Trump vs Clinton? I'm Blowing Raspberries!
By now, most people know I am not voting for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. I have left what remains of the Republican Party and will participate in politics more in line with the way John Adams recommended. Strong centralized parties, like strong central governments, result in only two things: incompetence (by design) and corruption. The sooner we, as voters, pull ourselves from the morass that is major party politics, the better this country will be.
For the time being I will vote 100% conservative down-ticket, no matter the party label, and encourage all of you to do the same. Today's discussion will demonstrate just some of the reasons you should do the same.
While I still think Trump is an undisciplined, non-thinking, self-absorbed crybaby, it wouldn't be fair to him or the reader to not say something about the economic programs the two leading candidates announced this week. Bottom line, Trump's is the more intelligent plan and more likely to bring economic growth, but not by much. Note: Gary Johnson's economic plan is the most informed, credible and detailed by a long shot and has been on the streets for months.
We'll start with Clinton's "plan" first. She promises that she will produce an "economy that works for everyone". Right there, you have the premise upon which everything that follows will fail. An economy of any sort CANNOT AND WILL NOT EVER work for ANYONE. An economy is not something you can assign an overarching task to, no matter your political philosophy, making it do things for people. An economy, like gravity, will function based on the self-interest and awareness of everyone participating in the economy. It cannot be made to produce a desired result. You can interfere with the free conduct of people within an economy to produce artificial results, but I challenge anyone to demonstrate where that has ever been successful on a national level. No, the New Deal was a failure. The Great Society continues to erode the economic and moral fabric of the nation to this day.
There are several articles The Economist has published over the years dealing with the meddling in the laws of economics over the last 250 years. The title of the most important one escapes me. One that tells almost the same story can be found here. See how the reaction to each crisis by government and banks leads to, or contributes to a future crisis. See as well how the government never acts in the interest of "the people" in these situations. They always act in the interest of the big banks. While it can be argued that taking care of the banks takes care of "the people", government corruption and incompetence rarely results in a happy outcome for anyone but major bankers and politicians.
So just the premise Clinton relies on to increase the power of the central government is fatally flawed as "economic policy". But there are issues addressed in her "plan". First is that darn, unfair tax code. You know the one. That tax code that has the top 1% of productive society paying 37% of all federal taxes. Her solution to this problem is to make them pay even more. Check the logic here. They already pay more than 99% of the population and we have near zero growth for 9 years. So taxing only them several points higher, we'll solve all the problems? How?
If you soaked the infamous "1%" for all of their income, you wouldn't pay for Clinton's debt-free college and infrastructure programs. So much for Family Leave or Child Care. You would also be taking a huge chunk of money out of the productive economy and giving it to people without and exchange of value. And as stated failing to achieve your purpose.
Not to worry. There is nothing in the history of Democrats or the Clinton's specifically that would lead you to think the tax increases would be limited to rich people. With the inevitable failure of the plans as laid out, they will simply announce that all these crises from college tuition to baby sitting are much worse than thought. We'll have to soak everybody. (See Bill Clinton on raising taxes at all in his first year in office. It's worse than we thought...) And if you bitch about it, you're not patriotic.
So the whole "taxing the richest" thing is a lie. They know it. The "richest" will include anyone making $50,000 a year.
So what of her "programs"? We mentioned a few. There is the college loan refinance fiasco. We already have a dangerously large bubble in the student loan cancer. You want to see a tumor metastasize? Just allow Clinton to take a page from the Barney Frank school of Real Estate devaluation. We re-fi a bunch of loans, lower payments and tell the lenders they have to wait. We back these loans, already defaulting at alarming rates, with a government guarantee. Already we are spending borrowed money to pay back what deadbeats have defaulted on. By lowering payments, we may slow the default rate. But with no job growth, as we've seen for 8 years now, defaults will continue at incredibly high rates. Since the government now controls the entire student loan market, no one will be in a position to evaluate whether to make a loan. Anyone taking a loan, especially those in the "protected classes" will get it. Soon the banks will not be able to sustain the paper and facing collapse, turn to mommy gov to bail them out. This will cost hundreds of billions more to do than the original loan scheme that caused it all is costing. This is going to happen regardless of whether Clinton gets in office or not. It will be bigger than the housing bust. But the sooner everyone bails on the existing scheme, the less the damage will be. By stringing it out as if it was working for anyone we will make the damage exponentially greater.
There is a better way to finance college. I'll deal with that in a future post.
Matt Jordan is a travel writer, political commentator and author of 16 20 24. Get your SIGNED copy here!
Find 16 20 24 on Amazon.
Find 16 20 24 at Barnes & Noble