Trump Budget: "The wealthy don’t have enough and the poor have too much, and they’re going to fix that.”

Trump voters thought that a big talking New York millionaire and BS'er offered them the kind of hope no Democrat could offer...suckers. Your WTF moment f**ked us all!

The politics of resentment is barreling down the tracks with the hopes of boosting the economy, save taxpayer dollars, and finally give the rich that long awaited opportunity to use their tax savings to add costly labor to their payrolls. Makes perfect sense, despite a lack of consumer demand.

What a classic "supply side" moment.

The hard political work of helping identify and grow future industries, provide higher wages, offer free education and job training...eh, it's just another word for big government. The easiest solution is to just throw people off our safety net programs, like low wage part-timers and disabled Americans on Social Security:

Reduce or eliminate trillions of dollars in taxes that are paid primarily by the wealthy, including the estate tax and the marginal rate on ordinary income paid by the richest taxpayers. 

He would lessen spending on Medicaid by $1.4 trillion over a decade, and he would allow states to impose strict limits on other major anti-poverty benefits such as food stamps. repealing President Obama’s health-care reform, which helped cover poor and middle-class households with funds raised in part through greater taxes on the rich.

From the party that gave us the Great Recession and free market voodoo economics, Trump's budget secretary and Tea Party/Freedom Caucus ghoul Mick Mulvaney said:

“If you are a 30-year-old adult, you have never had a job in a healthy American economy. You’ve either been in a recession or sluggish recovery, and you think this is normal and we are here to tell you it is not.”

Oh but it its normal, every time we have a Republican president or House and Senate majority.

Gabriel Zucman, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, attributed the increase in inequality in part to President Reagan’s reductions in marginal rates paid by the rich. Zucman said that those reductions had failed to yield improving standards of living for Americans of middling incomes. “The U.S. has run a big experiment,” Zucman said. “It has failed in the most spectacular way.”

Zucman described Trump’s plans as an extension of Reagan’s approach. “If we double down on these past policies, inequality could really reach extreme and totally unprecedented levels in the years ahead,” Zucman said.

Wealthy Consumer Spending propping up nations jobless Economic Recovery. It really is all about them now.

It appears the middle class is being abandoned for much greener (money), wealthier pastures.

I can’t tell you enough how important I think this story is. It’s the underlying reason for everything right now, with no sign of it stopping. Scary as well as depressing, we’re in real trouble if all we have left are dollar stores:

NY Times: Business knows better than anyone else that the middle class is shrinking. "As politicians and pundits in Washington continue to spar over whether economic inequality is in fact deepening, in corporate America there really is no debate at all. The post-recession reality is that the customer base for businesses that appeal to the middle class is shrinking as the top tier pulls even further away. If there is any doubt, the speed at which companies are adapting to the new consumer landscape serves as very convincing evidence. Within top consulting firms and among Wall Street analysts, the shift is being described with a frankness more often associated with left-wing academics than business experts."
In response to the upward shift in spending, PricewaterhouseCoopers clients like big stores and restaurants are chasing richer customers with a wider offering of high-end goods and services, or focusing on rock-bottom prices to attract the expanding ranks of penny-pinching consumers. “You don’t want to be stuck in the middle.”

In 2012, the top 5 percent of earners were responsible for 38 percent of domestic consumption, up from 28 percent in 1995 … Since 2009, the year the recession ended, inflation-adjusted spending by this top echelon has risen 17 percent, compared with just 1 percent among the bottom 95 percent. 90 percent of the overall increase in inflation-adjusted consumption between 2009 and 2012 was generated by the top 20 percent of households.

Sears and J. C. Penney, retailers whose wares are aimed squarely at middle-class Americans, are both in dire straits. Investors have taken notice of the shrinking middle … Shares have fallen more than 50 percent since the end of 2009.

A shift at Darden … casual dining properties like Red Lobster and Olive Garden has dropped in every quarter but one since 2005 … On the other hand, at the Capital Grille, an upscale Darden chain where the average check per person is about $71, spending is up by an average of 5 percent annually over the last three years. LongHorn Steakhouse, another Darden chain, has been reworked to target a slightly more affluent crowd .. Now, hedge fund investors are pressuring Darden’s management to break up the company and spin out the more upscale properties into a separate entity.

We are Losing....

I thought these two headlines, in just one day, pretty much means we're in real trouble.

If Companies Consider Employees their biggest Expense, Why would we want the U.S. to be run like a business?

The guys with all the money are the biggest whiners and doomsayers.

These corporate Chicken Little's are so apoplectic about a possible tax increase that they've even warned their employees that jobs will be cut and benefits slashed if Democrats got their vote.

But wait, how much anguish have employees had to endure since wealthy Wall Street bankers crashed the global economy? And just as relevant, how have CEO's fared in all of this?

See what happened to a growing middle class after the Great Recession, before and after. For Wall Street, it was just another bump in the road. According to the Economic Policy Institute:

And from 1973 to 2011, men in the more blue collar manufacturing sector has tanked due to offshoring, like the jobs at Bain Capital's Sensata Technologies plant:

Irony? Jack Welch: "Imagine a country where challenging the ruling authorities...would result in mobs of administration sympathizers...Soviet Russia perhaps?"

It's time to go beyond the lunacy of right wing conspiracy theories.

Just think about the following statement from former GE CEO Jack Welch, in the context of the Walker protests statewide. Right wing politicians and conservative voters here accused liberal protesters and legislators of being sore losers, suggesting they should shut up until the next election. 

In the following Jack Welch statement, replace the word "data," with "legislation," and you'll see what I mean.  

WELCH: “Imagine a country where challenging the ruling authorities — questioning, say, a piece of data (legislation) released by central headquarters — would result in mobs of administration sympathizers claiming you should feel “embarrassed” and labeling you a fool, or worse. Soviet Russia perhaps? Communist China? Nope, that would be the United States right now, when a person (like me, for instance) suggests that a certain government datum doesn't make sense. And that’s why I made a stink about it.” Jack Welch in The Wall Street Journal.

Poor rich Jack Welch. Wisconsinites were labeled sore losers, vandals, and thugs for questioning authority. 

The frightening part of the new radicalized conservative movement is its dramatic tendency to "project," to assign their faults to other people, in this case liberals and Democrats. They don't even know the meaning of irony anymore. Welch and his fellow conservative wealthy elitists are used to living by a different set of rules, rules other Americans don't have a right too.

800 Executives Cry us a River.

I had to laugh when I read the following article about our elite “job creators,” those right wing CEO’s with money to burn, perpetuating the myth that they are the center of the universe. I’d like to send them all to China, for good, and see how they like communism.

Not to get sidetracked, I’ve condensed the following trash talk by our ruthless, conservative CEO blowhards, who want you to believe consumer demand has nothing to do with their success. They magically get money from deregulation and create jobs out of the goodness of their heart. Oh thank you masters…

Again, consumers create demand, which then creates jobs to keep up with that demand. Don’t forget this is a survey of 800 executives, who think the other 47 percent are just takers, and never understood that a free market is the last place you’d  ever find “certainty.”  

jsonline: A national survey of manufacturers, including Wisconsin companies, has cast a harsh light on the U.S. economy - with executives saying uncertainty in the marketplace has kept them from expanding their businesses and creating jobs.

There is no certainty in the market place. A funny thing too, in the last century or so, we had regulation and taxes…

62% of the survey respondents saying U.S. laws, regulations, taxes and fees affect their companies more negatively than foreign competitors … more than half of the 800 executives surveyed for the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Federation of Independent Businesses said they would not start a business in the current economic climate.

That’s the CEO class talking, with their air of entitlement, devoid of work ethic.

"Manufacturers have told policy-makers in Washington time and again that uncertainty and a negative business environment is turning the American dream into a nightmare," said Jay Timmons, National Association of Manufacturers president and chief executive officer. More than half of the survey respondents said China and India were more supportive of their small businesses and manufacturers than the United States was.

And yes, these CEO entitled whiners think we were better off at the bottom of the Great Recession 3 years ago. I’d like to send every one of these Republican fat cats back there too:

More than half of the surveyed executives said the national economy is worse now than it was three years ago. according to Dan Danner, president and CEO of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, "They're not willing to invest and create jobs. They believe things are going to get worse, not better." 

I bet they would “create jobs” if consumers had jobs, a decent wage, “certainty” in the work place and buying power to create demand.