Global Trade, a $43.5 Trillion Bill and Pig Butchering

Part 2 of Democracy Ascending

My Comment: Trump and Harris have no idea of how to win at global trade, the world’s largest business and what is essential to economic growth.

The Hill: Former President Trump and Vice President Harris are offering a flurry of ideas on spending and taxes that are fueling concerns on Capitol Hill that there’s no end in sight for huge annual deficits.

Trump’s reversal on capping state and local tax deductions, a key part of his tax reform legislation, is just the latest expensive proposal to emerge on the campaign trail.

Trump has proposed $8 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade, which he would offset with only $900 billion in revenue from reversing Biden-era clean energy tax breaks and $4 trillion in new tariffs, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.

Harris has called for raising taxes on the wealthy, but she’s also pushing expensive ideas, such as $25,000 down payments for first-time homebuyers and $50,000 tax cuts for entrepreneurs.

In all, her proposals would increase the deficit by $1.5 trillion over 10 years, experts say.

The exploding costs of both candidates’ policy platforms have experts predicting $2-trillion annual deficits well into the future.

“The powers that be other than a handful of us are not that concerned about the debt. That’s just a fact,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

“I think both parties have been terrible and both parties are about equally responsible for the debt. The Trump administration added $8 trillion in debt. The Biden-Harris administration will add $8 trillion debt. It’s almost equal,” Paul said. “Neither of them have proposed much in spending cuts or in spending restraint.”

Paul said Trump’s record on deficit spending is one of the reasons he hasn’t yet endorsed his presidential campaign.

Some Democrats are also disappointed with the huge prospective tab Trump and Harris are running up on the campaign trail as they woo voters with promises of lavish spending and costly tax breaks.

“No one is talking about having $35.5 trillion of debt. It’s just absolutely a shame and it’s beyond my comprehension why no one is even talking about it,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), a longtime Democrat who recently became an independent.

The United States of Debt

In 2023, U.S. GDP was $27.36 Trillion. U.S. debt under either Trump or Harris would climb by $8Trîllion to $43.5 Trillion, or 158.99% of GDP, as estimated by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.

Solutions

The way to solve our debt and economic growth problem is to drive U.S. engagement in the global economy by entrepreneurs and small businesses by mentoring them to scale globally without insisting on Representation without Taxation.     

Representation without taxation by multinationals has contributed to a dependence on property taxes, a disastrous policy of which Education is a primary victim:

Regional Economic Integration

Regional economic integration has been achieved in Europe with the EU despite its disparate cultures. Nothing of the kind has been achieved in the U.S. The Economic Development Depts. of each of our states fights for its own interests, as I have experienced personally.

Enter Hamilton

Hamilton convinced George Washington that a then much smaller U.S. needed one currency at a time when every state had its own. This was a requirement for fiscal responsibility. The U.S. had acquired huge debts from fighting the Revolutionary War and from maintaining the plantation and debt-ridden lifestyle of some of our slave-owning founders:

Fast Forward: Economic Delusion

John Kenneth Galbraith explained our penchant for economic delusion as "a tribute only to a recurrent preference in economic matters for formidable nonsense." In more biological terms, he refers to economic "trickle-down" as « the unlovely saying that when the horse dies in the street, the oats no longer pass through for the sparrows."

Total U.S. tax revenue, Jeffrey D. Sachs notes, is not even sufficient to meet costs for security and defense, social security, health expenditures and interest on government debt. This leaves only borrowing to pay for investments in the future -- in education, job training, infrastructure and fundamental research. In the 1960s, the U.S. spent around 4 percent of gross domestic product on nondefense research and development. That figure has now fallen to less than 1.5 percent.

Meanwhile:

WSJ: Pig-Butchering’ Scams Cost Americans Billions. This Lawyer Is Taking Them On.

Prosecutor Erin West has been one of the few to have any success against the criminals perpetrating a new type of fraud

In 2022, an unusual case came across the desk of Erin West, a California prosecutor who specializes in cybercrime. The victim was a 30-year-old man who thought he had met his soul mate on a dating app until he realized he had been conned out of $300,000. He was so ashamed that at times he was suicidal. 

West and her investigative task force pulled off something of a miracle: They recovered about 70% of the man’s money by tracing the funds to a wallet on a cryptocurrency exchange and then obtaining a warrant to freeze and seize it. It was the first time anyone was known to successfully claw back money stolen through a new type of fraud called “pig butchering,” in which scammers build victims’ trust and convince them to invest in bogus schemes.

Next: Winning at Global Trade without Debt and Schemes

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