US Politics in Trump era
The coronavirus recession is over for the rich, but the working class is far from recovered
Democrats Are Handing Donald Trump The Keys To The Country
The average millennial has a net worth of $8,000. That’s far less than previous generations.
Millennials are doing far worse financially than generations before them, with student loans, rising rents and higher health-care costs pushing the average net worth below $8,000, a new study shows. The net worth of Americans aged 18 to 35 has dropped 34 percent since 1996, according to research released Thursday by Deloitte, the accounting and professional services giant.
Trump Proposes To End Student Loan Forgiveness Program
The White House released Trump's 2020 budget proposal, which contains important implications for higher education and student loans. The budget includes $64.0 billion in funding for the U.S. Department of Education, a $7.1 billion, or 10%, decrease compared to the 2019 funding. The budget, as it relates to student loans, is built on several stated goals, among others:
January jobs: The US economy added 304,000 jobs. Workers got a 3-cent raise.
Employers added 304,000 new jobs to the US economy in January — once again surpassing economic forecasts, according to the latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, the latest jobs report once again shows little wage growth, which remains the biggest weakness in the American economy. The average US worker hasn’t seen their paycheck get much bigger since the Great Recession, which ended around 2009.
It’s official: The Trump tax cuts were a bust
Right before Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December 2017, President Trump proclaimed: “It’ll be fantastic for the middle-income people and for jobs, most of all ... I think we could go to 4%, 5% or even 6% [GDP growth], ultimately. We are back. We are really going to start to rock.” A year later, it’s very clear that the tax cuts boosted gross domestic product and jobs a bit — and just for one year.
Rubio Tweets Tax Bill He Voted For Helps Companies Over Workers
Republican Senator Marco Rubio broke with his party by blasting last year’s tax overhaul for benefiting corporations rather than workers. “When corporation uses profits for stock buy back it’s deciding that returning capital to shareholders is better for business than investing in their products or workers,” Rubio said in a tweet Thursday. “Tax code encourages this. No surprise we have work life that is unstable & low paying.”
Steel is surging under Trump. Will workers benefit?
When President Trump imposed tariffs on steel imports in June, Richard Lattanzi thought of dozens of his fellow steelworkers who have for years put off badly needed repairs of their cars and homes. “There was a lot of excitement here; there were a lot of us saying, ‘It’s about time someone is looking out for us,’ ” said Lattanzi, the mayor of this town of 7,000 and a safety inspector at the U.S. Steel plant in nearby West Mifflin. “A lot of people around here were saying, ‘We’re going to be okay.’ ”
A year after Hurricane Harvey, some cleanup workers are still unpaid
Under Trump, the jobs boom has finally reached blue-collar workers. Will it last?
Blue-collar jobs are growing at their fastest rate in more than 30 years, helping fuel a hiring boom in many small towns and rural areas that are strong supporters of President Trump ahead of November's mid-term elections. Jobs in goods-producing industries — mining, construction, and manufacturing — grew 3.3 percent in the year preceding July, the best rate since 1984, according to a Washington Post analysis.
In a Sign of the Economy’s Strength, Jobs and Wages Moved Higher in August
Low-, middle- and high-skilled jobs all saw some wage growth. Even so, the job market can vary radically depending on what people do and where they live. “In some occupations — typically those with low-skill requirements and relatively pleasant working conditions — there is a huge oversupply of candidates,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist at the online employment market site ZipRecruiter.
Koch-Backed Think Tank Finds That “Medicare for All” Would Cut Health Care Spending and Raise Wages. Whoops.
A new study from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University is making headlines for projecting that Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s “Medicare for All” bill is estimated to cost $32.6 trillion — a number that’s entirely in line with 2016 projections, and is literally old news. But what the Associated Press headline fails to announce is a much more sanguine update: The report, by Senior Research Strategist Charles Blahous, found that under Sanders’s plan, overall health costs would go down, and wages would go up.
Supreme Court Ruling Delivers a Sharp Blow to Labor Unions
For the biggest group of American workers, wages aren’t just flat. They’re falling.
Teachers Go on Strike in Oklahoma and Kentucky: ‘It Really Is a Wildfire’
The richest Americans get a $33,000 tax break under the GOP tax law. The poorest get $40.
Tax Overhaul Is a Blow to Affordable Housing Efforts
The last time that Congress approved a sweeping overhaul of the federal tax code, in 1986, it created a tax credit meant to encourage the private sector to invest in affordable housing. It has grown into a $9 billion-a-year social program that has funded the construction of some three million apartments for low-income residents.But the Republican tax plan approved last month amounts to a vast cutback, making it much less likely that such construction will continue apace.
As Trump Appeals to Farmers, Some of His Policies Don’t
Some of the president’s economic policies could actually harm the farm industry. New analyses of the tax law by economists at the Department of Agriculture suggest it could actually lower farm output in the years to come and effectively raise taxes on the lowest-earning farm households, while delivering large gains for the richest farmers.
Charities fear tax bill could turn philanthropy into a pursuit only for the rich
GOP tax plan doubles down on policies that are crushing the middle class
The middle class, which Pew defines as two-thirds to two times the national median income for a given household size, began to grow after World War II due to a surge in economic growth and because President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal gave workers more power. Before that, most Americans were poor or nearly so.
Net neutrality and the consequences of repealing the law explained!
Classifying ISPs as utility companies under Title II meant they had to treat the internet like every other utility — that is, just like gas, water, or phone service — and that they couldn’t cut off service at will or control how much of it any one person received based on how much that person paid for it. The idea was that the internet should be a public service that everyone has a right to use, not a privilege, and that regulating ISPs like utilities would prevent them from hijacking or monopolize that access.
Paul Ryan admits the GOP will gut Medicare and Medicaid to pay for tax cuts
Republicans in Congress are openly admitting they plan to use their tax reform bill to justify slashing funding for essential social programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps. The bill — which is expected to balloon the national deficit by at least $1 trillion, and which only benefits the country’s wealthiest in the long-term — has not yet been reconciled or signed.
‘I don’t think it’s going to help’: In a pro-Trump area, many voters are skeptical of GOP tax plan
Here in the Detroit suburbs and across the country, many voters say they view the Republican tax plan as simply a giveaway for the rich that will benefit only a small number of people in the long run. Trump and prominent members of his party promise that the cuts will spur economic growth — leading to more jobs and better pay — but many voters say they are skeptical that will actually happen.
Tax Bill Offers Last-Minute Breaks for Developers, Banks and Oil Industry
Even hours after the Senate vote, tax experts were scratching their heads over precisely what had made it into the final version of the bill and the impact of some significant provisions. Still, it was clear that many changes expanded tax benefits for the wealthiest taxpayers, while other attempts to close loopholes fell by the wayside. The bill would add $1 trillion to deficits over the coming decade.
US spends twice as much on tax break for rich as on rent for the poorest
The US government spends more than twice as much subsidizing the tax break for affluent homeowners, who would most likely be able to afford their homes anyway, as it does on helping the poorest families pay rent and avoid homelessness – $60.1bn versus $29.9bn in 2015. As Congress tackles tax reform, advocates and economists of all political stripes are appealing for the tax break to be addressed, but the chances of that are uncertain.
Senate GOP tax bill hurts the poor more than originally thought, CBO finds
The Senate Republican tax plan gives substantial tax cuts and benefits to Americans earning more than $100,000 a year, while the nation’s poorest would be worse off, according to a report released Sunday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Democrats have repeatedly slammed the bill as a giveaway to the rich at the expense of the poor. In addition to lowering taxes for businesses and many individuals, the Senate bill also makes a major change to health insurance that the CBO projects would have a harsh impact on lower-income families.Office.
Ending Medical Tax Break Could Be a ‘Gut Punch’ to the Middle Class
The Republican tax overhaul bill introduced in the House last week would eliminate that deduction, which allows people who itemize their federal income taxes to deduct medical expenses that exceed 10 percent of their total income. The change is part of a broad effort to rewrite the tax code in a way that Republicans say will be simpler and fairer. But while the party has framed its tax plan as a boon for the middle class, eliminating the medical-expense deduction would hit the middle class squarely, eliminating a source of relief that has helped millions of people cope with steep medical costs in a country without comprehensive, universal health coverage.
Trump’s HHS Unveils Medicaid Overhaul That Will Mean Fewer People Covered
On Tuesday morning, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) unveiled new criteria for evaluating pitches from states. Whereas in the past states had to prove that proposed changes would “increase and strengthen” health coverage of their low-income population, that requirement is gone, replaced with language that welcomes proposals for work requirements, drug tests and other hurdles that experts predict would reduce the Medicaid rolls by hundreds of thousands of people.
The big lesson of Trump’s first 2 weeks: resistance works
Bernie Sanders: “It is not good enough for someone to say, ‘I’m a woman! Vote for me!’”
What Sanders’s remarks about "identity politics" say about the Democratic Party’s future. Having the party embrace both gender and racial diversity is a necessary first step, Sanders said. But if “identity politics” means promoting black and female candidates who don’t have “the guts to take on the oligarchy,” Sanders argued, it’s largely beside the point.
For years, I’ve been watching anti-elite fury build in Wisconsin. Then came Trump.
I did not set out to study rural resentment of "elites," but that’s what I found. We did not see the Trump victory coming because at least one part of their resentment has grounding in reality: Urbanites have not been listening to the concerns of people in rural America. Indeed, resentment is also part of another big story of this election: the inaccuracy of polls. If you are a rural resident who believes that urban institutions like mass media and universities ignore and look down upon people like you, why would you spend time answering one of their surveys?