Envy Or Growth?

Despite the media feeding frenzy about Donald Trump's multiple faux pas and their over the top and unabashed water carrying for Hillary Clinton, the true battle in regards to the upcoming election is going to boil down to this question:

What do you want going forward – envy or economic growth?

Despite all of the other rhetoric making the rounds, this is what this election boils down to.

...Hillary is stuck in the past.  American corporate tax rates haven't changed since her husband was president. Her business plan, which she will unveil in Detroit on Thursday, actually hikes business taxes.  She's obsessed with making corporations pay “their fair share.”

Her definition of 'fair share' is always “more than they do now.” She really sees no connection between increasing business taxes and slowing or stagnant economic growth.

As Trump pointed out Monday,  "the one common feature of every Hillary Clinton idea is that it punishes you for working and doing business in the United States."

Clinton  advisor Neera Tanden says it's unnecessary to reduce corporate taxes because “the U.S. has been doing pretty well when it comes to competitiveness.” Huh? Indonesia, Spain, Poland, India, and China to name a few, are growing several times as fast as America's anemic 1.2% growth.

Obama will be the first president in the modern era that didn't have a single year where economic growth was 3%, a growth rate seen during at least one year during the administrations of his predecessors. Even Hillary's husband, Bill Clinton, saw multiple years of 3% (or better) economic growth. And now we have had three successive quarters where U.S. productivity has declined, something we haven't seen since the malaise of the Carter years. This is a possible sign that we may be slipping into another recession (or deepening the existing one since we haven't really recovered from the one that started in 2008). Another bad sign – business investment has also dropped over the past three quarters.

Hillary's plan to deal with this?

Double down on stupid.

Businesses that don't invest in more trucks and computers can't hire more drivers and office personnel.  Though the jobs report announced last Friday was hailed as a positive, declining investment makes future job growth shaky.

In the "Fair Growth" plan Clinton is set to unveil, there is no private sector growth.  Nothing in her plan will promote business investment, according to Moody's.

Her plan amounts to a $275 billion public works program -- a throwback to the 1930's -- paid for by more business taxes. As we learned then, and endured again with Obama's failed "shovel-ready" boondoggles, government can't spend its way to prosperity.

Clinton and the Democrats may tout the lower unemployment rate, but it is smoke and mirrors. The U3 unemployment rate is an indicator of how many people who are still collecting unemployment benefits and is not a true measure of how many people are unemployed or underemployed. (Underemployed means working part time rather than full time or working outside their normal occupation, like a business executive working as a clerk at a grocery store, for example.) The true measure of the unemployment rate is the U6 rate which comprises those counted under the U3 rate and those who no longer collect benefits, are underemployed, or have stopped looking for work.

It used to be that the difference between the U3 and U6 rates was usually around 3 to 4 percentage points. Under Obama that difference has averaged 7 percentage points.

As of July of this year, the U3 unemployment rate was 4.9% and the U6 rate was 10.1%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I expect under Hillary we can expect both of these rates to climb again as she strangles the economy with more taxes, more deficit spending, and more obstructive rules and regulations. I expect she'll keep trying to sell us the line that it's for our own good even though she hasn't a friggin' clue what's good for anyone...other than herself.

At least Trump knows what ails us in regards to the economy, having had to deal with the effects of increasing taxes, regulations, and bureaucratic red tape, and having had to deal with it for decades.

Will Trump be a good president? I don't know. But I think he knows how to get the American economy growing again. Clinton, on the other hand, will continue with the Democrat agenda, making pie-in-the-sky promises about 'fixing' the economy that are not based upon reality and will continue to strangle economic growth. And she will continue to harangue the 'makers' for not paying their 'fair share' when they already pay more than the rest of us combined.

So, what's it going to be – Envy or Growth?