Is The Economy Doing As Well As Trump Claims ?

Donald Trump loves to brag about how well the U.S. economy is doing (and take full credit for it). And if you look at the two main indicators that most view as showing a good economy -- the Stock Market and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) -- then that would be true.

The problem is though that those indicators only tell us how well the rich are doing. Note on the charts that stock values and GDP are both up in record territory, which means that corporations (and the rich who own and invest in them) are doing very well in the current economy.

Unfortunately, the rest of America is not doing as well. While stock values are way up, the net worth of most Americans is not. It lags far behind what it was before the Bush Recession. And while GDP is way up, the income for the bottom 90% of Americans is not. It barely equals the pre-Bush Recession levels (and is even worse when inflation is figured in).

Obviously, we need to develop better indicators for how well the economy is doing. The current indicators only tell us how well the rich are doing. We need indicators developed that will tell us how well ALL Americans are doing. Of course, that won't happen as long as the Republican control our government, because the rich are the only people they care about. All you have to do is look at their tax reform to know that (which gave 82% of the cuts to the richest people).

We need to change our economic policy to one that is fair for everyone in our society -- not just the rich, as Republican economic policy does. This is why we must flip Congress this year (and then the White House in 2020). We cannot instigate fairer economic policies (and develop indicators to tell us how the whole population is doing), until the Democrats are back in power.

The charts above are from The New York Times.