By Joseph E. Stiglitz
It is becoming
conventional wisdom that US
President Donald Trump will be tough
to beat in November, because,
whatever reservations about him
voters may have, he has been good
for the American economy. Nothing
could be further from the truth.
January 18, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" -
As the world’s
business elites trek to Davos for their
annual gathering, people should be asking a
simple question: Have they overcome their
infatuation with US President Donald Trump?
Two years ago, a few rare corporate leaders
were concerned about climate change, or
upset at Trump’s misogyny and bigotry. Most,
however, were celebrating the president’s
tax cuts for billionaires and corporations
and looking forward to his efforts to
deregulate the economy. That would allow
businesses to pollute the air more, get more
Americans hooked on opioids, entice more
children to eat their diabetes-inducing
foods, and engage in the sort of financial
shenanigans that brought on the 2008 crisis.
Today, many corporate bosses are still
talking about the continued GDP growth and
record stock prices. But neither GDP nor the
Dow is a good measure of economic
performance. Neither tells us what’s
happening to ordinary citizens’ living
standards or anything about sustainability.
In fact, US economic performance over the
past four years is Exhibit A in the
indictment against relying on these
indicators.
To get a good reading on a country’s
economic health, start by looking at the
health of its citizens. If they are happy
and prosperous, they will be healthy and
live longer. Among developed countries,
America sits at the bottom in this regard.
US life expectancy, already relatively low,
fell in each of the first two years of
Trump’s presidency, and in 2017, midlife
mortality reached its highest rate since
World War II. This is not a surprise,
because no president has worked harder to
make sure that more Americans lack health
insurance. Millions have lost their
coverage, and the uninsured rate has risen,
in just two years,
from 10.9% to 13.7%.
One reason for declining life expectancy in
America is what Anne Case and Nobel laureate
economist
Angus Deaton call deaths of despair,
caused by alcohol, drug overdoses, and
suicide. In 2017 (the most recent year for
which good data are available), such deaths
stood at
almost four times their 1999 level.
The only time I have seen anything like
these declines in health – outside of war or
epidemics – was when I was chief economist
of the World Bank and found out that
mortality and morbidity data confirmed what
our economic indicators suggested about the
dismal state of the post-Soviet Russian
economy.
Trump may be a good president for the top 1%
– and especially for the top 0.1% – but he
has not been good for everyone else. If
fully implemented, the 2017 tax cut will
result in tax increases for most
households in the second, third, and fourth
income quintiles.