How messed up are Trump Supporters?

[Angrboda]

Don’t be fooled: Working Americans are worse off under Trump

Despite robust economic numbers during the Trump presidency, the American public has seemed curiously unmoved by such good news as the lowest U.S. unemployment level in nearly half a century. Its enthusiasm might have been dampened by this underappreciated economic reality: The typical working American's earnings, when properly measured, have declined during the Trump administration.

As any White House would, the president's economic team touts positive earnings data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that suggest rising wages and salaries. But the figures are misleading. They focus not on how much an average working person earns but on the "average earnings" of all employed people. In times of rising inequality, employees at the top pull up "average" earnings. Shift to the bureau's earnings data for an average or "median" working person, and most of those claimed gains disappear. Another catch: The data used by the White House doesn't account for inflation. Adjust the median earnings data for inflation, and the illusion of progress evaporates.

Let's examine how much these technical sleights of hand distort what's happening to people's earnings....

...To determine how much the real earnings of a typical working American fell during that period, simply adjust the $876 in median weekly earnings in the quarter ending June 30, 2018, for the 3.32 percent inflation that occurred in the 18 months from the first quarter of 2017 to that date. The result: $876 in June 2018 had the same value as $848.20 in January 2017. In real terms, the weekly earnings of a typical working American fell $16.80, or 1.9 percent, during Donald Trump's first 18 months as president....

....Another blow to the White House's preferred economic narrative: The current earnings decline is a new development. Using the same measure, real median weekly earnings increased substantially during Barack Obama's final 18 months as president.

Before adjusting for inflation, median weekly earnings increased during Obama's last 18 months from $803 in the third quarter of 2015 to $849 in the last quarter of 2016. People's average weekly earnings thus increased $46, or 5.73 percent, before adjusting for inflation. Over the same months, cumulative inflation from July 2015 to December 2016 was 1.12 percent, so the real earnings of a typical working person clearly increased. By how much? Adjust the median weekly earnings in December 2016 of $849 for the 1.08 percent inflation over the preceding 18 months, which comes to $838.82. In real terms, the weekly earnings of a typical employed American increased $35.82, or 4.5 percent, over Obama's last 18 months in office, growing from $803 in the third quarter of 2015 to $838.82 in the fourth quarter of 2016.

In Ronald Reagan's succinct terms, average working Americans are worse off under the Trump presidency than they were under Obama's. Yes, low unemployment is something to applaud, but there might be a good reason that so many who have jobs aren't clapping.

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The Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies have stymied the Pentagon’s plans to relaunch its immigrant recruitment program known as MAVNI, which allowed thousands of people with critical medical or Asian and African language skills to join the military. The decades-old program was suspended in 2016 amid concerns over the screening process. The AP’s Lolita C. Baldor reports: “Defense officials shored up the vetting process, and planned to relaunch the program earlier this month. But there was an unexpected barrier … The officials familiar with the discussions said Homeland Security told the Pentagon that it would not be able sign any agreement blocking the deportation of the immigrant recruits brought in under the program. In previous years, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service used an informal process to give MAVNI recruits protection when their temporary or student visas expired because they were entering military service. In addition, Congress included new restrictions in the 2019 defense bill that limit each military service to 1,000 such recruits per year." The plan to restart MAVNI was backed by Jim Mattis.

(Washington Post)