Tehon
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- Jun 19, 2015
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The 1.5 trillion dollar tax cut mirrors the 1.5 trillion dollar infrastructure plan. If he paid for the infrastructure plan directly he would have to add 1.5 trillion directly to the debt. That would be a big no no for his base.I'm a little fuzzy on that one.If you wanted to add 1.5 trillion of new debt for infrastructure spending without pissing off your base by directly adding it to the debt, how would you do it?Perhaps those 2017 tax cuts and Trump's plan for upgrading infrastructure are just examples of government borrowing from elites instead of taxing them?Well, this is somewhat more applicable today.The $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan recently put forth will triple the costs of providing infrastructure services and price US cities and states out of the market if its implemented. "It would vastly raise the cost of living and doing business rather than making things easier for the population."
Simon Patten knew better long before Trump was born according to this Michael Hudson interview:
Trump Privatizes America
"MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, to begin with, the way that Trump’s plan is to be financed would triple the cost of what the engineers say, to $22 trillion. The reason is that it’s a Thatcherite privatization scheme. Its economic philosophy reverses the last 150 years of public infrastructure in America. In fact, it’s the biggest attack on industrial capitalism in over 100 years.
"America’s first professor of economics at the first business school – Simon Patten, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School – said that public infrastructure is a fourth factor of production.
"But it’s not like labor, land, and capital, because the role of public infrastructure is not to make a profit.
"It’s role is to provide public services that are basic for the economy’s living standards and capacity to produce, and to provide these at a subsidized rate.
"That’s how America got rich and came to dominate the world industrial economy: by publicly subsidizing its basic costs: Low-cost roads, and low-cost other infrastructure.
"The government bore these costs so that public infrastructure would subsidize the economy to lower the cost of doing business.
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Recall the 2017 BS Tax Cuts for one.
Perhaps I would start with rethinking that "balanced budget" thing?
Analysis | The Daily 202: Trump budget highlights disconnect between populist rhetoric and plutocrat reality
"Trump repeatedly promised that he would balance the budget 'very quickly.' It turns out that a guy who has often described himself as the 'king of debt' didn’t feel that passionately about deficits.
"Last year, he laid out a plan to balance the budget in 10 years.
"This year he didn’t even try.
"Trump now accepts annual deficits that will run over $1 trillion as the new normal.
"Going further, the president also promised on the campaign trail that he’d get rid of the national debt altogether by the end of his second term.
"But his White House now projects that the national debt, which is already over $20 trillion, will grow more than $2 trillion over the next two years and by at least $7 trillion over the next decade.
"The administration repeatedly denied this in December as officials pushed to cut taxes by $1.5 trillion."
And I suppose $1.5 trillion in tax cuts might soften the blow for some?
But would his base care if the debt grew because of tax breaks? After all, the "people" are getting to keep their money.
He gives a tax break and repatriates offshore money that can be invested directly into his infrastructure plan.
The debt is still there but the optics are different.