Guest Post by Bill Bonner
PARIS – Well, it’s all settled. This is the greatest economy that the world has ever seen.
The president said so himself on Twitter over the weekend:
Tax CUTS are working. America is WINNING BIG under President Trump!
The Nasdaq hit a new record high – pushed up by its favorite tech stocks. And the latest jobs report tells us that unemployment is at 3.8%, a 50-year low.
Let’s see… a 50-year low. That would put it back in 1968.
When the president refers to making America great again… that is probably what he has in mind.
Biggest Joke
We remember 1968. We were still in college. And in the summer, we had to quickly get a job to earn money so we could pay tuition for the following year.
As we recall, after two days of replying to want ads, we had two offers.
One was in a boatyard in Annapolis, scrapping hulls and painting the “bright work.”
The other was in a motley crew of half-wit foreigners in Baltimore, climbing TV towers to put on a coat of rust-preventing paint.
Neither were great jobs. The second was also dangerous, but it paid better. We earned $5.35 an hour, which wasn’t so bad in 1968.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
And over the summer, we saved up about $1,500 – which was enough, barely, to keep us going for another year, assuming we continued our on-campus job of washing dishes in a frat house kitchen in return for free food.
Can an unskilled person find work so easily today? We don’t know.
According to the figures reported last week, 40% of adults can’t scrape together even $400 for emergencies. If it was so easy to get work, you’d think there would be fewer Americans with empty pockets.
Besides, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures are mostly nonsense – The Donald said so himself when he was running for office.
He referred to the BLS numbers as “the biggest joke in the country.”
But now that he’s The Man, the joke is on the other foot; nonsense is a lot more appealing.
Better and Better
When you are out of power, you attack. When you are in power, you defend. Thus, it has always been… and always shall be.
Now that he is in charge, the economy is great… the BLS tells the truth… and America is getting better and better every day.
As for the Nasdaq… the index was only invented in 1971. By the summer of 1998, it was around 1,900.
An investor might have expected it to go down from there, since it had been going up for more than 25 years.
But woe to the speculator who went short. The index rose another 200% over the following two years, and was at a record high of over 5,000 when the end finally came in 2000.
Nature hates excess, and every bubble finds its pin.
The Nasdaq crashed in 2000, with investors giving up 70% of their money… and then, they waited 14 years to be made whole again.
Now, the Nasdaq is again at a record high… it races ahead, and it dares not sit down; there are pins in every cushion.
Perhaps the biggest threat is the president himself… who is practically a briar patch of barbed opinions and prickly acts.
The Donald Show
Like every sentient being, we have been watching The Donald Show with both amusement and alarum.
The usual categories of American politician – slimeball, ideologue, glad-hander, or hack – don’t suit Mr. Trump. Like a show with a bad scriptwriter, spectators don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
We don’t know, either. But our guess is that America’s president is more a feature of his time… than it is of him.
Like mud on a fender, history tells us where it has been.
The U.S. has been in a decline ever since we were painting TV towers for $5.35 an hour. Debt, laws, regulations, and lobbyists have piled up.
Why? Our simple hypothesis: more win-lose deals; fewer win-win deals.
And the real measure of any president, before or since, is whether he resisted the win-lose deals… or encouraged more of them.
Win-lose deals are how the Swamp does business. Conniving. Stealing. Plotting. Backstabbing. Lobbying. Chiseling. And always using the power of the government to get an advantage. The insiders pass laws as dense as Christmas pudding. Then they get hired to help companies find the plums.
Just look at what happened to the people who put together the law that The Donald thinks is making America great again – the tax cut. From the newspaper The Hill:
Republican aides in Congress who were instrumental in writing the sweeping tax law last year are hitting the exits to take jobs in the lobbying industry.
Cashing in on K Street [where the lobbyists are] is a common move for congressional staffers in both parties, especially after major legislation is signed into law. Something similar happened after Obamacare passed in 2010.
In the two years after President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, more than 30 former administration officials, lawmakers, and congressional staffers that had worked on the law joined the K Street ranks. The numbers have likely grown since then. What Obamacare was for Democrats, last year’s tax law was for Republicans…
Democrat. Republican. It hardly matters. When the swill hits the trough, the pigs come a-running.
And MAGA? Probably not.
No Wall.
Illegal aliens are still flooding across the border.
Twenty percent of Mexico’s population is still living in California.
Winning.
No repeal of ObamaCare either. Same old same old.
All TRUMPS FAULT!!!
IT’S…
ALL…
TRUMP’S…
FAULT…
And conservatives wonder why they are forever branded “the party of the stupid”.
I posted this on another thread and thought I’d add it here. It’s a little less persnikity. 🙂
“So it’s Trumps fault that he hasn’t fixed in 2 years what it took GovCo 60 years to decimate? I’m just asking……and no I’m not a “Trumpeteer”, just someone who knows that “better” is sometimes a good deal when “worse” is waiting in the wings and “perfect” doesn’t exist.”
Of the 223,000 new jobs, 215,000 were made up out of thin air via the birth/death model. Thin air is also responsible for the creation of trillions of counterfeit dollars over the last few years. Governments thrive on thin air, though it chokes the rest of us. I think we need to outlaw thin air–and governments.
I would bet that a person making $5.35 an hour in 1968 could buy a home and raise a family.
In 2018 that’s equal to over $70,000 a year.
and pay his way through college too!
Work a little overtime and you could get a brand new muscle car and fill it with gas as cheap as water.
I did. But it was 1978.
Indeed. The minimum wage in 1968 was something like 50% more than the minimum wage today, in even BLS inflation adjusted terms. $5.35/hour is more than 3 times the minimum wage then.
How many jobs pay $22/hour in the US these days?
I made $4.04 per hour on construction labor that same era went up to $4.23. All kinds of time and a half overtime. Maybe when costs of living are considered, it may have been the best pay I ever had.
The guys were able to buy houses, pick-up trucks, snow mobiles, support families with kids and afford to drink beer after work.
Those were the “good old days”.
And stop tweeting shit on sessions-sniveling, thieving little shit ball that he is-cause you put him there and he’s the only one defending the border, pathetic effort that it is.
In 1900 horses were used for transportation by many. And then came the automobile. Travelers became dependant on auto manufacturers and oil companies.
We used to have gardens to grow fresh food. Now we don’t know how to plant a seed or pick a bean. Our only hope is the local grocery store and their abundance of pesticide ridden, artificially flavored and colored, GMO “food products.” In Monsanto we trust!
And how about the “convenience” of technological advancements? The internet, cell phones, Facebook and porn galore. Everything uses technology. And nobody is capable of creating a microchip in their basement. But we all know that Bill Gates has always had our best interest at heart.
From a horse you could feed from your own garden to travel the country, to fat asses unable to spell or multiply. I mean, why do they need to know such English or math when we have spell check and calculators. And the electricity never goes out!
In 1900 a man could depend on himself for almost every need. In 2018 nobody can even depend on a man.
America, in serfdom we trust.
Pleeeze! Trump has taken his exams and failed them all. Sure, he is exerting the US leverage that still exists, but he is providing overwhelming evidence to many of these slave countries that it may be time for them to find a new master or seek freedom. Many countries are moving in this direction, and US grip is wakening. Arrogance and oppression will work, but only for so long.
Meanwhile Russia and China continue to crush it, taking advantage of the US hubris and stupidity. Trump will have a summit with Putin because he needs Russia help. Period. “I’ll stop punishing you if you help me” . Putin’s response will be, “on the contrary, you have not punished us at all, you have given us incentive and conviction to innovate, get much stronger, resourceful and persistent to succeed on our own”. Thank you.
It’s not even the favorite tech stocks, the amazons and googles and facebooks and apples. The Russell 2000 has outperformed those big names. It’s funny how this index is up over 100% annualized in the 5 or so weeks since my indicator produced its highest reading of all time. Charts posted on my Gab, of course.