/lit/ - Literature

>>16931913
Labor force participation, even for just prime aged men 24-55, never recovered to even 2007 levels during the "Trump Boom," let alone the 1990s. Massively more young people didn't work, and disability payment rates by kept going up.

The Trump Boom was pure illusion. Unemployment got better but actual % of people working barely moved. This was with the Fed juicing the economy was hard as possible under Trump's public order. Recall 2018, where a 25 basis point hike caused overvalued stocks to crash, and then the Fed went right back to juicing, or the massive repo bailout in 2019. This is with Trump tripling the deficit to over $1 trillion before Covid. Easy to juice the economy when the government borrows $0.25 of every dollar it spends.

Stock performance was driven by buy backs supported by Fed policy. Corporate debt to GDP was already at an all time high before Covid. Basically, policy allowed corps to recklessly borrow, not to grow operations, but to buy back stock and boost investor and executive pay. The Covid hits and the Fed does unlimited bond buying to make sure no large corp fails.

Real wages grew towards the end, but not particularly fast and the trend didn't break up stagnation since 1979. Wage and household income growth 2017-2019 was nowhere near the best, it wasn't even better than the mid-2000s.

The "Trump Boom" is smoke and mirrors.