QUICK HIT

      The growth fairy has been invited to knock at our door yet again. This is the same growth fairy invoked in the 1980’s when Reagan twice cut taxes, and by George W. Bush in the 2000’s when he repeated the experiment. Lowering taxes would, both claimed, free up capital for investment, resulting in economic growth sufficient to compensate for the decline in tax revenues.

     I invite readers to do a little (very little) work. Perform a Google Image search for “U.S. debt as a percentage of GDP”. My own effort took less than a minute and produced a simple, easy-to-read chart. I note, by the way, that I first did this search years ago and have repeated it several times, always with the same result.

      When Ronald Reagan first cut taxes, our national debt equaled 32% of our Gross Domestic Product. Twelve years later, when George H. W. Bush passed the baton to Bill Clinton, it had risen to 65% of GDP, more than doubling. The growth fairy summoned by Ronald Reagan and his Treasury Secretary, Don Regan, never arrived. Perhaps she had an accident on her way over.

     George W. Bush repeated Reagan’s error. His tax cuts, like Reagan’s, did not contain offsetting budget cuts, producing a potential deficit that would be compensated for by economic growth. At least according to Bush and his economic advisors. Unfortunately, our debt grew from 50% of GDP (Clinton produced a surplus) to 80% by the time Bush handed off to Obama at the beginning of the worst recession in more than 70 years.

      Yesterday, Don the Con proposed an enormous tax cut that will, on first examination, increase our national debt by 8 trillion dollars over a decade. But not to worry. Trump will wave his magic wand (or maybe recite a magic mantra) and the growth fairy will finally appear at our fiscal door, ready and able to grow us out of debt.

       One thing about conservatives, they have no mercy. Trump’s tax cuts will put tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars in his and his family’s pockets. The growth fairy will not show up, our debt will explode, leaving future generations to deal with the consequences. But that’s the way the game is played in TrumpWorld. And the only issue up for consideration is whether Republicans are able to con the whiny whiteys into embracing the big lie they repeat whenever they seek to fatten the wallets of the billionaires who control their political lives. Anybody wanna be primaried next time out?