Here’s a REAL affordability agenda
The latest gauge on inflation showed prices increasing 2.7 percent in December compared with the same period a year ago. Food prices were up 3.1 percent. (Reminder: Trump was elected on two issues: bringing prices down, especially food, and avoiding foreign entanglements.)
Trump traveled to Detroit to deliver an address to
the Detroit Economic Club. It was about “affordability” and he filled it with
lies — such as Americans aren’t paying for his tariffs (of course they are) and
inflation was “way, way, down” (it’s about the same as it was when he took
office).
And he insisted that “affordability” is a “fake word by
Democrats.” Unfortunately for Trump, “affordability” has become even more
politically potent than immigration or crime. And in his first year at the
helm, he’s made America less affordable.
He’s also been putting forward some ass-backward ideas for
bringing down prices that will actually increase them. His biggest: Fire the
current chair of the Federal Reserve Board and install a chair who’ll lower
interest rates — and thereby, in Trump’s addled brain, bring down the costs of
borrowing to buy homes and cars. (In his speech today, he called Fed chair
Jerome Powell Powell, a “jerk.”)
Trump’s decision to open up a criminal investigation of
Powell is a bizarre escalation of his pressure campaign against the central
bank to cut interest rates. And it’s truly ass-backwards. Without an
independent Fed committed to using interest rates to fight inflation, everyone
who buys or sells or invests will have to assume the risk of runaway prices in
the future. The result is a risk “premium” that makes everything more
expensive instead of more affordable.
What should be done to make America more affordable? Ten commonsense initiatives:
1. Get rid of Trump’s tariffs
Trump’s blanket, unpredictable, on-again-off-again, gigantic
and then sometimes modest tariffs have caused prices to jump on just about
everything. That’s because tariffs are import taxes that are paid by the
companies that do the importing and by their consumers.
Tariffs can be a tool to create American jobs, but only if
they’re used in a targeted and responsible way. Targeted and responsible are
two adjectives that no one uses in describing Trump’s tariffs.
The first step to make life more affordable for the average
American is to get rid of them.
2. Bust up monopolies
Trump’s overriding goal is to boost share prices. He doesn’t
seem to understand that most Americans aren’t directly affected by share
prices: Over 90 percent of the value of shares held by Americans is held by the
richest 10 percent; over half by the richest 1 percent.
In pursuit of high share prices, Trump has essentially given
up on antitrust enforcement. Big corporations are now merging and buying up
potential competitors at a rapid rate. But this means less competition, and
less competition results in higher prices.
It’s another ass-backward approach to affordability. Trump’s
overriding goal of high share prices collides with what should be the real
goal: keeping prices low.
A real affordability agenda would bust up big corporations
that dominate their industries and prohibit price gouging.
3. Fight for stronger unions
Trump hates unions and has done everything he can do to
weaken the National Labor Relations Board and the Labor Department. He’s given
free rein to corporate union-busting.
Here again, Trump’s goal of high share prices and corporate
profitability is at direct odds with the needs of average workers for higher
wages, which are necessary if the goods and services they require are to become
more affordable to them.
Workers need more bargaining power to get higher wages.
Unions do that. A real affordability agenda therefore would make it easier for
workers to start or join them.
4. Raise the national minimum wage
For the same reason Trump believes unions and higher wages
are bad for the economy — that is, his definition of the economy, which is the
stock market — he’s been dead set against raising the national minimum wage.
But the federal minimum wage has been stuck at a measly
$7.25 since 2009. Raise the damn wage. And raise it even higher for employees
of big corporations that pay their top executives hundreds of times more than
their workers.
5. Pass Medicare For All
Trump has been trying to destroy the Affordable Care Act
because it was passed under his predecessor, Barack Obama. His latest gambit
has been to block any extension of the subsidies that Americans need to be able
to afford health insurance under the ACA. (The fight over this issue resulted
in the longest government shutdown in history.)
Without those subsidies, the typical American will be paying
30 to 100 percent more for health insurance this year than last — which is
already driving many people out of the ACA marketplace and forcing them to live
without health insurance at all.
Extending ACA subsidies is necessary but not sufficient. A
real affordability agenda would make Medicare available to all Americans. This
will bring down health care costs for everyone, because Medicare is cheaper and
more efficient than for-profit health insurance.
6. Make housing more affordable
Last Wednesday, Trump called for a ban on
institutional investors buying single-family housing. I suppose it’s nice that
he’s finally gotten around to this, but I’ll believe it when he actually signs
the legislation.
A real affordability agenda would ban Wall Street firms from
buying up housing, crack down on corporate landlords that collude to jack up
rent prices, get rid of zoning laws that make it harder to build homes, and
increase funding to boost the construction of housing in cities that need it
most.
7. Make child care and elder care more affordable
The costs of child care take a third of the incomes of
parents with young children, on average. The costs of elder care can be even
higher for working people with elderly parents. Both are essential for working
families.
An affordability agenda would include a universal child care
program for parents and boost funding for caregivers of aging parents.
8. Give Americans paid leave
Here again, the goal of fat corporate profits and high share
prices collides with what American workers need. Trump consistently opts for
the former and argues that the nation “can’t afford” paid family leave.
Baloney. We’re the richest country in the world. Every other
advanced nation provides paid leave. Working Americans need it. We should
provide it, too.
9. Stop Big Finance from siphoning off people’s incomes
Trump has deregulated big banks and allowed them to charge
up to 30 percent interest on credit cards. (The banks love it because credit
cards provide them with four
times the return of any other line of business.) Trump has gotten rid
of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which stopped other sleazy
financial practices. And he’s allowed more consolidation of big financial
institutions, which means even less competition, higher prices, and shadier
deals. (His Justice Department recently approved the merger of Capital One and
Discover, which will pile even more debt on low-income
consumers.)
The captains of Wall Street have never had it so good.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon made $770 million last year. But average working
people are being shafted.
A real affordability agenda would cap credit card interest
rates at 5 percent, stop the banks from charging late fees on unsuspecting
consumers (Trump’s OMB director, Russ Vought, withdrew the
late fee rule in April), and bust up the biggest banks whose market power is
allowing them to charge absurdly high interest rates on all borrowing.
10. Raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and
corporations
Besides tariffs, Trump’s economic policy has cut taxes
mainly on wealthy individuals and big corporations. He’s imbibed the
“trickle-down” Kool-Aid that assumes tax cuts at the top make everyone better
off.
The reality, as we’ve learned since Trump’s first tax cut
mostly benefiting the wealthy and big corporations (as we should have learned
from Ronald Reagan’s and George W. Bush’s trickle-down tax cuts also mainly
benefiting the rich and big corporations) is that nothing trickles
down. Trickle-down economics is a cruel sham.
The cumulative effects of all these tax cuts has been to
make America’s rich far richer — now owning a record share of the nation’s
wealth — and big corporations far more profitable (corporate profits are also
near record levels), while dramatically enlarging the national debt.
And what do we get with a bigger debt? More inflation, which
makes everything less affordable. Again, Trump has it ass-backward.
It’s time we ended the trickle-down hoax once and for all.
Besides, it’s only fair that the super rich pay more in
taxes so that the rest of America can afford what Americans need: housing,
health care, child care and elder care.
And by the way, even after paying more in taxes, the rich
will still be richer than they’ve ever been, and giant corporations will still
be exceedingly profitable.
***
These 10 steps are crucial for making America affordable
again. Don’t fall for Trump’s ass-backward agenda, which will only make the
rich richer and big corporations more profitable. You and I and everyone who
wants to lower the cost of living for Americans should back the real
affordability agenda.
Please share this with any Democrat or independent (hell,
share it with any Republican) interested in running for office and improving
Americans’ standard of living.