Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is trying to sell himself as a shrewd business genius.
He promises to be the “greatest jobs President that God ever created.” Swearing that he will return jobs to the United States, the man whose suits are made in Indonesia says that he will fix all of America’s economic problems.
Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, entire legions of economists and other business people have dismissed his ideas as foolish and potentially dangerous.
45 Living Economist Advisers Of All Presidents – Since Nixon, Will Not Vote For Donald Trump! Trump Has No Idea What To Do On USA Economy!
— onahunttoday (@onahunttoday) August 26, 2016
The Huffington Post reports that last summer one of Trump’s key economic advisors, Stephen Moore, met with a group of leading conservatives at the super secretive, uber conservative Council for National Policy. He spoke to the group about how Trump would finance his plans. Mind you, although he was explaining what a theoretical President Trump would do, he stated that he was “speaking for himself” and said that he hadn’t actually discussed these ideas with the candidate.
Um. Isn’t that more than a little bit concerning to anyone?
At any rate, here is what conservative, small-government Stephen Moore said.
Trump’s first step would be to eliminate the Departments of Commerce, Energy and Education. He didn’t mention the 150,000 government workers who would lose jobs at these agencies, nor did he mention their role in overseeing pesky little items like nuclear safety, student loans, and the U.S. patent office. He just focused on the money that would be saved by eliminating them.
Next idea on the table is the end of the earth as we know it. Also called unlimited drilling for oil and gas, unlimited fracking and as much mining as possible. Boy, howdy, just think of all those great jobs created! It sounds so good in a nice simplistic way. More jobs, more energy independence, win-win!
The truth, however, is that the price of fossil fuels in so low right now on the world market that gas drilling operations across the country are sitting idle because the return is just not worth the effort.
Finally, the federal government under a President Donald Trump would just plain stop paying for all those annoying public service programs. Instead, they’d provide “block grants” to states to use as they see fit. Moore said:
“All these programs, job training, health care, medical services, da da da, we’ll just pass all that stuff back to the states.”
I’m not an economist, but this all sounds like a stupid plan to me. As if all of the incredibly complex issues around, say, public education and the almost 30 year effort to reform it, can be solved by just eliminating the Department of Education. As if unemployment can be solved just by handing everyone a drill and say, “Go for it!”
Donald Trump is a failed businessman without the intellectual capacity to grasp complex issues. He inarticulate to the point of appearing to have a language disorder, impulsive enough to appear to have ADHD and hateful enough to appear to have no soul.
How can anyone even be considering voting for him?
Featured image by Mike Licht via Flickr. Available through Creative Commons Attribution Generic 2.0 License.
