Blue State Blues. The High-Income, Liberal California Professoriate Will Pay Higher Taxes Thanks To President Trump

The most wonderful sight of this Holiday Season is watching high-income residents in Blue states squirm over losing some, in many cases a lot, of their prized deduction for state and local taxes to a $10,000 cap.  These are the same people, especially the professoriate in the top 2% of the income distribution, who have been clamoring, indeed begging, for higher taxes on the rich to reduce inequality and foster social justice.  Now they will be taxed more thanks to President Trump and red-state Republicans.  (Don’t hold your breath waiting for them to thank President Trump.)

We are told that the new normal is 2% economic growth.  The reason is that 2% was the best achieved under President Obama.  The economists who worked for or advised him, along with others in the never-Trump or just plain don’t like Trump camps, will choke on 3-4% growth under President Trump.  Will they sing a different song if growth of 3-4% becomes the new, new normal over the next five years?  Will they admit that they were wrong or that their models were incomplete?  Will they cheer new job creation and higher wages?  (Don’t hold your breath waiting for them to thank President Trump.)

Presidents Bush and Obama launched three wars in the Middle East and North Africa, squandering trillions in treasure while inflicting death and destruction on both local populations and American armed forces. President Trump, in marked contrast, has virtually obliterated ISIS in Iraq and Syria with minimal expenditure and loss of life under the brilliant leadership of General James Mattis.  (Don’t hold your breath waiting for the Bush and Obama foreign policy and national security establishments to thank President Trump.)

Don’t forget the pollsters who predicted Hillary Clinton in a cakewalk victory.  These are the same people talking up a blue wave return to control of one or both houses of Congress in the mid-term 2018 elections.  (When they are wrong in 2018 as they were in 2016, don’t hold your breath waiting for them to acknowledge their failures.)

Persuading members of the academic, political, and media industrial complex (APMIC) to acknowledge the success of President Trump is akin to lecturing rats on the benefits of proper hygiene to control plague.  No matter how strong the economy and success of his foreign policy, APMIC will never acknowledge his achievements.  Were they to do so—oh, just dreaming!