The Trump/Vance campaign is primarily a scapegoating campaign against immigrants. Not just "illegal" immigrants. Immigrants, including immigrants who have gone through the naturalization process and become full citizens. It is the ugliest, morally campaign I have ever witnessed -- every bit as ugly as Hitler's scapegoating of the Jews.
Scapegoating as a tactic deployed against disfavored groups often occurs in times of crisis, including economic and public health crises. What is both amazing and frightening about the scapegoating by the Trump/Vance campaign is that the "crisis" is entirely made up. The campaign's claims about immigrants, crime and the economy are not only lies, they are vicious, malicious lies against a a group that has been treated in this manner throughout U.S. history.
The lies are pretty simple:
1. The U.S. economy is a disaster.
2. Immigrants are taking real American's jobs.
3. Immigrants are savage criminals who are causing a massive wave of crime that is literally holding real American's hostage in their towns and homes.
1. The Economy is Strong
We had another president whose economy was similar to that of Joe Biden. During the early part of his term, the economy suffered a spike in inflation even larger than that experienced during the Biden administration. For the rest of his term, the inflation rate gradually subsided until it was in the normal range expected by economists. His name was Ronald Reagan and he was re-elected in a landslide. Why? Because neither political party discovered how effective the Big Lie technique really is. Trump's big lie that he won the 2020 election taught him and almost every other R politician in America that there was no political consequence to lying to the American people over and again about practically anything. I'm not talking about the normal and expected political spin that seems to be part and parcel of politics. I'm talking about looking the American people in the eye telling them that up is down.
The Economist is by no means a politically liberal publication. Its economic reporting is highly regarded and for good reason. The October 17 edition took an in depth look at the U.S. economy. Here's the big headline:
Some key excerpts that describe our economy and contrast it with that of other countries:The Envy of the World. America's Economy is Bigger and Better than Ever
Yes. Americans who live in the poorest U.S. state earn more on average than their counterparts in England, Canada and Germany.Over the past three decades America has left the rest of the rich world in the dust. In 1990 it accounted for about two-fifths of the gdp of the g7. Today it makes up half. Output per person is now about 30% higher than in western Europe and Canada, and 60% higher than in Japan—gaps that have roughly doubled since 1990. Mississippi may be America’s poorest state, but its hard-working residents earn, on average, more than Brits, Canadians or Germans. Lately, China too has gone backwards. Having closed in rapidly on America in the years before the pandemic, its nominal gdp has slipped from about three-quarters of America’s in 2021 to two-thirds today.
Disaster my ass.
That "good policy" that produced economic growth three times that of the rest of the G7 countries and kept us out of a recession is what Ajax sneeringly calls "Bidenomics." Things that Trump bragged that he would do, Biden (with the help of Congress) actually did. He reduced our dependence on China for computer chips through a targeted tariff and investment in factories that make chips. He did the same thing in another area of critical importance to the future of the company -- batteries. Not only are batteries necessary for the move from ICE to electric vehicles, they are also critical for producing drones, which are becoming of increasing military importance.To see why, consider first the factors behind America’s success. As our special report this week sets out, innate advantages play an important role. America is a big country blessed with vast energy resources. The shale-oil revolution has driven perhaps a tenth of its economic growth since the early 2000s. The enormous size of its consumer and capital markets means that a good idea dreamt up in Michigan can make it big across America’s 49 other states.
Yet good policy has been important, too. America has long married light-touch regulation with speedy and generous spending when a crisis hits. Although supersized stimulus during the pandemic fuelled inflation, it has also ensured that America has grown by 10% since 2020, three times the pace of the rest of the g7. By contrast, stingier Germany is mired in recession for a second consecutive year.
From an article titled "American Productivity Still Leads the World:"This combination of factors has fuelled a powerful virtuous cycle. America’s dynamic private sector draws in immigrants, ideas and investment, begetting more dynamism. It is home not just to the world’s biggest rocket-launch industry, but also its internet giants and best artificial-intelligence startups. Its seven big tech firms are together worth more than the stockmarkets of Britain, Canada, Germany and Japan combined; Amazon alone spends more on research and development than all of British business. Because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, meanwhile, investors have a keen appetite for American debt. They flock to Treasuries in times of crisis, letting the government dole out vast stimulus packages.
This year the average American worker will generate about $171,000 in economic output, compared with (on purchasing-parity terms) $120,000 in the euro area, $118,000 in Britain and $96,000 in Japan. That represents a 70% increase in labour productivity in America since 1990, well ahead of the increases elsewhere: 29% in Europe, 46% in Britain and 25% in Japan.
To explain this productivity outperformance, it is useful to break it into a few broad, overlapping categories. The first is investment in capital. American workers, simply put, have more tools at their disposal, both the physical kind such as highways and warehouses and the intangible sort in the form of software. Non-residential investment has run at about 17% of gdp in America since the mid-1990s, consistently higher than the share in large European economies, according to John Fernald of insead, a business school in France. Moreover, much American business investment is the most potent kind: spending on research and development, which sows the seeds for future growth. With the exceptions of Israel and South Korea, America invests more in r&d than any other country, at roughly 3.5% of gdp. China is the one major power that has closed the gap on r&d spending, but it still trails America by a large absolute margin.
https://www.economist.com/special-repor ... n-the-dustThe underlying cause of America’s tech superiority is the country’s vibrant innovation lifecycle. It starts with its universities, helped by their ability to attract many of the brightest minds from around the world. Public support for research is robust. Financing for young companies is plentiful. And companies face few regulatory hurdles to scale up. It is not that American regulators are lax but that they compare favourably to many of those elsewhere in the world. Europe still fragments along national lines. Japan has a way to go in shaking up its stodgy corporate governance. In China the Communist Party has set its own cause back by throttling its once-vibrant private sector.
Take note of the kinds of things that are listed as strengths of the U.S.: immigrants (who the Trump/Vance campaign promise to deport), universities (that the Trump/Vance campaign portray as enemies) and the absence of regulatory hurdles (exposing the lie that regulations are strangling American business).
"The economy is a disaster" is a Big Lie.
To the extent that Americans are in personal economic hardship, that's a distributional issue. As a nation, we generate plenty of wealth. In 1980, the share of GDP that goes to the wealthiest Americans began to increase at the expense of the middle class. The gap grew over the course of decades until fairly recently.
We can always take action to make those who are the worst off in our society better and more economically secure. But that's always been the case. Capitalism generates winners and losers, especially when the winners have enough wealth to rig the system in their favor. Helping those out that the private market has left behind -- declining rural areas and declining rust belt towns -- is where government comes in. That's another thing that Bidenomics has emphasized -- investment in those left behind areas of the country.The skew towards the top is sharp. America ranks as the most unequal big rich-world country (see chart). Combined with lower average incomes elsewhere, the pay of America’s top workers looks astonishing to European eyes. For comparison, it takes the equivalent of a mere $250,000 or so to enter the top 1% of two-person households in Britain
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It would be natural to conclude that high inequality is merely the flipside of America’s wealth. That is probably true to an extent. Yet America has grown more redistributive over the period examined by this special report, expanding the earned-income tax credit, a wage top-up for low earners, in the 1990s, and subsidies for health insurance in the 2010s. And it is not clear that tolerance for inequality is powering its economic outperformance over the past decade.
Take the corporate lawyer. Even after taxes and transfers, the average real income of households like his grew by 110% from 1990 to 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office (cbo). But most of that growth took place early in the time period: in 2019 he was probably doing worse than his equivalent in 2007, before the global financial crisis.
By contrast incomes in the lowest 20% of households, in which the fast-food worker resides, surged in the tight labour market of the late-2010s. By 2019 she was enjoying after-tax-and-transfer household income 25% higher than those like her in 2007, in part thanks to “Obamacare”. Even over the full period since 1990, the bottom quintile’s after-tax-and-transfer income growth was 77%, the same as for the highest quintile—thus, excluding the highest-earning 1% from the top 20% would show the poor enjoying faster income growth than the upper-middle-class. In the 2020s the burger-flipper probably had a boost from the tight post-pandemic labour market, which lifted wage growth the most at the bottom end of the income distribution.
It is the mechanic and teaching assistant in the middle who have the best claim to having missed the party: median real income rose by 57% from 1990 to 2019. But that is still a healthy 1.6% per year—a far cry from the stagnation in median earnings that is sometimes alleged, based in part on an inflation index, the cpi, which is biased upwards.
2. Immigrants aren't taking jobs from real Americans.
As businesses ramped up during Biden's term, the U.S. experienced a labor shortage. The supply of employment was insufficient to meet the demand. Even after the fed increased interest rates to slow inflation, job creation continued to be surprisingly strong. This is exactly the opposite of what Trump claims to be true -- we aren't short of jobs, we are short of workers. It does no good to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. if we don't have the necessary workers. That's the role that immigrants have played in the U.S. economy -- fueling expansion.
The actual experience of the Haitians that are here temporarily is a good example. They have gone to locations where employers were unable to find sufficient workers. And they don't just take jobs -- they create them too. They add to the economy either by opening business themselves or by providing a sufficient market to allow others to open businesses.
The benefits that immigrants bring to the U.S. has been studied and documented over and over. Use the Google.
"They're stealing America Jobs" is a lie.
3. America is nowhere close to experiencing record crime.
Trump and Vance describe an America straight out of a Mad Max movie, with housewives having their throats slashed right and left and women being raped and murdered if they dare set foot our of their homes. It's another Big Lie.
Crime rates in the U.S. peaked in the 1990s and have never come close to those peak rates. The decrease was dramatic, with crime rates being halved. They have never come anywhere close to those peaks again.
As the Pew report says, statistics show a decrease in crime in 2023 (as do preliminary statistics for 2024). The report also notes a surprising fact:
Why would Americans think that crime rates are increasing when they are in fact falling? Perhaps it's because one of the two major parties gaslights the American people about the actual incidence of crime as a foundational part of their political campaigns. When the question is about their local area, Americans are more inclined to belief their own lying eyes. But, when its about crime elsewhere, they seem to believe what politicians and partisan media have told them.Americans tend to believe crime is up, even when official data shows it is down.
In 23 of 27 Gallup surveys conducted since 1993, at least 60% of U.S. adults have said there is more crime nationally than there was the year before, despite the downward trend in crime rates during most of that period.
While perceptions of rising crime at the national level are common, fewer Americans believe crime is up in their own communities. In every Gallup crime survey since the 1990s, Americans have been much less likely to say crime is up in their area than to say the same about crime nationally.
The crime Big Lie is clearly illustrated by Trump's claims about Aurora CO. An out of town slumlord owned several apartment complexes that were in abysmal condition. When they were sued, they used the presence of Venezuelan gangs as their excuse for the horrible condition of their properties. That's it. Was there crime? Sure -- there always is when slumlords own and operate slums. Was the town held hostage by Venezuelan gangs? Hell no.
"America is under siege by criminals" is a lie.
4. Trump's description of immigrants as brutal, murderous thugs is a lie.
Look, we've done this. Immigrants, including those here illegally, commit crimes at a lower rate than "real" Americans. Immigrants, including illegal immigrants, come here for better lives. They work, hard, expanding the economy. The notion that people who aren't here legally, who are here to have better lives, run around committing crimes (which would get them expelled) is nonsensical. They need a low profile to avoid getting caught and sent back.
Here is the way Trump talks about immigrants.
And you see how bad it’s getting,” he said. “When you look at what’s going on with the migrants attacking villages and cities all throughout the Midwest, in particular right now, but it’s all over.
A vote for Kamala Harris means 40 or 50 million more illegal aliens will invade across our borders, stealing your money, stealing your jobs, stealing your life.
Not wanting to be outdone, Vance said the following about Springfield, Ohio.Venezuelan gangs had taken over entire apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado. The governor is petrified.
Vance is a Senator that represents the people of Springfield, Ohio. It's citizens are his constituents. Why did he allow this to happen to his constituents? Well, he didn't. Because this is just another lie.“Murders are up by 81% because of what Kamala Harris has allowed to happen to this small community,”
Another Big Lie. There was no increase in murders and no Haitian murdered anyone.
Unless he means occupied by a senile old golfer untethered from reality, this is another Big Lie.Trump wrote: And you see how bad it’s getting. When you look at what’s going on with the migrants attacking villages and cities all throughout the Midwest, in particular right now, but it’s all over.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartande ... -villages/
A partial list of more Big Lies:
And the reason Trump tells these Big Lies over and over is that they work.In a December 2023 speech, also in New Hampshire, Trump said that undocumented immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country."
On immigration, Sunday's comments were also just the latest example of how Trump's rhetoric has grown increasingly pointed, as he makes the issue his closing pitch of the 2024 campaign.
At a rally in Aurora, Colorado, on Friday, which has become a focal point of the former president's pitch on border security, Trump cited the criticism he received for calling immigrants "rapists" in the last election, among a number of derogatory comments he's made about people seeking to enter the U.S., while suggesting that the new landscape in the country requires a whole new vocabulary.
"Those statements are peanuts compared to what's happening to our country," Trump said. "These are the worst criminals in the world… These people are the most violent people on Earth."
The former president said he would "rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered," pledging to put "vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail or kick them out of our country."
"You can't live with these people," Trump said. "These are stone-cold killers. You could be walking down the street with your husband, you'll both be dead."
Trump said he hoped Colorado would vote in protest for "what they have done to the fabric of your culture."
In recent rallies, Trump has called migrants "animals," and said that they are coming to America from "dungeons of the Third World," to "prey upon innocent American citizens."
Those are lies, although I have no doubt that the survey respondents believe that they are true. There has been no effort to increase the number of migrant crossings. Every sane person in the U.S. knows that non-citizens (legal or illegal) can't vote. Neither the Biden Administration nor any D congresscritter is trying to enable non-citizens to vote.Among Trump voters, 65% believe the Biden administration has tried to increase the number of migrant crossings at the southern border, according to CBS News polling. And among the individuals who say so, nearly three-quarters say it's happening because the administration wants noncitizens to vote. Only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote in federal elections, and illegal crossings at the southern border reached the lowest point of Mr. Biden's presidency in September.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-tru ... immigrant/
The entire foundation of the Trump/Vance campaign is the Big Lie. But it's not just a Big Lie -- it's an evil, slanderous, malicious big lie on par with blood libel. It's a Big Lie that will result in harassment, threats, assault, and murder of, not just immigrants but brown and black skinned citizens. It's the same playbook that led to programs during the black death, torture and killing of witches, and the holocaust.
It's morally repugnant, and it is to our national shame that it is being rewarded by so many of my fellow Americans.
ETA to correct operator errors.
