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Booming US Economic Growth?

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Booming US Economic Growth?

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

America’s economic engine benefits corporate predators and high-net worth individuals exclusively.

It’s propelled by the greatest wealth transfer scheme from ordinary people to privileged ones in world history.

Wall Street and other corporate predators never had things better since America’s Gilded Age of robber barons and captains of industry. 

A small segment of society benefitted hugely at the expense of most others. Fortunes were amassed through greed, grand theft, and absence of regulatory restraint.

What goes around comes around. Main street Depression conditions since the 2008 financial crisis affect countless millions in America. 

Real unemployment exceeds 21%. Most workers have rotten temp or part-time low-pay, few or no-benefits jobs.

George Carlin was right, saying “(t)he reason they call it the American dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

Reported US second quarter 4.1% GDP was far less rosy than it appeared. Economist John Williams calls US GDP numbers the “most heavily-gimmicked of US statistics.”

Paul Craig Roberts calls the vaunted US economy “a house of card.” Ahead of Friday’s release, the Economic Collapse blog headlined “We Are About To See A Great, Big Debt-Fueled GDP Number For The 2nd Quarter, But There Is A Catch,” saying:

Things aren’t always as they seem. The US hasn’t “had a full year of 3 percent growth since the middle of the Bush administration.”

“Last year the US economy grew by only 2.3 percent” - by manipulating negative growth to look positive, according to Williams.

“The US economy has not grown by at least 3 percent on an annual basis in 14 years. That is the longest stretch in all of US history by a wide margin,” the Economic Collapse blog reported.

Reported Q-2 4.1% economic growth was largely from last year’s $1.5 trillion GOP tax cut heist, enriching corporate predators, billionaires and millionaires hugely - in part paid for by deep Medicare, Medicaid, education and other social spending cuts - what Americans for Tax Justice called “an abomination.”

It was also from around $300 billion in economic stimulus enacted last February, massive corporate stock buybacks inflating equity valuations, and businesses boosting inventories ahead of Trump regime tariffs kicking in.

The downside ahead is growing national debt exceeding GDP at over $21 trillion - increasing exponentially, along with rising interest rates and reduced Fed purchases of US Treasuries.

During its tenure, the Obama regime doubled the national debt from around $10 trillion to $19.5 trillion.

Since Trump took office, the national debt grew to $21.3 trillion, or nearly $65,000 for every US citizen.

Trump’s Friday tweet about “accomplish(ing) an economic turnaround of HISTORIC proportions” was a bald-faced lie!

There was nothing “amazing” about 4.1% second quarter GDP growth. Omitted from his bravado was silence on privileged Americans benefitting financially at the expense of most others.

Wages aren’t keeping pace with inflation. Benefits are eroding. Economist Jared Bernstein explained that “in our era of high economic inequality, GDP should definitely not be taken as a signal of broad well-being.”

Patriotic Millionaires head Morris Pearl stressed that “most Americans are still struggling.”

Robust US economic growth is more illusion than reality. Ordinary Americans struggle to get by. Prosperity is for the privileged few alone.

Depression-level unemployment, underemployment, hunger and homelessness go unreported.

“You can’t eat GDP,” writer Dante Atkins tweeted.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

 

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

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