Trump: Dangerous as Heck

As you can see I changed the title of this post from Trump: Dangerous as Hell. The reason is quite simple. Trump's dangers do not include the world as a radioactive wasteland; Clinton's do. Trump's dangers are economic. 

No, it is not tariffs or immigration. He is mostly right on these. It is like Trump is stuck in a time warp to the 80's in advocating what the original George Bush called "Voodoo Economics." To a degree this voodoo actually worked. Dropping the federal marginal tax rate from 70% to 35% would tend to increase the economy. This added to the fact that there was a business cycle meant that Reagan's tax cuts mostly paid for themselves in revenue. Reagan dramatically increased military spending and made no cuts in domestic spending, this meant huge deficits. Trump is proposing the same kind of thing. But the situation is different. The US is currently at the height of the business cycle, not its bottom, so revenue will be on a downward trend. The highest US marginal tax rate is about 40%, so cutting it to, lets say 30%, will not have the same stimulus as cutting from 70 to 35 did. 

What makes Trump's proposal dangerous is the high level of debt the US has right now. This is a bipartisan problem. Bush roughly doubled the debt from 5 trillion to 10 trillion. He added at least 1 trillion to the US unfunded liabilities by adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare—without paying for it. He also added a huge amount, no one knows how much, to future liabilities for the veterans of his wars. He was, fiscally speaking, a demographic train wreck as our population ages. 

I know I am supposed to say that Obama was even worse, but they were both equally bad. Obama continued Bush's wars, but at a reduced level, so that is good. But Obama also added a huge amount to the budget by introducing ObamaCare. Obama also doubled the debt. While the deficits have gone down, oddly enough borrowing continues to grow. This year the deficit will be around 600 billion dollars, at what may very well be the height of the business cycle. But at the same time the debt of the US will increase by 1.4 trillion. I have no explanation of the difference in the size of the increase beyond the fact you can't trust government numbers. 

In this environment, a tax cut is foolhardy in the extreme. Increasing military spending, when the US is already spending more than the rest of the world combined is also foolhardy in the extreme.

So on domestic fiscal policy I would say that Clinton is slightly better. But at this point what difference does it make if Clinton's foreign policy leads to war and possible nuclear holocaust. It would seem that Obama is paving the way for a Clinton War with Russia. 

The old phrase "lessor of two evils" has always been a metaphor since neither candidate was actually evil. In this election cycle it is not a metaphor. 

I will announce my vote tomorrow.