January 19, 2021

Journalists have a strange way of describing Trump's economy. It's an aggregate of conservative type rationalisms without coherence.

They combine a positive frame consisting of reduced unemployment and sizzling stock market with the negatives of accomplishing nothing in manufacturing or trade. What was it that improved Trump's economy (until the pandemic set it back), while all methods were rock bottom failures?

Reduced unemployment is the starting point of the propaganda—putting the best foot forward. It just happens that the supposed improvement was not as good as it was for Obama. In other words, Trump's reduction in something that was automatic is said to be a positive thing, where it is actually a negative thing.

The main reason why unemployment has been decreasing for a long time is because there are fewer Mexicans coming across the border due to the Mexican economy improving following the NAFTA trade agreement (North American Free Trade Agreement) of twenty years ago.

Those jobs are almost all minimum wage. So the liberals have been instituting an increase in the minimum wage from the usual $11 per hour to $15 per hour, while conservative oppose it claiming minimum wage workers are just putting themselves out of work by increasing their pay. In other words, conservatives just love the minimum wage workers to pieces, so they take over their lives to improve them.

Then the next component of the propaganda is the sizzling stock market. It's been nothing but a disgrace since Greenspan labeled it "irrational exuberance" twenty years ago and has continually been more irrational, since it has become nothing but a gambling casino and redistribution of wealth for the one-percenters.

So Trump said he was going to use the stock market as a measure of his economy. If Trump can figure out what a scam it is, why can't the journalists get it right?

Within hours of Trump getting elected, the real economy and the stock market blipped upward instantly. The reason why that happens is because the minute conservatives are back in power they start partying which includes heading for the restaurants and buying merchandize. That effect requires a lot more minimum wage workers but it does nothing significant for the economic structure which influences most persons. It certainly has nothing to do with Trump's ingeniousness, since it began a few months before he took office.

Conservatives are that way. They live under a cloud of doom while liberals are in power; and then when they re-acquire power they cut loose with freedom again. It's one of the reasons why they hate liberals. They suffocate under requirements which they cannot meet when liberals are in control.

The unmeetable requirements for conservatives include all elements of rationality including the laws and regulations created by government. With conservatives in power, those laws and the underlying rationality become irrelevant to them. They see no reason not to destroy the environment by dumping byproducts of industry into the water and atmosphere. It's freedom and open skies, in their view—the open skies of smog and pollution which are nothing compared to the heavy weight of rationality.