Politicians and promises: Trump vs. the Socialists
An interesting discussion ensued in the “Being a Socialist means you never have to explain” thread. In the post, I had pointed out that both Sanders and Warren were promoting single payer health care and refusing to tell us how such an enormous entitlement would be funded. Commenter “Montage” responded by making two analogies to things Trump had promised when he was campaigning:
Sort of like the ‘wall’. Mexico will pay for it, right? Oh wait well it will get paid for. How? Not important.
Then while campaigning Trump said he would eliminate the debt in 8 years. How? Tax cuts! What? Now the debt has increased by 68%.
Just for starters, it’s true that politicians all make promises they can’t keep. But Trump has kept far more of his promises than most.
Turning to specifics, the Wall was a linchpin of Trump’s campaign. When Trump said Mexico would pay, I recall that the vast majority of his supporters thought it was hyperbole, almost some sort of joke. They wanted a Wall and they wanted him to build one, but they were not actually expecting Mexico to pay. And so far the Wall is being built and is not being funded by Mexico. However, the funding involves no particular increase in taxes but rather the diversion of money from one program to another.
In addition, the amount of money involved in the Wall is relatviely small for a government project and practically irrelevant compared with the utterly enormous and exponentially greater expense of single-payer health care.
Now let’s take the debt. My first response (which is partly tongue-in-cheek and partly not) is that Trump said in eight years, and only two and three-quarters have passed so far. Give him the full eight and who knows.
In addition, as commenter “Art Deco” pointed out, the debt has “only” increased 15% since Trump took office, not 68% as claimed. “Montage” countered by saying he meant the deficit, not the debt.
What did Trump actually promise? Was it about the debt or the deficit? It’s surprisingly difficult to determine, because people so often confuse the two. Here’s an example of the sort of article I found when I Googled it. The headline says he promised to eliminate the deficit in 8 years, but the article (and links) talks about the debt.
As best I can tell, it was the national debt Trump promised to eliminate. And the time frame was eight years. What’s more, although “Montage” seems to think Trump promised it would be accomplished through tax cuts, that’s actually not what Trump said:
The Republican presidential front-runner said in a wide-ranging interview with The Washington Post that he’d be able to get rid of the more than $19 trillion debt “over a period of eight years.”
Eliminating that amount of debt in eight years is highly improbable, according to most economists, The Washington Post reported. It could require using $2 trillion a year from the annual $4 trillion budget to pay off holders of the debt.
Trump insisted in the interview that “renegotiating all of our deals” would help pay down the debt by sparking economic growth.
“The power is trade. Our deals are so bad,” Trump said. “I would immediately start renegotiating our trade deals with Mexico, China, Japan and all of these countries that are just absolutely destroying us.”
The Washington Post also refuted that claim, reporting that many economists have said a trade war could cripple the U.S. economy.
So, if Trump does get a second term and eight full years, it will be possible to know the truth or falsehood of the claim. Trump certainly has renegotiated our trade deals, and – contrary to the predictions of “many economists” – so far the US economy is far from crippled.
But the bottom line is that, although Trump’s prediction about the reduction of the debt may end being wrong – for one thing, he doesn’t have control of Congress, which votes on funding – he did not refuse to say how it would be done. Sanders and Warren are refusing to even say what they propose to do to fund an extraordinarily large new entitlement, which is not business as usual nor is it false promises as usual. It is a refusal to even address the issue of finances at all.
Eliminating the debt, even in 8 years sounds ridiculous. I didn’t recall that one. I’d be thrilled if he could get the deficit close to zero, but that ain’t happening either, at this moment.
The claim that Mexico will pay for the wall was certainly an odd if not wild one. I’ve been vaguely hoping that a few years from now we will be informed that somehow 2 or 4 bits have been subtracted from the price the US has been paying for a barrel of Mexico’s oil during Trump’s tenure. More likely the claim was just ploy for low information voters.
Obama spent $800B on a shovel ready jobs stimulus, and then used its failure as a laugh line in a subsequent speech. So yeah, a few 10’s of billions isn’t a big deal.
“… many economists have said a trade war could cripple the U.S. economy.”
Ha! So crippled that we’re the strongest developed economy in the world. (Ignoring Norway and their oil riches.)
We need to bear in thought the distinction first enunciated by Salena Zito in The Atlantic:
“It’s a familiar split. When he (Trump) makes claims like this, the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”
Reference: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/trump-makes-his-case-in-pittsburgh/501335/
I for one am a big-time believer in accuracy, in both big and little things. I’d like a president who is accurate, serious, and literally correct about whatever item is being cited. I’d also like my very own pony for Christmas . . .
“Sanders and Warren are refusing to even say what they propose to do to fund an extraordinarily large new entitlement, which is not business as usual nor is it false promises as usual. It is a refusal to even address the issue of finances at all.” – Neo
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-democratic-plan-for-a-42-national-sales-tax-202549219.html
Socialism is always about a socialist elite vanguard, spending Other People’s Money. The rich will always find a way to avoid being too much the Other People. There’s no Free Lunch, so somebody must pay.
It is especially attractive in health care, where most folk avoid going to the doctor unless they “need” to, so there is already a big desire to minimize use thru minimizing the need. High costs or low costs, most folks only use doctors when they need to. Medicine for sickness is quite unlike most other goods or services, which are far more sensitive to price.
Plus, socialized medicine is working in many other OECD countries, including Slovakia and France. France was one of many countries trying a millionaire’s tax, and found its rich folk, its investors, leaving France. So instead of increasing tax revenue a lot, it increased a little, but reduced investment, future wealth, by a lot.
Yet, like in the UK or the US Veterans Admin, socialized medicine restricts too much use by rationing thru wait lists. Sometimes folk die on the wait lists. More Canadians seem to come to America for expensive, but near term health care, rather than long waits on lower cost/ free Canadian health care.
Money facts and waitlist facts don’t seem to faze Dems, tho.
“Montage”, who would appear to be manju’s cousin, confounds planning and executing a discrete public works project that will have a sunk cost in 11 digits (10s of billions) and annual maintenance charges in 9 or perhaps 10 digits with the financing scheme of an economic sector for which gross output is current $2,500 bn per annum. He confounds financing the 2d World War – which required a general mobilization, the devotion of 1/3 of productive capacity to the war effort, and putting > 15 million men in uniform – with the Iraq and Afghanistan War, which required activating reserves and devoting an additional 1% of domestic product to military uses.
Thirty-five years ago, Michael Kinsley wrote a column in which he delineated a program for balancing the federal budget over a short period of years. He said it took him a week-end working with available print sources on current spending and revenue projections (and, presumably policy shop papers). His point was that it is not difficult to figure out how to balance the budget without causing severe social disruptions. It’s just that members of Congress have so many side-deals, so and so much turf, so many shticks, so many seedy ad pitches to their public, that they simply refused to actually do it. Our politicians stank then and stink now. With some ebb and flow, the stink seems to get worse every generation. The academic political science taught to my contemporaries incorporated a series of apologia for the stink (“authoritative allocation of valued things”).
Nowadays, with readily available digital data, a fat idiot like me can, from his couch, gin up in a fragment of an afternoon what took Kinsley a couple of days with requisitioned manuals from the Government Printing Office.
Now, there is no value-neutral way to balance the budget. However, if we were a serious country, our institutions would generate an aggregation of preferences which would provide criteria which rule in and rule out particular types of federal spending. Since 1960, our institutions have been unable to do that.
Actually if by “paying for the wall” you mean spending money to limit illegal immigration here, Mexico is paying. Pressured by Trump, they’re making it harder for those in Central America to reach our borders.
Art –
Which is why Draining the Swamp matters so much.
Art, most like what you say except:
our institutions have been unable to do that.
Our elites making decisions in those institutions have been unwilling to do that.
As you said, echoing Kinsley, it’s not that hard to do.
See Dan Mitchell — slow growth in gov’t to less than economic growth. That will allow America to grow out of the debt, over time.
But Trump, most Reps, and all Dems, love giving away – Other People’s Money. (Few support Rand Paul or even balanced budgets, today)
Our elites making decisions in those institutions have been unwilling to do that.
As you said, echoing Kinsley, it’s not that hard to do.
The institutional set up enhances the power of obstructive veto groups. Rather moreso than was the case 60 years ago.
” “Montage” countered by saying he meant the deficit, not the debt.”
Leftists never confess their falsehoods unless challenged by truth.
Art Deco,
How true (with some exceptions).
However, PROPS* to Art D. for knowing how to conjugate the verb “to stink”:
stink, stank, stunk.
People who can conjugate -ing and -ink verbs are few, far between, and highly valuable.
The one that most people still seem to know is “drink, drank, drunk.” It’s not hard — most of them go like that.
Think, thank, thunk. *g*
.
*"Props," per the Urban Dictionary:
'Slang term for "accolades", "proper respect", or "just dues". Popularized in the 1980s by rappers who shortened the term "propers" which was in turn being used as an abbreviated version of "proper respect" at least by the 1960s. The increase in this term's usage during the late 1980s and early 1990s coincided with an increasing fascination with the mafia within rap circles. Both communities have traditionally placed great emphasis on the importance of earning and giving respect.'