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"This is how the Trump administration should be getting ready, if it could just admit the peril." - Ted King - 08-23-2019
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/heres-what-a-normal-white-house-would-be-doing-to-prepare-for-a-recession/2019/08/23/0bfa48ca-c4f5-11e9-9986-1fb3e4397be4_story.html
I don't see Jared Bernstein as some sort of economic guru, but I think he's right a lot more often than he's wrong. In this opinion piece he's laying out the rationale for how to deal with the seemingly growing prospect of a recession. It's a well thought out, sober analysis of a topic that could soon be front and center of the nation's attention:
[Snippet - what the Republicans will probably want to do and why those are probably bad ideas]
Another tool, one often preferred by Republicans (and the only one Trump has touted so far), is tax cuts. About one-fourth of the 2009 Recovery Act went to tax cuts, and they can be useful in terms of putting money in the pockets of people who need it. But such plans make sense only if they’re well-targeted and temporary. Giving a tax cut to rich people who don’t need it, even in a recession, is a waste. Because they’re not income-constrained in the first place, they won’t increase their spending, delivering no extra stimulus.
The Trump administration has already floated a few tax cuts in this context, though it’s not clear if these are serious proposals. One idea his team has mentioned — cutting capital gains taxes — is a good example of a cut that wouldn’t help. Because 86 percent of its benefits would go to the top 1 percent, whose average income is north of $2 million, this cut wouldn’t do anything to offset the downturn. It would also be a permanent change that would cost the Treasury at least $100 billion over 10 years.
Parenthetically, reading this felt like drinking a cool glass of water after paying too much attention to the torrid world that is Trump's unstable psyche.
Edit: removed a link to a different article on a somewhat different topic.
Re: "This is how the Trump administration should be getting ready, if it could just admit the peril." - mattkime - 08-23-2019
>[If and when the recession begins, it won’t be Trump’s fault]
Funny how they take credit when numbers go up but not when they go down.
Re: "This is how the Trump administration should be getting ready, if it could just admit the peril." - Ted King - 08-23-2019
mattkime wrote:
>[If and when the recession begins, it won’t be Trump’s fault]
Funny how they take credit when numbers go up but not when they go down.
I forgot to cut that bit out - it was the caption for an ad/link to a different article on a matter related to the subject of this article. It's kind of redundant to say "Trump" and "it's not his fault".
Re: "This is how the Trump administration should be getting ready, if it could just admit the peril." - mattkime - 08-23-2019
Ted King wrote:
[quote=mattkime]
>[If and when the recession begins, it won’t be Trump’s fault]
Funny how they take credit when numbers go up but not when they go down.
I forgot to cut that bit out - it was the caption for an ad/link to a different article on a matter related to the subject of this article. It's kind of redundant to say "Trump" and "it's not his fault".
Also explains why my quick skim of the article didn't find that bit.
Perfect illustration of journalism on the internet. ;-)