Tag: A. Deaton

Met de regelmaat van de klok hoor je in
de media dat Trump misschien wel een rare snuiter is, maar dat hij
bijzonder goed is voor de
economie, zie de aandelenkoersen de de groei van het bruto
binnenlands product. Echter daar valt nog wel het
e.e.a. op te merken volgens Joseph Stiglitz, Nobelprijswinnaar
economie en professor aan de Columbia Universiteit. Het zegt niets
over hoe het gaat met de gewone burgers en duurzaamheid. Dit
is niet alleen belangrijk voor de volksgezondheid, dierenwelzijn, het
klimaat en het milieu, maar ook voor het voortbestaan van de wereld
zoals wij die kennen. Voorts moet niet vergeten worden dat de klimaatverandering een grote kostenpost is, niet alleen wat betreft een enorm aantal mensenlevens, maar ook gigantische kapitalen aan schade veroorzaakt…..

(professor Joseph Stiglitz, foto van Wikipedia)

Uiteraard zijn de zaken die ik hiervoor
noemde onderdeel van de laatste, maar het kan niet vaak genoeg gezegd
worden dat we de wereld naar de kloten helpen…… Ondanks alle
mooie praatjes op klimaattoppen, wordt er ook in de rest van het
westen weinig of niets gedaan om de klimaatverandering af te remmen
en tevens de luchtvervuiling tegen te gaan, een vervuiling die
zovelen het leven kost…. (in Nederland sterven er jaarlijks 18.000
mensen jaren eerder door de uitstoot van auto’s en dat na een akelig
ziekbed, om maar te zwijgen over het grote aantal kinderen dat
jaarlijks door diezelfde uitstoot long- en/of luchtwegklachten
oploopt….) Er worden nu zelfs praatjes verkondigd dat de nieuwste
dieselmotoren goed zijn voor het de luchtkwaliteit, ‘vergetend’ dat
de vervuiling die er nog steeds uitkomt, vooral gebonden is aan het
zwaar kankerverwekkende ultrafijnstof……

Lees het volgende artikel waarin Stiglitz o.a. ook spreekt over het aantal beloofde banen door Trump en geeft het door, dit artikel verscheen
op Information Clearing House:

The
Truth About the Trump Economy

By
Joseph E. Stiglitz

It is becoming
conventional wisdom that US President Donald Trump will be tough to
beat in November, because, whatever reservations about him voters may
have, he has been good for the American economy. Nothing could be
further from the truth.

January 18,
2020 “Information
Clearing House”
– As
the world’s business elites trek to Davos for their annual
gathering, people should be asking a simple question: Have they
overcome their infatuation with US President Donald Trump?

Two years ago, a few
rare corporate leaders were concerned about climate change, or upset
at Trump’s misogyny and bigotry. Most, however, were celebrating
the president’s tax cuts for billionaires and corporations and
looking forward to his efforts to deregulate the economy. That would
allow businesses to pollute the air more, get more Americans hooked
on opioids, entice more children to eat their diabetes-inducing
foods, and engage in the sort of financial shenanigans that brought
on the 2008 crisis.

Today, many corporate
bosses are still talking about the continued GDP growth and record
stock prices. But neither GDP nor the Dow is a good measure of
economic performance. 

Neither tells us what’s happening to ordinary
citizens’ living standards or anything about sustainability. In
fact, US economic performance over the past four years is Exhibit A
in the indictment against relying on these indicators.

To get a good reading
on a country’s economic health, start by looking at the health of
its citizens. If they are happy and prosperous, they will be healthy
and live longer. Among developed countries, America sits at the
bottom in this regard. US life expectancy, already relatively low,
fell in each of the first two years of Trump’s presidency, and in
2017, midlife mortality reached its highest rate since World War II.
This is not a surprise, because no president has worked harder to
make sure that more Americans lack health insurance. Millions have
lost their coverage, and the uninsured rate has risen, in just two
years, from
10.9% to 13.7%.

One reason for
declining life expectancy in America is what Anne Case and Nobel
laureate economist Angus
Deaton call deaths of despair, caused by alcohol, drug overdoses,
and suicide. In 2017 (the most recent year for which good data are
available), such deaths stood at almost
four times their 1999 level.

The only time I have
seen anything like these declines in health – outside of war or
epidemics – was when I was chief economist of the World Bank and
found out that mortality and morbidity data confirmed what our
economic indicators suggested about the dismal state of the
post-Soviet Russian economy.

Trump may be a good
president for the top 1% – and especially for the top 0.1% – but
he has not been good for everyone else. If fully implemented, the
2017 tax cut will result in tax increases
for most households in the second, third, and fourth income
quintiles.

Given tax cuts that
disproportionately benefit the ultrarich and corporations, it should
come as no surprise that there was no
significant change in the median US household’s disposable
income between 2017 and 2018 (again, the most recent year with
good data). 

The lion’s share of the increase in GDP is also going
to those at the top. Real median weekly
earnings are just 2.6% above their level when Trump took office.
And these increases have not offset long periods of wage stagnation.
For example, the median wage of a full-time male worker (and those
with full-time jobs are the lucky ones) is still more than 3%
below what it was 40 years ago. Nor has there been much progress
on reducing racial disparities: in the third quarter of 2019, median
weekly earnings for black men working full-time were less
than three-quarters the level for white men.

Making matters worse,
the growth that has occurred is not environmentally sustainable –
and even less so thanks to the Trump administration’s gutting of
regulations that have passed stringent cost-benefit analyses. The air
will be less breathable, the water less drinkable, and the planet
more subject to climate change. In fact, losses related to climate
change have already reached new highs in the US, which has suffered
more property damage than any other country – reaching some
1.5% of GDP in 2017. 

The tax cuts were
supposed to spur a new wave of investment. Instead, they triggered an
all-time record
binge of share buybacks – some $800 billion in 2018 – by some
of America’s most profitable companies, and led to record
peacetime deficits (almost $1 trillion in fiscal 2019) in a
country supposedly near full employment. And even with weak
investment, the US had to borrow massively abroad: the most recent
data show foreign
borrowing at nearly $500 billion a year, with an increase of more
than 10% in America’s net indebtedness position in
one year alone.

Likewise, Trump’s
trade wars, for all their sound and fury, have not reduced the US
trade deficit, which was one-quarter higher in 2018 than it was in
2016. The 2018 goods deficit was the largest
on record. Even the deficit in trade with China was up
almost a quarter from 2016. The US did get a new North American
trade agreement, without the investment agreement provisions that the
Business Roundtable wanted, without the provisions raising drug
prices that the pharmaceutical companies wanted, and with better
labor and environmental provisions. Trump, a self-proclaimed master
deal maker, lost on almost every front in his negotiations with
congressional Democrats, resulting in a slightly improved trade
arrangement.

And despite Trump’s
vaunted promises to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, the
increase in manufacturing employment is still lower than it was under
his predecessor, Barack Obama, once the post-2008 recovery set in,
and is still markedly below its pre-crisis level. Even the
unemployment rate, at a 50-year low, masks economic fragility. The
employment
rate for working-age males and females, while rising, has increased
less than during the Obama recovery, and is still significantly
below that of other developed countries. 

The pace of job creation
is also markedly slower than it was under Obama.

Again, the low
employment rate is not a surprise, not least because unhealthy people
can’t work. Moreover, those on disability benefits, in prison –
the US incarceration
rate has increased more than sixfold since 1970, with some two
million people currently behind bars – or so discouraged that
they are not actively seeking jobs are not counted as “unemployed.”
But, of course, they are not employed. Nor is it a surprise that a
country that doesn’t provide affordable childcare or guarantee
family leave would have lower female employment – adjusted for
population, more than ten percentage points lower – than other
developed countries.

Even judging by GDP,
the Trump economy falls short. Last quarter’s growth was just 2.1%,
far less than the 4%, 5%, or even 6% Trump promised
to deliver, and even less than the 2.4% average of Obama’s second
term. That is a remarkably poor performance considering the stimulus
provided by the $1 trillion deficit and ultra-low interest rates.
This is not an accident, or just a matter of bad luck: Trump’s
brand is uncertainty, volatility, and prevarication, whereas trust,
stability, and confidence are essential for growth. So is equality,
according to the International Monetary Fund.

So, Trump deserves
failing grades not just on essential tasks like upholding democracy
and preserving our planet. He should not get a pass on the economy,
either.

Joseph
E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is University Professor
at Columbia University and Chief Economist at the Roosevelt
Institute. His most recent book is People,
Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent.