Sherburn on Cowardice Old and New

 

Sherburn on Cowardice Old and New

Colonel Sherburn – a proud looking man about 55 – and he was a heap and the best dressed man in that town.

Do I know you? I know you clear through. I was born and raised in the South, and I’ve lived in the North; so I know the average all around. The average man’s a coward. In the North he lets anybody walk over him that wants to, and goes home and pray for a humble spirit to bear it. In the South one man, all by himself, has stopped a stage full of men in daytime and robbed the lot. Your newspapers call you a brave people so much that you think you are braver than any other people – where as you’re just as brave and no braver. Why don’t your juries hang murderers? Because their afraid the man’s friends will shoot them in the back, in the dark – and it’s just what they would do.

. . . The average man don’t like trouble and danger. But if only half a man – like Buck Harkness there – shouts ‘Lynch him! Lynch him!’ you’re afraid to back down – afraid to be found out for what you are – cowards – and so you raise a yell, and hang yourself onto that half-a-man’s coattail, and come raging up here, swearing what big things you’re going to do. The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that’s what an army is – a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but from courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers.

------------From Colonel Sherburn’s slow and scornful speech, Chapter 22, of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  

Arthur Schlesinger's Imperial Presidency

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. The Imperial Presidency, (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1973) 0-395-17713-8

Some may doubt the need, or use, to review a book about the powers and duties of U.S, presidents published 52 years ago in 1973. But wait! Allow me to quote from page 418 of this 419 page book. “If the Nixon White House escaped the consequences of its illegal behavior, why would future Presidents and their associates not suppose themselves entitled to do what the Nixon White House had done? . . . We have noted that corruption appears to visit the White House in fifty-year cycles. This suggests that exposure and retribution inoculate the Presidency against its latent criminal impulses for about half a century. Around the year 2023 the American people would be well advised to go on alert and start nailing down everything in sight.”

Arthur Schlesinger passed away in 2007 but not his relevance to Trump. The book has eleven chapters that start with two chapters outlining the 1787 constitutional debate defining the executive power of the president. Narrative for the next five chapters follow a historical chronology of events almost entirely confined to the war making and foreign policy powers in the presidential office. The last three chapters discuss democracy in relation to foreign policy, the uses and abuses of presidential secrecy and a discussion of the future of the presidential office.

The founding fathers did not want the president to have the sole power to declare war. After long debate they adopted the Alexander Hamilton proposals that the Senate will have the sole power of declaring war and the executive will direct the war authorized by Congress. There would be a separation of power: Congress would declare war, the President would be commander and chief. The 1787 debate assures no one considered the president’s role as commander in chief as a source of independent authority.

From the beginning the separation of power generated a history of struggles with the President asserting authority to make foreign policy decisions without consulting Congress, or in direct opposition by it. Except for making treaties and nominating ambassadors with the advice and consent of the Senate, Schlesinger explains the Constitution has nothing else to say about foreign affairs and diplomacy. Nothing written guides recognizing foreign governments, declaring neutrality in international disputes, the status of executive agreements or the gathering or sharing of foreign intelligence.  No sections clarify authority in military emergencies. Many of the contested decisions involve military deployment in disputes that fill chapters 3 through 7 where Schlesinger narrates the Constitutional disputes between Congress and the many Presidents from colonial times to Richard Nixon.

The presidents often got their way in foreign policy by easily exploiting a divided Congress such as John Tyler and James K. Polk with Mexico and Abraham Lincoln with the Civil War. While the Constitution provides Congress with separate powers to restrain a defiant president, these powers tend to be hard to use such as impeachment, veto of a treaty, or refusal to vote funds; consensus can be hard to assemble. Schlesinger narrates many of these episodes like the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson and the battle over Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations after WWI. Separate chapters narrate disputes between Congress and Franklin Roosevelts in WWII, between Congress and President Truman in the Korean War, and between Congress and Presidents Johnson and Nixon in the Vietnam War.

After this thorough historical review, the narrative reaches Chapter 8 where Schlesinger characterizes the Imperial Presidency and then applies these characteristics to Richard Nixon.  He argues Nixon ignored his cabinet and brought an unprecedented exclusion of Congress, the Press, and public opinion from governmental decision making and concentrated power in the White House. Nixon asserted absolute authority over the Vietnam War and foreign policy and then expanded the imperial presidency to take over domestic policy as well.

Schlesinger lived through the Nixon era as an active and informed historian and journalist. In the Imperial Presidency he characterized Nixon as a man with “revolutionary dreams,” a “sense of life as a battlefield” and a president “whose inner mix of vulnerability and ambition impelled him to push the historical logic to its extremity.”

In domestic policy, Nixon, like Trump after him, proposed corporate tax relief, made offers of subsidies, threats of tariffs, and various lucrative deals to reward the politically compliant and punish the unregenerate. Nixon, like Trump after him, used the executive order to alter legislation, or change the authority of boards or agencies to suit his purpose. Nixon expected to shape policy by impounding funds for Congressionally approved projects he did not like. In July 1969 his Administration released a statement they would not enforce Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He appointed an Office of Economic Opportunity director to dismantle the agency that Congress had voted to continue.

Nixon asserted power to revoke legislation such as the Family Practice of Medicine Act passed Congress by overwhelming veto proof majorities December 14, 1970. He declined to return the bill to Congress with his veto within the required 10 days but instead waited eight days and declared a five day holiday recess gave him authority to defeat the bill with a pocket veto. Republican Senator Jacob Javits declared the bill “illegally vetoed” and commented “If the pocket veto clause applies to a five-day adjournment, why should it not also apply to an adjournment of three days, or a weekend, or one day, or overnight.”

Nixon expanded executive privilege to new levels, often rejecting formal requests for documents or requests for administration officials to testify before Congress. He made unprecedented use of executive privilege to thwart investigation into his Watergate misconduct and expected to keep secrets from Congress and the country like bombing South East Asia during and after the Vietnam War.

Chapter 8 ends the narrative as historical chronology. By Chapter 9 readers have studied dozens of examples of presidents doing as they please and Congress unable to use their power to stop him. In the last three chapters Schlesinger wants to know “how a government based on the principle of the separation of powers could be made to work.” These chapters are topical rather than chronological but there are no answers, only more examples of the failure of the separation of powers to hold a president accountable.

Schlesinger’s Imperial Presidency gives readers little reason to believe our Constitution and the separation of powers can maintain democracy. In 1973 Schlesinger thought the Vietnam War proved our Constitution was obsolete and left presidents to exercise unchecked power. By the end of the book Schlesinger doubted the Constitution would be adequate to limit presidential misconduct “if the people themselves had come to an unconscious acceptance of the imperial presidency.” The country survived Nixon, but in 2025 the Nixon connection to Trump should be easy to feel. I find nothing that assures the country will survive Trump. After reading his book I feel certain Arthur Schlesinger would agree.

 

 

 

 

 

Public School Teacher Salaries in Fairfax, Virginia

Public School Teacher Salaries in Fairfax, Virginia

Recently I reviewed the Fairfax County Public School pay schedules for its classroom teachers. Fairfax County has one of the biggest school districts in the country.  The published schedules have pay for steps that have pay for each year of experience in the Fairfax County schools. The pay goes up from step to step to reflect individual seniority.

If a teacher moves up year by year, presumably from a satisfactory performance rating and also gets the cost of living adjustment for the adjusted pay schedules, then a teacher that stays in the system will get pay increases that raise their buying power, a.k.a. real wage. For example, a teacher fresh out of college at step one in 2020 received pay of $50,000. If five years later they were at step five in the 2025 cost adjusted pay scale they would earn $68,145, which provides a 10.7 percent increase in their real wage. That also equals 6.4 percent annual percent increase, more than the inflation rate for the period.

However, the story changes for those that enter teaching in later years or who enter the system with experience in other school systems. As the years have gone by the new pay scales do not keep with inflation. If I compare the step 5 salary in 2020 with the step 5 salary in 2025 for someone coming into the system, their 2020 was $58,492. For someone entering the system as a step 5 in 2025 their salary would be $63,005.  The 2025 salary is a cost adjusted salary drop in the real wage of 12.52 percent over the 2020 salary.

The decline also applies the more years of experience someone brings into the system. Someone at step 20 in 2020 received a salary of $79,469. Someone at step 20 in 2025 would receive a salary of $88,111. To keep up with inflation and keep a stable buying power the salary would need to be $97,856 in 2025. The $88,111 is a 9.96 percent decrease in the real wage for someone entering the system at step 20.

The pay scales are designed to encourage teachers to stay in the system and they will advance over time if they do, but since all new teachers have started at a systematically lower real wage year by year, they are advancing from a continuously lower real wage from the years before. In Fairfax County, Virginia, the public school teachers sink farther and farther down the economic ladder.

Trump’s Tariff Netherworld

Trump’s Tariff Netherworld

Forecasting the amount of economic change caused by a change in tariff rates requires a chain of data. The data would be prices and quantity of sales preferably by the month and over many years. When forecasters predict a change in sales from a price change the price changes typically come in modest or small changes. The percent change in quantity of sales per month is divided by the percent change in price, which economists define as elasticity.  Elasticity mostly varies by a small amount above or below -1. An elasticity of -1.5 would forecast a 1.5 percent decrease in quantity from a one percent increase in price. Applied to Trump’s 25 percent tariff the forecast would be a 37.5 percent decline in quantity. However, an immense change like 25 percent is totally outside the range of data or any experience for more than a 100 years. It is not a legitimate forecast. It could be much more or much less. The only reasonable forecast if tariffs go forward will be a steep decline into depression and more in the United States than elsewhere.

Trump talked and tweeted his way through his first term while others like Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell managed the economy. Corporate America got what it wanted in his first term and had the media promote him daily through Biden’s term, which put him in office for a second term. Corporate officials have made only tepid public comment against Trumps erratic trade war threats. No president at least since the end of reconstruction in 1877 has ever been able to defy corporate America. The recent 90-day tariff suspension suggests some positive influence, so it remains hard to think America’s CEO’s will sit by for him to ruin the economy, but we continue waiting for a more frank response.

Since January 20, 2025 the Trump tariff announcements have come day by day with erratic and often draconian changes in no apparent pattern or detectable plan. They have no resemblance to an economic policy. Always announcements come with his fabricated belief that other countries cheat the United States; beliefs without basis in history or fact. Given he thinks of the United States as an extension of his himself and his ego, his unpredictable paranoia has become a substitute for managing the economy. 

Trump appears increasingly deranged pushing conspiracies while corporate media refuses to call evil by its true name and corporate America refuses to employ its money bags to put a stop to it. Don’t be fooled, their money and determination put him in office and they can put him out. We can only wonder how far the economy and what remains of civil society will descend if they do not.

David Leonhardt, Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream

 

David Leonhardt, Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream, (NY:  Random House, 2023), 395 pages, $32.00

In his new book New York Times journalist David Leonhardt gives readers the origin of the term “American Dream.” It derives from an 1880’s book of history by an author I have never heard of named James Truslow Adams. A lengthy quote from the book, titled The Epic of America, describes the better, richer and happier life future progress will bring to Americans. As you might guess the Leonardt book writes about the disappearing American Dream.

The book has an Introduction, a Part I entitled “The Rise” with four chapters and a Part II entitled “The Fall” with six chapters, followed by a Conclusion of 26 pages. For no obvious reason the Introduction is numbered in roman numerals, ix- xxxiv, which often signals something readers might skip over.  Here though the Introduction should be read as part of the book.

Halfway into the introduction Leonhardt explains “For almost forty years now, the United States has been doing a worse job than any similar country of keeping its citizens healthy and alive.” How true, but he does not blame our failure on capitalism. Instead, he writes “My central argument is that capitalism remains the best system for delivering rising living standards to the greatest number of people – but only a certain type of capitalism.” He fills in this argument by defining three forces he argues generate the rise and fall of Democratic Capitalism as practiced in the United States. He gives brief discussion of Power, Culture, Investment.

The four chapters of Part I, The Rise, offer quite disparate people and events intended to trace the rise of the American Dream. Discussion stays within the 1920’s up to the early 1960’s.  The first chapter gives a sketch of depression era labor history and union organizing using the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike as an example of working-class effort and success.  In chapter two readers meet businessman Paul Hoffman and a selection of other businessmen including automobile executive and Michigan Governor George Romney as examples of people who worked as trustees of the common welfare. Leonhardt contrasts the career and sacrifice of George Romney, the father, with his son Mitt Romney who opted for money making at Bain Capital. Chapter three does much the same for another selection of people that stayed in long run careers. Include here Dwight Eisenhower, computer pioneer Grace Hopper and some discussion of the government’s move to support long term research. Chapter 4 features the efforts of A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and his early struggles for racial equality.

Next, begins the six chapters of Part II, the Fall, that starts with chapter five entitled “The Young Intelligentsia.” Here readers meet C. Wright Mills, Tom Hayden, Betty Friedan, Raph Nader and follow their careers along with a supporting cast of people Leonhardt defines as New Left. He narrates their efforts and successes before shifting to the careers of people he defines as the old left, primarily four labor union leaders of the 1950’s and 1960’s: George Meany, Cesar Chavez, Walter Reuther and Jerry Wurf. Leonhardt takes six pages describing Meany’s failure to expand the labor movement, and while more charitable with the others they too failed to unify the working class.

Chapter Six starts describing a few celebrated crimes of the 1960’s and a plot of crime data that documents the increasing crime rate.  There follows a discussion of the academic and political response to crime.  Here Leonhardt provides the reaction to crime of Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon, George Wallace and a much longer discussion of Robert Kennedy. Kennedy confronted the crime issue to unite the working class, something Democratic politicians have avoided ever since.

Chapter 7 and 8 develops the evolution of conservative ideology following Richard Nixon’s election. Many are mentioned in this effort in Chapter 7 but it primarily follows the Chicago School and the efforts of Milton Friedman and Robert Bork. Chapter 8 follows with the October 1973 Middle East oil embargo, which Leonhardt treats as the beginning of an era that “Clears the Track for Business.” Here Leonhardt follows the Ronald Reagan era and those in the anti-tax movement and the de-regulators like lobbyist Charls Walker, Congressman Jack Kemp, deregulator Ann Gorsuch and a little more of Robert Bork. The closing pages describe the Democrats response and evaluates the economic success of Republican “Neoliberals.”

Chapter Nine, “This Little Village Called America,” gives the historical background and politics of immigration. Narrative starts with 1924 and moves forward to Edward Kennedy and the 1965 immigration law, then onward to Congresswomen Barbara Jordan and the 1986 amendments and on to Bill Clinton, Bernie Sanders and the present immigration troubles. Chapter Ten, the last chapter before the conclusion, describes the decline in education spending, the rise of health care and income support subsidies and the failure to invest in the future or address inequality of income and wealth.

The designation of the first four chapters as Rise and the last six chapters as Fall feels out-of-place; all ten chapters feel like Fall.  Possibly the editors at Random House wanted something that feels good to include, but I found that quite difficult to find. For example, the Rise chapters included the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike where employers made public calls to organize a “citizen army” of vigilantes to end picketing as a first response. Continuing the strike required a dangerous, deadly and ferocious battle to fight the employer’s organized violence until finally the intervention of Governor Olsen as impartial mediator got employers to the bargaining table. While the strike ended with some wage and labor gains, they amounted to a hiccup; I cannot find a consistent Rise through any periods in America’s labor relations.

Think of the above as a minor criticism to an otherwise well written book of important economic and public policy subjects. The book makes a rough progression through time, where chapter narratives are primarily topical and treat the people and events in the narrative as evidence for drawing conclusions. Leonhardt offers censure across the political spectrum such as “What the New Left tried to do, it often succeeded at doing. Yet, the movement never made much of an attempt to improve pay, benefits, and job conditions of the working class, . . .” How true.

Before narrating the chapter 7-8 Nixon-Reagan era, Leonhardt suggests “By the late 1960’s, millions of American workers had no political home.” How true and a perfect introduction for describing the corporate agenda that leaves the working class with declining real wages and greater inequality by 2025. Be sure to read the immigration chapter carefully, it provides a thorough and excellent discussion of the evolving controversies of immigration law and policy, the best chapter in my opinion.

The Conclusion chapter returns to the American dream and the power, culture, investment forces that he mentioned at the beginning. He writes “If there is a central reason for the decline of the American dream over the past half century, it has been the lack of a strong political movement dedicated to protecting that dream.”  Lack of a strong political movement translates to a failure of the always-divided Democratic Party to be an opposition party and defend the working class.

The need for change and new direction dominates the conclusion narrative: “Think about how different American society might be if there were also strong movements to reduce corporate concentration, raise taxes on the wealthy, lower medical costs, create universal pre-K education and increase middle class pay.” He advises progressives interested in building a movement for change needs to know it “requires making the left less upscale than it now is and more inclusive of people who are not white collar professionals” and he counsels for a reinvigorated labor movement and listening more to the working class. In the last two paragraphs of the book Leonhardt expresses outrage for the past up to the present but hope for the future. After finishing the narrative, I can agree America is not hopeless, but I found precious little hope for a shining future.

 

The Trump Recession Watch

Update August 19, 2025

Trump has disconnected from his Trump administration; Trump's voice is a voice alone. His public pronouncements show someone who believes the economy will prosper and affirm his policy genius. He  wants acclaim and prizes; a peace prize? In contrast the people who make the decisions and actually do something in his administration know the economy will flounder with what they are doing. They need a steep recession to get rid of the social safety net and all the things and people they hate. The signs continue to show they are succeeding. 

Update June 9, 2025

The erratic announcements continue with new and higher tariff announcements coming in what feels like an equal number of announcements suspending them. The "Big Beautiful" budget debate has focused on spending cuts, especially in Medicaid, but it should be noted that the budget deficit is money borrowed that will be put back into the spending stream. A recession comes with a slow down in spending but a monster budget deficit puts billions back into the spending stream and brings a high potential for inflation and higher interest rates. Nothing I can find in public discussion suggests any coherent policy or anything remotely responsible. Recession? Inflation? Stagflation? Corporate America has split in two. Half wants to keep the profits flowing and so does not want tariffs, but the other half wants a depression. For them a depression generates an entertaining class warfare as a perk of their wealth and the upper class status. Chaos is still a good forecast. 

Update April 26, 2025

All financial and economic news has correctly predicted recession of severe proportion as we have listened to the belligerent Trump making daily threats and watch the stock market gyrate. I cannot understand how anyone could vote for Trump after the January 6 events; what did anyone think? Suspending the tariffs in random and unpredictable fashion is corporate America reasserting control over economic policy and Trump's unfiltered dribble, but they say nothing in public to challenge his legal or constitutional misconduct. The tariffs must be suspended permanently or the economy will fall into chaotic decline. Social security, Medicare and Medicaid must be sustained or a similar decline will result. 

Update April 6, 2025

I have not tried an update for so long given the bizarre and erratic announcements that appear to express the daily whims of Trump but nothing even approximating a coherent policy. Based on early announcements I thought tariffs would be on a selection of steel, aluminum, automobiles and automobile parts between Canada, Mexico and the United States and with continued tariffs on China. Instead we have a delusionary announcement of draconian tariffs of high and varied tariff(tax) rates for most of the rest of the world. 

Current production and trading worldwide reflects close to fifty years of continuous and successful efforts to lower tariffs. As I stated below economies need a stable flow of transactions to generate stable production, income and employment. If the U.S. actually goes ahead to collect these tariffs a stable economy will become unstable and there is no previous basis to predict how far the economy will fall; it will be a long way down. Since corporate America put Trump in office and owns Congress, we have to wonder what they plan to do with the Trump tariff delusion.

The Trump Recession Watch Update - March 16, 2025

There will be a nasty recession if the tariffs go forward as Trump demands. Jobs are vulnerable to even a modest recession because so many of the jobs that have replaced the lost manufacturing jobs are in vulnerable discretionary industries like leisure and hospitality at restaurants, accommodations, travel, and a variety of optional business services and in retail. In 1990 manufacturing jobs were 13.08 percent of establishment employment. If they were still 13.08 percent instead of 8 percent there would be 20.7 million manufacturing jobs instead of 12.6 million. Jobs will melt away in a recession, which is strictly optional. Where are the oligarchs? They may have gotten to Schumer and convinced him to keep the government operating as they want but we can hope in exchange for some limits to federal cuts. Our rich oligarchs do not want us to know how put off they are with Trump but I have to think they still expect to control him and they do not relish a recession. Time will tell.

The Trump Recession Watch Update - March 6, 2025

Suspending the tariffs for a month is a sign that corporate America remains in charge of the economy and does not want, or expect to benefit from, a recession. Every single thing Trump proposes will set off a recession, or worse, and so it cannot be at all certain recession/depression is not what is intended.

The Trump Recession Watch Update - March 5, 2025

The tariffs alone should be enough to set off a recession. If the federal share of Medicaid is slashed as threatened there will be a grimy and nasty recession. It is impossible to pull that much money out of the spending stream and keep the economy going. Employment will be falling; unemployment rising. We might wonder why corporate America with its reported 12,000 lobbyists would sit by wringing their hands, when it was their money bags that bought the Republicans and Congress. Either corporate America intends what is going on or they are cringing cowards.

The Trump Recession Watch – February 25, 2025

Before predicting a Trump recession, it is useful to remember the George W. Bush recession that began in the fall of 2008 and did not recover until early 2010. Recall it was W’s Crony’s that depressed the economy looting the banking system with speculative gambling in home mortgage innovations. By the third quarter of 2009 the Gross Domestic Product was down $450.1 billion dollars seasonally adjusted at annual rates. For an economy approaching $15 trillion of GDP in 2009 that was only a 3.4 percent decline. However, the quarterly average of seasonally adjusted employment was down 6,692,000 jobs. Jobs just melted away in a 3.4 percent GDP downturn.

Since an economy is nothing but a flow of transactions measured over time, Trump might take a hint from the Bush debacle and avoid depressing the economy. As February 2025 ends Trump has allowed Musk to dismiss probationary federal employees, but news reports put the number losing their jobs at 200,000, significant, but small compared to 6.692 million. So far Trump is all talk but no serious action toward a recession.

However, that could change given the talk of draconian cuts to health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid. The Bureau of Economic Analysis that produces the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) reports in their Table 3.12 an annual Medicaid budget of $878 billion dollars for 2023. Table 3.12 reports a Medicare budget of $1.009 trillion. From the beginning of Trump’s first term to eight years later at the end of Biden’s term health care provided 3.163 million new jobs or 27 percent of all new jobs, more than any other sub sector.

Some of the worthies in Congress have discussed eliminating the $878 billion Medicaid budget, a good way to start a recession. While the amount remains to be negotiated, it is worth remembering the beneficiaries of Medicaid do not receive a dime of that budget. All of the Medicaid budget goes directly to corporate health care venders in what is only the first round of a spending decline. Payroll cuts to doctors and nurses and revenue cuts to medical suppliers bring a second round of decline to the spending stream. The initial cuts reduce production, income and employment by three to four times the initial amount; economists call it a multiplier effect.

Managing the economy requires making sure the flow of transactions remains steady and increases with the growth of population and our productive capacity. That is an important point because recessions in the modern economy are strictly optional and can be readily avoided with cooperation of the Federal Reserve Bank and the United States Treasury.

Back in the 19th and early 20th century recessions were a regular occurrence like the recessions and depressions of 1873-1878, 1881-1884, 1893-1897, 1907, 1913-14, 1920-1921. In those days it was tough to manage the economy without a central bank and corporate America determined to hang onto the gold standard. Once the Great Depression of 1929 got under way the Franklin Roosevelt administration threw out the gold standard and with the Banking Act of 1935 introduced the modern tools of monetary and economic policy.

Today’s monetary management makes recessions optional like the George W. Bush recession where rogues and scoundrels had enough concentrated power to pursue their own agenda. It is easy to notice Trump and Musk have their own agenda and any economic decline will be caused as their option. Trump threatened many depressing economic policies before his inauguration and his policy pronouncements since January 20 have been universally depressing. Corporate America has pursued lower tariffs for at least 60 years because they learned, slowly but surely, that tariffs bring retaliation. A 25% tariff on Canada, our biggest trading partner, will bring retaliation and depress both economies. Mass deportation, as opposed to slowing immigration, will be economically depressing as will draconian cuts in Medicaid and Medicare or in food stamp aid or AID with its food for peace program.

Since corporate America has been the primary force making economic policy in the United States since the 19th century, we might wonder who is in charge here? Corporate America made all economic decisions during Trump’s first term, which is why tariffs remained low and immigrant labor, documented or not, remained cheap and plentiful and the economy did well. Corporate America has been restrained and somewhat subdued so far, but going along with DEI pronouncements, beating up on the federal workforce or taking over the Kennedy Center does not threaten the larger economy.

Corporate America has always expected Presidents to serve corporate power, not the other way around. Since WWII corporate America has preferred a stable economy, but never assume as economists like to do that corporate America can be counted on to just maximize profits. America’s labor history proves a segment of corporate America and the wealthy like class warfare. In 2025, Musk represents the warfare segment of the wealthy who know a depressed economy generates inequality as a perk of the upper class. If Trump wants his second term economy to go as well as his first, he will opt out of recession. The upcoming budget debate will tell the story. Watch the policy fight coming up, but expect corporate America still has the unity to neutralize the budget ax, tariffs, deportations and Musk. Updates!

Trump versus Biden on Jobs

Trump versus Biden on Jobs

To compare jobs in the economy during the Trump years of 2017 to 2021 with the Biden years of 2021 to 2025 requires allowing for the job losses from the Pandemic quarantine, which recall started in the early spring of 2020. In the jobs data for March 2020 establishment employment reached 150.898 million jobs. A month later in April 2020 establishment employment declined to only 130.421 million jobs, a decline of 20.477 million jobs.

Both presidents were in office for 48 months, the usual four year term. In the first 39 pre-Pandemic months of Trump’s first term in office, establishment employment increased by 5.262 million jobs. The Pandemic job decline of April 2020 and slow job recovery restored the Pandemic job losses by February 2022, the thirteenth month into the Biden Administration. While many continued to wear face masks and be wary of spreading Covid, the pharmaceutical industry had a vaccine available and jobs had returned to their pre-Pandemic total and a semblance of normality. This leaves the last 35 months of the Biden administration as a normal and comparable period for review with the first 39 months of the Trump administration.

In the first 13 months of the Biden Administration jobs increased just under 7.960 million to 150.876 million jobs, which restored the remaining Pandemic job losses left from the Trump term. In the last 35 months of the Biden administration beginning with February 2022, national employment increased by 8.660 million jobs. Therefore, the Trump economy that generated 5.262 million new jobs during the 39 months the pre-Pandemic months did not do as well creating jobs as the post Pandemic Biden economy that generated 8.660 million jobs in 35 months.

The Biden administration’s superior performance on jobs resulted primarily from a selection of industries where the Biden economy did much better.

Health Care and Education

Start with health care where Trump created 1.326 million health care jobs in 39 months while the Biden economy created 2.691 million jobs in 35 months. Move to education where the Trump economy created 90 thousand jobs in private education, while the Biden administration created 256 thousand jobs. In state supported public education the Trump economy created 84 thousand jobs while the Biden economy created 192 thousand jobs. In the local public schools the Trump economy created 130 thousand new jobs where the Biden economy created 457 thousand new jobs.

Leisure and Hospitality

Leisure and hospitality did much better during the Biden Administration and in all its sub sectors: performing arts, spectator sports, museums, historical sites, amusements, gambling, recreation, accommodations, restaurants and related food services. The combined changes were 284 thousand more jobs for Trump in 39 months while the Biden economy added 1.527 million jobs in the last 35 months of his administration.

Government

In government employment, excluding education, Biden and the Biden economy created more jobs and did so in all three levels of government: federal, state and local. The first 39 months of the Trump administration brought a combined increase of 313 thousand government jobs, with 80 thousand of those jobs in the federal government, not counting the post office. Under Biden the total increase was 879 thousand.

Trade, Transportation and Utility

Retail trade employment during the first 39 months of the pre-Pandemic Trump economy dropped 440 thousand jobs, but more jobs in the courier and messenger sub sector Trumps pre-Pandemic economy created 216 thousand new jobs. The result undoubtedly reflects the general decline of sales at the cashiers check out in exchange for home delivery of Internet sales. The combined increase of courier and messenger jobs and 366 thousand new jobs supporting home delivery in the warehouse and storage sub sector during the first 39 months of the Trump administration were large but not as large as a recovery of trade jobs, modal transportation and utility employment during the Biden economy. The combined trade, transportation, and utility sector, a.k.a. NAICS 40, had 345 thousand new jobs during the pre-Pandemic Trump years but 465 thousand new jobs during the post Pandemic Biden economy.

In those sub sector industries where remote work is possible Pandemic job losses were small and quick to recover. These were primarily in finance and banking, and the professions such as law, accounting, computing, engineering and various management consulting and research industries. Job gains in these sub sectors were comparable for Trump and Biden as, for example, in management and technical consulting services where there were 164 thousand new jobs during the 39 pre-Pandemic months of the Trump administration, but 142 thousand new jobs during the 35 post-Pandemic months of the Biden administration. The Trump economy did somewhat better in goods production – natural resources, construction manufacturing - in the pre-Pandemic period than the Biden economy in the post-Pandemic period: Trump 1.082 million jobs, Biden 811 thousand jobs.  It should be mentioned that goods production was 21.96 percent of establishment production in 1990 that has declined continuously to 13.58 percent by 2025, a decline of 8.38 percent in a decline that shows no sign of ending.

The superior job performance during the Biden economy came in part because of much higher job growth, but especially in the jobs of the future. New jobs will have to come in health care and education as they have been. Otherwise, replacement jobs for the millions of manufacturing jobs corporate America has moved abroad have been coming in leisure and hospitality and government service and will have to continue given remaining service industries continue to grow so slowly they have a declining share of national employment.

During his first term Trump liked to brag about the new jobs on the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly jobs report and take credit for creating them. As his second term gets under way, he appears determined to enlarge the unemployed as fast as he can. For the new unemployed among us beware of ventilating politicians and union officials advising obedience to the “law.” Try hard to understand the significance of January 6.