Labor Day Assesment

If you consider how things were 4 years ago versus how they are today, almost everything is worse.

The one exception is related to the price of stocks which have gone up as  the Federal Reserve continues to subsidize the markets with extremely low interest rates.

Whatever changes have been made to trade policy, it hasn't impacted us very much at least not in a noticeable way.  Our trade deficit is as high as ever and we haven't seen a great boom in manufacturing.  Companies are still moving production overseas.  We hae imposed some tariffs but that just drives up some prices since we pay for them.

Unemployment is much worse although it did get better before the Pandemic.  However it was quite low four years ago and the reduction in the rate is also related to the number of people leaving the workforce.  The jobs haven't got better, many of them are simply low paying service jobs which are growing for various reasons.

The state of health care is much worse as we have a Pandemic but in addition we he increased the number of uninsured over the last four years.  The current administration has no real plan or none they will reveal.  I suspect it is simply to let the market decide and let a lot of people suffer or go bankrupt.  

The increase in Racism has been inspired by this Administration which has encouraged racists and white supremacists' to grow.  Some of the racial unrest might just be the fact that we have more visibility into things that have always happened because of cell phone cameras and body cams.  It may be an actual increase.  Either way we need a strong effective police force that respects the lives of all Americans equally.  We don't have second class citizens, or, at least we shouldn't.

Our national defense is probably about the same although our prestige and support from allies has declined.  Our extreme positions of Iran versus our conciliatory positions on North Koreas is inconsistent and has increase the threat of nuclear war.  No on wins that.

The border is effectively the same but our treatment of immigrants is in some cases shameful.  People seeking asylum or peaceful entry into this country are people who should be treated with respect.  Those who cross the border without permission are still people who we need to disposition.  There is a basic level of humanity that seems lacking in our approach.

Certainly our social security and medicare programs are in generally worse shape.  The trust funds are closer to running out and no fix has been proposed.  Further, eliminating the payroll tax will lead to faster depletion.  

The deficit and national debt are much worse.  Fixing those are major undertakings.

Perhaps the worse thing is the failure to address climate change.  We act like it isn't accepted science when it is.  We seem to be sticking our head in the sand which is heating up before it floods.

There may be areas that are better that I missed but any such improvement is not significant.  The working man is not doing better even if he has a job.  

We need to actually repair America now.