Checking up on the economy

I am continually amused by the claims of Trumpistas that the U.S. is experiencing an economic resurgence and utopia, for which of course the vulgarian in chief deserves all the credit. Joseph Stiglitz, who unlike them and me has won a Nobel Memorial Prize in economics (it ' s not a real Nobel prize, economists added it later because they wanted one too)knows otherwise.This is a fairly dense essay which it ' s difficult to summarize without quoting, but I ' ll try. Meanwhile one pull quote: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.I actually think even less of GDP as an indicator of anything we should necessarily feel happy about than does Stiglitz, whose critique includes the observation that it is actually growing slowly. That doesn ' t necessarily bother me, but these facts do:U.S. life expectancy is actually falling. We haven ' t seen that in ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs