Comment on Was Trumps "booming economy" proof that "trickle down" policy actually works??
Letme@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Trump/Pence did nothing more than ride the Obama/Biden economic trajectory, until they bungled their Covid response and crashed the economy, then printed and gave away so much money that inflation ran out of control.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
While I generally agree with the incompetence of the Trump administration, I think COVID would have impacted the economy no matter who was President. Remember this was a pandemic and it fucked up the whole world economy pretty bad, not just the USA.
It can also be argued that the US was printing massive amounts of money to float the economy long before that, and that the COVID spending was the proverbial “cherry on top” that finally kicked inflation into high gear, especially since many companies used the real struggles of the economy as a shield to price-gouge consumers.
The PPP was widely abused, but it was far from the worst corporate handout the US has done in history. I would actually argue this was partially “chickens coming home to roost” since we never actually really addressed issues that caused the crash of 2008. I’d been waiting since 2008 for the other shoe to drop, ever since Henry Paulson asked US taxpayers for $700 billion to spend on failing banks (originally asked with no strings attached and no oversight… sound familiar?[^1]).
To act like this isn’t a long-term result of Republican fuckery and just Trump is ignoring a long history of Republican President’s trying to get away with no oversight spending.
[^1] www.npr.org/transcripts/94985539?storyId=94985539