Under trump, national debt tops $21 trillion for first time ever

There is a danger Trump will damage the economy with tariffs and deficits.

 

How about no personal tax cuts for anyone, personal tax increases for 1%ers, and targeted tax cuts for business to encourage investment and worker training? The tax revenue difference could be used to reduce the deficit, increase government research, help education, and rebuild or infrastructure.

 

how about a flat tax, no one rich or poor is taxed for any dollars earned under the living wage, but for every dollar over that everyone is taxed the same

 

It's not getting better since he left office.

 

That's not a flat tax, but it's better than a pure flat tax. I'm not opposed in theory to a flat tax, but the system overall is tilted against wage earners. Bezos, Gates, and Buffet are worth more than the bottom 50% of Americans.

 

Please take time to remember the economic situation Obama INHERITED upon taking office. The Great Recession of 2008 was the worst economic calamity to hit the U.S. since the Great Depression. It's easy to cast blame from the sidelines, but how would you have handled it if it had been you in the Oval Office? Looking back on it from now, it's easy to see the mistakes made, but could you or I have done better at that time under those circumstances? Personally, I think he did quite well given the situation at the time.

 

it's a flat tax, just everyone rich or poor gets the same tax credit of up to the living wage

for it to work though all income has to be treated as income, labored income should not be taxed more then unlabored income

 

plus he still had to pay for Bush's tax cuts for the rich and Bush's two ten+ year wars, which of course is where most of the debt came from

the bank bailouts happened under Bush, but money dolled out under Obama, Obama did bail the people out with a stimulus as Bush refused too

when it comes to helping the people, the right is always "how you gonna pay for it" but helping the rich they never ask that

 

Outsourcing manufacturing jobs is not as big a problem as people think, but the competition from illegals inside the country is keenly felt in some sectors.

 

He never tried to do much

The almost $1 trillion dollar stimulas that dems passed was a joke

It did little to help the man on the street in America with funding to teach african men how to clean their penis

And as obama yucked about - shovel ready jobs that were not in fact shovel ready

 

If we could get a majority in congress for a balanced budget I would support it and so would trump

But the reality is that there is no majority for that

 

I believe it and I’m not a fool

Bush tried to a hieve nation building in the backward muslim countries and it was a failure

But it was an effort that many liberals goaded him into

 

This is not like the end of WWII when millions of GIs returned to America

We have an undersized military based on what the country expects them to do

So finding jobs is not a consideration

They will remain in uniform no mstter where they serve

 

It is getting better in all the right ways

But changing 35 years of stupid trade policy will not haopen overnight

 

I will give obama one economic factor beyond his control

He took office after 10 to 15 years of manufacturing job flight to china amd mexico

Normally when we have a recovery consimer demad rises and the underemployed go back to work filling thst demand

But many of those jobs were gone so the natural order of things had changed

And obama chose to roll with that as the new norm instead of trying to correct the problem as trump is trying to do

 

Naysayers and hate groups always find an alternative interpretation for any statement or action of someone they oppose. For many Americans, Obama couldn't do anything right. I've seen a lot of that kind of thinking expressed on this forum, to the point--and I hate to admit it--that I suspect the main reason is based on racism. I saw in Obama as close to the "perfect" husband, father, and overall "man" as any I've ever seen. He was a living, breathing perfect example of the kind of honorable, caring, loyal, husband, father and human being the so-called "family values" party had described in speeches and interviews for years. Yet, they acted as if he never lived up to any of the values they said they stood for. That was total hypocrisy, and the only thing it could be based on was racism. The party of Lincoln; the party founded on opposition to human slavery; the party that gave us the 13th and 14th amendments; the party that led us through a Civil War to end all that inhumanity, has devolved into a party of ultra-conservative white folk, who have adopted the thinking of the Civil War South and are trying desperately to inflict it on the 21st Century American masses before they figure out what's happening. This makes any mistakes made by Obama pale by comparison.

 

Only if republicans voted for those bills.

 

How is Trump fixing anything? So far, the only thing I've seen him do is assault our friends around the world while cuddling up with our historic enemies; punishing those in the intelligence and law enforcement departments who tried to warn him of Russian interference in our elections; sign into law a tax cut specifically designed to give back more to the wealthiest classes while raising taxes on the middle and lower classes; kill every law or Executive Order passed by his predecessors to save nature from unconscious but deadly onslaught of humanity--and save humanity from the dangers of chemicals & other toxins released into nature and used in our agricultural industries that could and did poison or harm our health in some way; and find ways to weaken, limit or end Obamacare, which was the only access to medical help available to millions of American families; and finally, kidnap over 1,500 children (including infants) from immigrants entering our country, even many who were trying to seek asylum. Kidnapping is a criminal act that is normally punished by incarceration. Why is criminal activity OK for Trump? Is he above the law?

 

OP

I thought the US national debt was $22tr, but hey, what's a $trillion one way or the other? It's small change to NASA!

 

The elephant in the room is inflation and rising interests rates which may make the debt self-sustaining, and possibly even be accelerating in magnitude, irrespective of whether Trump makes an effort to rein in budget deficits.

 

Obama worship on display. Now tell us how he didn't pay ransom for US Navy hostages.

 

In what way would that be? Economic growth is about what it was in 2014 under Obama. Real wages have gone down since January 2017. Inflation is starting to take hold and the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates, a move that is flattening the yield curve and threatening a recession. Trump started trade wars with countries like Canada where we have a trade surplus when he could have enlisted their aid in fighting China. We're now running huge deficits.

The trouble with you is that you don't understand how the economy works.

 

Obama won't ever be President again, so what's the relevance of discussing what he did or didn't do? Ditto all the blather about Useless Hillary because she won't ever become President.

Why don't you focus on what the Bloviator-in-Chief is doing?

 

Sorry but when some Obama worshiper tries to rewrite history I'm going to set him straight.

 

But you keep bringing Obama up even if the liberal type is focused on the Bloviator.