Trump makes America 2015 again

 48.66% had a full time job in March 2026.

48.65% had one in May 2015.

 

Ha, taxes coerce behavior whether you like it or not, so you'd better decide what behavior you want because you're going to get it good and hard either way

 Tax Power Not Designed To Coerce Behavior - Gary Abernathy, RCEnergy

... the Fifth Circuit’s ruling is a welcome nod to the fact that the federal government cannot take tax laws intended to increase revenue and twist them merely to regulate business activities. ...

I mean, do these people not remember Ronald Reagan?

“If you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it.” 

But Ronald Reagan ignorantly reduced high marginal ordinary income tax rates, destroying the need for the owners of capital to make the arbitrage decision going forward between either choosing low long term capital gains tax rates or the high ordinary income tax rates. 

The owners of capital had been no dummies and had picked the low rates for years. That drove domestic investment throughout the post-war because it had to, and produced the good paying full time jobs and GDP which too few even remember now. But faced with an easier path to low taxes, they took it.

The tax windfall set the conditions for the hollowing-out of the U.S. economy when those billions of dollars met the opening to China in 2001, where they worked for pennies on the dollar and regulations were practically non-existent.

20,000 domestic manufacturing establishments alone were lost in the wake of the 1986 tax reform, and 70,000 more after 1997. Millions of manufacturing jobs went with them, and with them the American middle class and the American dream.

All because Ronald Reagan, the liberal, thought rich people knew best what to do with their own money.

In the mid-1980s we had maybe 35 billionaires and people in their 20s routinely married and bought their first home. Today we have 1,135 billionaires and people are nearly 40 before they can afford to buy their first home. And we have Ph.D.s all over the place who can't spell in their own language let alone in a foreign one.  

Put a random set of 100 people in a room and the fact is only 25% of them are college material, but the rest need and deserve good jobs the same as they do, and they aren't going to be "knowledge" jobs.

I can still remember my company's HR head telling my truck-driving employees in the 1990s that they had to start thinking of themselves as "knowledge workers" instead of as what they were. I got the hell out of there. By 2003 most of those new "knowledge workers" of mine had lost their jobs driving truck when the company had to "restructure". Just one tale in tens of thousands of such tales.

America will not begin to be great again without tax policy which favors the American people over some eggheaded libertarian's idea of a principle which favors only the rich. 

Although the trend for continued claims for unemployment is slightly up since Nov 1, 2021, the overall trend for initial claims remains down since then

The average weekly figure for initial claims in 2025 was historically very low at 224,490, and for 1Q2026 it's up only 3.7% from that, to 232,826.

The average weekly figure for continued claims in 2025 was 1,923,140, and for 1Q2026 it's 2,140,439, up 11.3%.

      

Post-Reagan GDP underperformed the immediate post-war by over 26%, Trump-era GDP underperforms it by almost 32%

Ronald Reagan didn't make America great again, and neither has Trump.

The watershed tax changes throwing away the threat of high ordinary income taxation under Reagan in 1986 and Trump in 2018 have got to go.

The country needs genuinely domestic, long-term investment to bring back economic growth. Reward that with low tax incentives and penalize everything else.

Rich people OBVIOUSLY haven't demonstrated that they know best what to do with their own money, otherwise they would have done it already.

We watched helplessly year after year, especially after 2000, as one business after another moved its production abroad seeking lower labor and regulatory costs to make themselves rich, not us.

We have to make them reverse it, because they aren't going to do it otherwise. Tax the shit out of them until they do the right thing, and keep the threat of taxes hanging over their heads to keep them doing the right thing. 

Real GDP Compound Annual Growth Rates

GDPCA 9 April 2026

1947-1984: 3.638%

1984-2017: 2.679%

2017-2025: 2.476%

 

Both foreign born population and foreign born employment ticked up again in March 2026

 

Employment with government at all levels remains very high in March 2026 at 23.3 million

 

Federal employment in March 2026 is at levels last seen in 1966

 

38.11% eating but not working in March 2026

 

48.66% worked full time in March 2026

 When does the Golden Age start?

 

 

So Lori Chavez-Deremer at the Department of Labor had a good long lie-in past NOON today and didn't get the initial claims numbers to FRED until 4:16PM EDT

 These numbers are routinely updated not long after the 8:30am press release in previous administrations.

 

 

Some Golden Age: The 10-year trend for percent change for ADP private payrolls is down

 

Initial Claims updated one eternity later

The Trump administration thinks so little of its one truly bright spot that it makes us wait to enjoy it.

Raw claims average below 195k in March to date, only the third month averaging below 200k in his second term to date.

You'd think that they'd be out there trumpeting these continued historically low numbers, but it is evident that they don't really care.

It's political malpractice. 

 

Trump's dysfunctional government can't even get the weekly Initial Claims for Unemployment chart at FRED updated on time

 This happens repeatedly under Trump and his loser appointees.

We're still waiting for today's update even though the news release came out as usual at 0830 hours. 

 

 

I keep hearing how we don't need manufacturing jobs because robots and automation are going to save us

 

Full time in Feb 2026 is so 2009

 

Trump makes America 1969 again

February 2026 might as well be July 1969, when the percentage of Americans working hit 59% for the first time.

America does not even come close to working up to its potential. 

(geek note: population estimates get updated at the beginning of each year, which means current percentage calculations and comparisons such as this one will not exactly match previous ones posted here in 2025, 2024, 2023, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera) 

 

Trump has cut federal employment down nearly to May 1966 levels

 

Manufacturing employment falls again in Feb 2026, back to Mar 2018 levels

 

As a share of the native born employment level, the foreign born employment level is much higher in Feb 2026 under Trump II than in Feb 2019 under Trump I lol

 

The unemployment level in Feb 2026 has risen very close to the Jan 2017 level when Trump took over for the first time: 8.05 million vs. 8.14 million