump, who makes pledges but absolutely cannot return these workers to their economic blue-collar bliss of yesteryear. They have bought into his non-white immigrant/foreign economic powers blame game… completely forgetting about the rich folks here who bought the automation to drive blue collar workers out of their high paying (costing?) jobs. When that realization finally sets in, where exactly will that rage be redirected?

A few of our wealthiest citizens, from Warren Buffet and Bill Gates to George Soros and Jeff Bezos, have come to the realization that an economically stratified/severely income polarized society cannot survive. Whether for altruistic reasons, an understanding that without consumers able to buy their products and services they have no business or perhaps a vision of the rich who were killed in the “Let them eat cake” French Revolution, they know that extreme economic disparity often generates violent political instability. In a nation with as many guns as there are people, the risks are only amplified.

A few more rich folks, having slorped at the tax cut “trough” with big smiles (see below), are now turning on their Trumpian savior because his trade war and economic isolationism are beginning to cost them bigtime in their international forays. They know he can decimate some of their most important growth opportunities overseas. With growth from consumer buying-power within the United States level, the loss of economic growth overseas is devastating to so many U.S. companies. But Donald Trump continues to play his dangerous brinkmanship, promising much to the masses but delivering almost nothing.

Donald Trump will embrace extreme right-wing, evangelical social conservatism to get as many votes as long as his rich cronies’ agendas (his interpretation of those priorities anyway) can be implemented. Remember his promises when his multi-trillion-dollar corporate tax cut was proposed? Higher salaries and lots of hiring by the companies benefitting from the cut? While all Americans are now saddled with the trillion-plus dollar hit that the tax cut is imposing on our deficit, the few Americans who really benefitting from those tax savings are hardly pouring that money to make good on Donald Trump’s promises.

The Guardian U.K. (September 1^st) looked at the hard numbers since that tax cut went into effect: “Analysis shows just 6% of corporate gains from Trump’s tax cuts have trickled down to workers as raises, bonuses and investments… US stock markets keep hitting record highs – as anyone who follows Donald Trump’s Twitter account can’t help but notice. And ‘more good news is coming’ for those who have ‘made a fortune’ in US stocks, the president promised this week.

“But behind Trump’s sunny, late summer disposition, there is growing concern that the principal beneficiaries of Trumpian economic largesse are those like him in the uppermost reaches of the economic scale.

“The top 10% of American households owned 84% of all stocks in 2016, according to a paper by NYU economist Edward Wolff. As the markets have been driven higher by an unprecedented binge in share buybacks, boosted by Trump’s historic corporate tax cuts, those gains have disproportionately gone to the very wealthy…

“[American] companies have spent a stunning $5.1tn buying their own shares since 2008. According to a UBS report in June, repurchases are up 83% year to date, far ahead of the 9% gain in dividends.

“And no one loves share buybacks more than tech, with Apple representing about 20% of the sector’s total with $219bn of share repurchases since 2015, according to its website, and stated plans to allocate $100bn more. Led by Apple, tech buybacks have jumped $160bn in 2018, an increase of more than 200% from 2017.”

In short, except when he can “give” on a social policy that does not cost him and his rich cronies hard cash, Donald Trump is only the president for a plutocracy where he wishes to be and remain the autocrat with the ultimate power over everything. Did you really listen to the speeches at John McCain’s funeral service in Washington? Trump’s folly was plain to McCain, a staunch Republican. Why is the rest of the GOP so completely willing to sell their souls and the soul of the entire nation for a platform that does not, cannot and will never work?

I’m Peter Dekom, and as Donald Trump battles for absolute power, we all need to remember that absolute power corrupts absolutely… and Donald Trump came into power on a massive surfboard of corruption that he took decades to build before he even ran for office.