Make America Great Again.
Who, that is actually an American, wouldn't want that? It has the ring of a slogan that could have come to symbolize a generation or more of positive, durable change -- much like Reagan's "Its Morning in America."
As with all slogans they're marketing messages and thus contain the term of art known as "puffery" in the legal world; this is why when you buy a new car advertised by a sexy young thing and don't get laid you can't sue over your lack of new-found luck in the sack. But Reagan's slogan was, quite-arguably, the most-successful presidential ad campaign in history.
So here we are roughly a year into Trump's second term and yet where is the alleged progress? There hasn't been any, unless you measure "progress" in the price of stocks, of course. There is a serious problem with trying to use that metric: 93% of stocks are held by those in the top 10% of American families by net worth and the top 1% hold more than half. If you're a common working person your share of that increase is a statistical zero while you watch the other guy jet off to Paris for the weekend.
The price of groceries, rent, homes, cars and trucks, car and homeowners insurance, (especially) medical insurance and cost, electricity, water and other essential goods and services have all gone up while goods and service quality has gone down. Amazon "Prime" is likely to go up another $20 this year (if their previous patterns hold), Spotify has hiked prices every year (including just now), Disney+ and Paramount+ are both aggressively raising prices as, in the last year, has Apple TV+, Netflix, HBO Max, Discovery+ and many others. After peddling "with ads" options as a less-expensive choice on streaming those prices have been raised too. Never mind skyrocketing health insurance for ever-more-poor coverage.
Trump promised to deport illegal aliens. He sort of has; the people he's targeted from a legal perspective are those who are very unlikely to go willingly -- those who have substantial criminal records in the United States. Rather obviously committing sexual assault, robbery or trafficking in either people or drugs is a far more-serious offense than mere illegal entry into the United States, and those who do any of the former are not going to go quietly. That these arrests generate outrage is a curious failure of thought by the protestors when you think about it; one of the more-recent targets was wanted for assaulting his domestic partner. Perhaps you can explain how people managed to gin up a group obstructing the police who were seeking to arrest and deport someone who beat his wife or girlfriend, and why said protestors would want that person to stay in the United States.
But if you contemplate the issue of enforcing laws in the general sense for a minute you'll realize an essential truth: You can't arrest your way out of a criminal wave of consequence that is imposing cost on society from the bottom up -- there aren't enough cops and nobody would tolerate there being enough cops to actually do it nor can you pay the bill required to do so. Criminals don't stop if you ask them nicely; you have to force them to stop, and only a reasonable fear or being caught and punished, or actually catching and punishing them, does so. This is time, money and manpower intensive for each person you wish to arrest. If it takes two cops to arrest one criminal, then six months or more to try said criminal (during which you must jail or otherwise supervise them at tens of thousands in expense), and then you must take the cost of supervising and enforcing said sentence whatever it is, you spend a lot of money, manpower and time to get one bad actor off the street.
In many cases we as a society judge that its worth it; we need to have and pay for cops, judges and jails because there are jackasses. There always have been and always will be, and if asking a criminal to stop ever worked we wouldn't need any of the three. There has never been a society free of such persons, quite sadly, just as we will always need firemen because whether by Act of God, accident, foolishness or criminal act there will always be fires.
Thus if you're serious about the actions that impact Americans and which have metastasized over the last decades you must find a a means of leverage that removes or otherwise stops many criminal acts at once with little or no per-person manpower cost. We have electrical codes in buildings for this precise reason; it is far cheaper to inspect and correct dangerous electrical installations up front than put out the fires they would otherwise cause and replace the resulting destroyed property, never mind those who would die in said fires and are gone forever.
President Trump, like all Presidents before him, has such capacity in the form of existing laws. Like all such Presidents before him in recent decades he has refused to use them. Two sets of laws in particular would immediately drop the cost of living for Americans by double-digit percentages of their monthly spending, one of them would at the same time lift wages for those in the bottom economic tiers.
This would not be inflationary because at the same time it would slash government spending on social programs of various sorts which in turn reduces the federal deficit and it is a mathematical fact that all inflation is a function of deficit spending. In fact the Federal Government is running about an 8% fiscal deficit every year at present which is the reason -- and the only reason -- that inflation has and is roaring. It shows up in different places (the government cannot realistically control where it goes) and by many measurements is deliberately gamed in the CPI index, which I've covered before, but all that game-playing cannot cover up the impact in your wallet which every American experiences.
As I've pointed out 8 USC 1324, if enforced, ends the illegal immigrant problem immediately. It criminalizes the bringing in, harboring, transporting or employing illegal immigrants. It is not a civil statute; it is a criminal felony and calls for prison terms of 5 years or more for each and every person who commits such offenses. Most-importantly, it escalates the penalty dramatically if the illegal alien commits an act of violence and either harms or kills an American with the second case resulting in a potential penalty of life behind bars.
Specifically:
(iii) in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(i), (ii), (iii), (iv), or (v) during and in relation to which the person causes serious bodily injury (as defined in section 1365 of title 18) to, or places in jeopardy the life of, any person, be fined under title 18, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both; and
(iv) in the case of a violation of subparagraph (A)(i), (ii), (iii), (iv), or (v) resulting in the death of any person, be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, fined under title 18, or both.
Would you rent lodging to or allow to stay on your property, employ, or even just transport in a car, bus, train or aircraft an illegal immigrant if you were going to serve a life sentence should that person subsequently killed someone, such as occurred with both Laken Riley and Mollie Tibbetts among many others? Of course you wouldn't; nobody in their right mind would do any of those things because there is absolutely no way to know which of the illegal immigrants you harbor, employ or transport might subsequently kill someone. Likewise 20 years in the slammer because one of them committed armed robbery is not a risk anyone sane would be willing to take when hiring a roofer since there's no way for you to be reasonably sure, as the employer, that said roofer won't roofie someone's drink at the bar that night and then attack said person or decide to rob a convenience store.
This law has stood on the books since the 1950s and has not been repealed. Rather, it has been ignored and yet exactly zero illegal immigrants would be able to rent a place to live, travel by any form of publicly-available transport or be employed were it to be enforced. All Trump has to do is have his DOJ and FBI march into every chicken plant and construction site along with rental housing managers and start arresting the owners and managers, indicting them under this law, investigating whether any of their employees or tenants has committed a violent act involving injury or death and then stacking up the penalties on top of the starting 10 year sentences when they find that it is so.
Employment and housing availability for all illegal immigrants would go to zero overnight and they'd all leave, save those who "make their living" committing violent acts in which case those individuals would have to be chased down and arrested like any other violent felon on the run.
If Trump did this millions of homes and rental housing units would immediately become vacant; rents would fall like a stone at the lower end which, incidentally, is the very housing that American young people and those of lesser economic capacity require in order to live independently. The existing $1,000 apartment would suddenly cost $600/mo -- and become affordable. At the same time wages for roofers, drywall installers, farm workers and similar would all rise dramatically so the net benefit to Americans on the lower end of the wage and economic capacity scale would come from both ends of the spectrum -- earnings capacity would skyrocket while cost of living would drop like a stone. Car insurance would drop precipitously because many illegal aliens drive without licenses or insurance and the wrecks they are involved in would stop occurring since they'd not be here. All of these changes would not be inflationary because those very same illegal immigrants who would be forced to leave do consume health and other public resources both directly and indirectly but don't earn enough to pay for them thus the deficit would fall, reducing the cause of all inflation.
Of course there would be losers. Among them would be KB Homes, Toll Brothers and DR Horton. Take a look at DR Horton's stock price and tell me whether you'd rather the capacity to earn an good living of young Americans and those on the lower ends of the economic spectrum is more important than DR Horton's stock price going from $30 in 2020 to nearly $150 -- a multiple of five, today. Yes, their stock price would likely return to $30 or perhaps even less; back in 2010 they traded at roughly $10 and might once again. Once again is the young American couple who wishes to pair off and have children more important than a handful of executives at DR Horton, Toll Brothers and KB Homes and their stock prices, all three of which skyrocketed under the recent multi-year "open border" displacement of Americans by illegal immigrants?
Now look at 15 USC Ch 1. The Supreme Court decision Royal Drug established in 1979 (and the follow-on case Maricopa County) that price negotiation by health insurance firms is not exempt from anti-trust law, specifically the Sherman, Clayton and Robinson-Patman sections of anti-trust law. That law, incidentally, is not just a civil statute, it, like 8 USC 1324, calls for felony prison time as punishment for offenses under Sherman and Clayton for each individual person involved in such an act; being a corporate executive or employee does not shield you from that criminal consequence.
Every single health insurance firm, physician's office, hospital, pharmacy, pharmacy benefit manager and more violate this law every single day if they have a different price schedule for each person who comes in as a result of their so-called "insurance" or lack thereof and this results in a non-competitive outcome meaning someone gets screwed with a higher price. The reality is that basically everyone gets screwed today and this collusive behavior to fix prices is a felony and has been a felony for more than 100 years.
Medical expense has gone from 4% of economic activity in the 1960s and 70s to roughly 20% today, an expansion of five times. At the same time technology has reduced cost dramatically across the board in every thing that it touches. Contemplate how much less you pay today for a calculator, computer, television or similar compared with that of just a few years prior. Instead of wall-mounted file cabinets for medical records holding paper by the ream, all hand-scribbled, you now have it all on a thumb drive per-person and a disk for everyone; a reduction in cost that is likely 99% or more plus the reduction in errors that come from keyed entries .vs. trying to read some doctor's illegible scribble on a paper chart has to be enormous. In addition taking payments in cash is actually cheaper today than before due to electronic check clearing and similar; what used to take 3-5 days to clear now often clears the bank the same day. The cost of these goods and services has gone up instead of down because of unlawful cartel behavior and once again there aren't enough cops to arrest every single physician and nurse, nor does nibbling around the edge with deals by the President for this drug or that actually fix anything.
But arresting, indicting and jailing the heads of every health insurance firm, the directors and officers of the largest health care cartels in a given metro area (e.g. Covenant and Prisma here, Kaiser in California, etc.) would instantly collapse price because exactly none of those people will keep doing it when the price of doing so is ten years in federal prison and a permanent federal felony criminal record and said conviction by statute forbids doing future business with many areas of government entirely -- including serving on many corporate boards.
Look at Cigna as an example; their stock has gone from about $40 in 2011 to over $270 today. CVS has more than tripled and United Health, while down quite a bit from its highs still stands at roughly seven times its 2011 price, currently around $290/share.
In the mid 1990s my cost as a CEO to cover you with reasonably-decent health insurance averaged about $5,000/year. That was outrageous at the time and seriously depressed entry-level wages yet today it is not at all uncommon for the total cost to an employer for actual reasonably-decent coverage to be $20,000/year or four time as much. Garbage coverage such as through the PPACA ("Obamacare") is often $12,000/year with another $10,000 deductible thus it is worthless until you have $22,000 of medical expenses per year. Nobody of reasonable earnings capacity can afford that without literally winding up in the street and this is a huge part of the reason recent graduates and others are having enormous trouble finding entry-level jobs; the cost to employ said recent graduate is not the $50,000 a year entry-level salary -- it is in fact closer $80,000 which they simply cannot pay and remain in business.
You never see this as an employee because it is not on your checkstub but it is an actual cost and if the price was far more-reasonable, say, 20% of that or $4,000 you would get the rest in wages and those entering the workforce would get hired. All of this increase is because of unlawful, feloniously-so, activity by virtually every single part of the health care system in America.
Those who clamor for "socialized medicine" are simply trying to make sure you can't opt out of it irrespective of your circumstances or choices, because to do so will require even more tax increases or more deficit spending which will result directly in inflation. AOC and Bernie Sanders know this; they are quite-literally selling you a "medicine" that is in fact full of economic hemlock.
Once again if you arrest and imprison executives all of this stops immediately because you cannot make someone else pay your prison sentence; you must show up and serve it. Health care prices drop by 80% in an afternoon and at the same time the cost of living drops like a stone as well because that $20,000/year in health care "cost" that everyone winds up paying one way or another drops to $4,000! This cost is in everything you buy and as a result the price of all things in the economy drops dramatically and for 80% of the population your take-home pay that you can actually spend skyrockets.
The average American would see an immediate and permanent increase in their spendable income by more than $10,000 per person, per year plus a significant price decrease in both goods and services. Some would be less and some more, of course, but the average family of four would see roughly a $30,000 real income increase -- with negative inflation impact because the deficit would nosedive. At the same time your income takes a rocket ride higher prices on everything you buy crater. The average American wins not once but twice and not slightly -- dramatically.
Tell me, what would your family standard of living look like if all prices on average fell at 8-10% and your spendable after-tax income as a single person rose by $10,000 or $30,000 for a family of four, all in one year and that improvement and decrease in cost continued indefinitely into the future?
In addition Powell just said, once again, that the deficits we are running are unsustainable. Taking 80% out of medical cost will immediately and with finality terminate the driver of this problem over the last 30 years -- CMS. The MTS is and has been clear on where all deficit spending has come over the last three decades on an unbroken and unequivocal basis and it is in one and only place, CMS. Taking the above action with regard to 15 USC Chapter 1 and the medical sector puts an immediate and full stop to the fiscal deterioration of the United States.
Would you call that "Making America Great Again"? I bet you would and that is exactly what will happen if this is done.
Some people would of course get screwed. Who? Well, health care executives for one, but in addition those employed in the system who don't actually provide care to people would lose their jobs since now instead of a building full of people trying to figure out how to bill you for more and get more there would be one gal at the front desk who took a check or ran your credit card -- and the bill would be one fifth of what it is today. Yes, stock prices in that sector would crater as well. And?
The economic expansion and improvement this would generate instantly in all other sectors of the economy would be enormous so while those clerks and such would have a disruption (and quite a bad one temporarily) they'd rapidly find jobs doing something else in some other area of the economy that would skyrocket in hiring and real wages. Nearly 10 years ago I published a long pair of articles expanding on the framework in my book Leverage that would accomplish precisely this -- and laid out what would happen if we didn't do it.
We didn't do it and exactly what was predicted has occurred. Isn't it time to do it and have the "if you do this that's what will happen" occur instead?
These two laws, if employed by Trump in this first year, would have also resulted in a major market dive in asset prices -- homes and stocks, to be specific and for openers. But the decrease in overall price level, particularly from the latter forced expense which is in everything you buy, would be massive. We would have had a negative double-digit inflation print in consumer prices as a whole while wages, on balance, would have risen by 8-10% in real, spendable after-tax terms across the economy with more benefit on a percentage basis going to those of lower incomes. Most lower-income working individuals would see increases in real spendable income of 20% or more at the same time rents and other mandatory costs would fall like a stone.
We'd have both much better and cheaper health care and no more illegal immigrants.
We still can have this, incidentally -- but our current President, just like the prior ones, has deliberately refused.
Donald Trump lost the plot through his intentional refusal to actually honor his Oath of Office and merely enforce existing laws. No Congress can stop a President from enforcing an existing law and neither can the courts. It is simply a matter of will, which he, as with his predecessors, lack because doing so means those in the top 1% continue to exploit everyone under them and slowly strangle them to death economically while ginning up an "outrage of the moment" to distract the public.
PS: There are many more areas -- such as H-1b abuse -- but these two above are ones that carry criminal penalties and thus require no changes in the law and since they exist Congress and Judges cannot block them, nor can those who are guilty cost-shift as occurs with fines where large corporations simply do not care -- they just increase their prices and make the customer pay the fine. The key point is that you can't cost-shift a prison sentence and the more money you make and the further up the economic ladder you are the more prison sucks in relative terms compared to your standard of living right now, never mind the multiplicative effect of jailing one corporate officer that removes 100 illegal immigrants from the US or stops $20 million of unlawfully extracted funds from Americans in the economy is enormous, inexpensive for the benefit obtained and cannot be evaded. As such it is not only a good remedy for large, well-off malefactors, it is the only remedy that ever has or ever will work.
