Syndicated columns

I’m sure the Trump administration’s latest really bad tax idea – indexing capital gains for inflation, a cut that delivers 86 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent – comes from my old pal Larry Kudlow. I mention Larry not to just to name-check him, nor to make the obvious point that I’ve clearly failed to persuade him on this issue. I raise it because Larry is a die-hard supply-sider, despite the pervasive lack of supportive evidence, and one argument that hasn’t been elevated enough regarding this proposal is why the administration’s main selling point – indexing gains will boost investment and growth – is wrong. In the current system, when the owner of a financial asset sells it, she pays a tax on the growth in its value. Inflation is not considered, but the tax rate on capital gains is far below that on regular earnings (for top earners, about 24 percent versus 37 percent). By adjusting the original asset price for inflation, those paying cap gains would get a windfall amounting to at least $100 billion over 10 years. The benefits, as noted, flow exclusively to those at the top of the scale.

Thank God for Uncle Rudy. You know Rudy – the eccentric, sometimes batty, uncle who lives in the attic? One thing about Rudy, he always seems to know when family gatherings are becoming tense and descends to the rescue with some gibberish to lighten the mood.

After President Donald Trump met with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker last week, tensions between the two economic powerhouses abated, as the United States and the European Union announced an agreement to move forward on trade negotiations. But all is not as it seems. The “deal,” such as it is, is vintage EU: the agricultural sector is excluded, except for soybeans. This won’t be good news for American farmers, who struggle to gain a foothold in a highly protected European market. The Obama administration refused to accept an agriculture carve-out when negotiating a trade agreement with the Europeans.

One of the current complaints of the Trump right concerns the treatment given to Alex Jones by Facebook, which has temporarily banned the radio host for videos that violated “community standards.” According to Lou Dobbs of the Fox Business Network, “freedom of speech [is] under attack.” Fox News television personality Tucker Carlson has also come to Jones’ defense, saying sarcastically, “I know we’re supposed to think Alex Jones is way more radical than, like, Bill Maher.” Well, yes, that is precisely what we should think. At various points, Jones has promoted the belief that 9/11 was an “inside job,” that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of a pizzeria, that NASA had built a child slave colony on Mars in order to harvest blood and bone marrow, that the Oklahoma City bombing, the Boston Marathon bombing and the Sandy Hook school shooting were government “false flag” operations, that some shooting survivors were “crisis actors,” that “globalists” are intent on committing genocide and that Democrats are on the verge of launching a second civil war.

“Imagine the earth beneath you opening up and swallowing you whole. Imagine feeling everything good inside you – love, joy, kindness, trust, security, hope – burning and scorching to embers, giving way to fear, desperation, anguish and helplessness. Imagine being trapped in your worst nightmare, knowing that you will never wake from it. Imagine feeling truly abandoned – by God, by the universe, by humanity. Imagine all of that – and imagine it being far worse.” – “A Better Place,” by Pati Navalta Poblete

It didn’t take long after the Helsinki summit for European and American media publications to declare Donald Trump Vladimir Putin’s pet dog. Britain’s Daily Mirror used “Putin’s poodle” in its next-day coverage. Other European and American outlets referred to the president as “weak” or “submissive.”

Give President Trump credit. When he chastised NATO allies over their failure to spend adequately on our common defense, his critics said he was endangering the Atlantic alliance. Instead, his tough stance persuaded allies to spend billions more on defense, strengthening NATO instead. Now, Trump is doing the same on trade. At the Group of Seven summit in Quebec, Trump was roundly criticized for publicly berating allies over their trade practices and provoking a needless trade war. Well, once again, it appears Trump is being proved right. On Wednesday, he and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced a cease-fire in their trade war and promised to seek the complete elimination of most trade barriers between the United States and the European Union. “We agreed today ... to work together toward zero tariffs, zero non-tariff barriers, and zero subsidies on non-auto industrial goods,” declared the two leaders in a joint statement.

In a recent discussion about policing fake news, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg alarmingly remarked that he doesn’t block Holocaust deniers on his social-media platform because they aren’t “intentionally getting it wrong.” The sad truth is that Zuckerberg is right: People aren’t great at understanding history or current events, and many of them have trouble sorting facts from opinion.

If you are not collateral damage in the escalating trade wars, the bulletins from the wars’ multiplying fronts are hilarious reading. You are collateral damage only if you are a manufacturer, farmer or consumer, so relax and enjoy the following reports. Whirlpool, which makes washing machines and demands for government protection, wheedled Washington into imposing tariffs on, and quotas for, imported machines. Unfortunately for Whirlpool, American steel and aluminum makers horned in on the protectionist fun, getting tariffs – taxes paid by Americans – imposed on imports of those materials that, the Wall Street Journal says, account for most of the weight of 200-pound washing machines. And for part of the decline in Whirlpool’s share price. And for declining demand for appliances, the prices of which have risen as protectionism increases manufacturing costs and decreases competition.

The color purple is in short supply. There is a “Blue America” and a “Red America” – two banks on either side of a very broad river of disinterested people, with a handful of purple bridges across.

When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, members were champing at the bit to get answers to the burning question in Washington: What did (or didn’t) President Donald Trump deliver to Vladimir Putin in their one-on-one meeting in Helsinki, at which only interpreters were present? The question is hot because Trump was so deferential at the infamous joint news conference, at which he said he trusted Putin over U.S. intelligence agencies. With acquiescence like that, who knows what Trump might have given away, since he didn’t brief his intelligence chiefs – or much of anyone else. Yet the Russians have been leaking claims that the leaders made “important verbal agreements,” perhaps on Syria or Ukraine or nuclear accords.

Amazon’s Prime Day is often lauded as offering some of the best deals of the year in online shopping, but a closer look at the stream of corporate welfare that has helped fuel the rapid growth of Amazon’s flagship subscription service reveals that Prime is a raw deal for consumers and taxpayers alike. Washington lawmakers, who have already given up enough taxpayer dollars to the hometown tech giant, must think long and hard before giving another penny to the third-richest company in the world. Analysts say the true value of the Prime package, which includes music and video streaming, books, clothing, food, and, of course, expedited shipping service, is over $780 per year. But members still only pay $119 for their Prime subscription. This seemingly-unbeatable deal for consumers only begins to make sense in light of the fact that Amazon has built its business model with a big assist from government handouts. In fact, Amazon has received over $20 million in subsidies from Washington taxpayers since 2000.

The Trump administration may have declared it over, but a new War on Poverty is coming anyways. It will be fought largely over the “work requirement” – should the government require welfare recipients either to get a job or to train for one? It’s a philosophical as much as a practical question. A work requirement addresses a dilemma of all welfare programs. If you make eligibility and benefits too generous, you destroy the incentive to work. People will just collect their welfare checks. But if the program is too stingy and strict, many genuinely needy people may lack support. A work requirement tries to disarm this dilemma by conditioning welfare benefits on having a job or training for one. There’s already a work requirement for TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). That’s traditional welfare; it mainly assists single mothers and their children. Now the Trump administration proposes work requirements for two huge programs: Medicaid, health insurance for the poor; and food stamps, now known as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). A little background. First, these programs are huge. According to a new report by President Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), Medicaid had 71 million recipients in 2016 and cost $566 billion, counting both federal and state contributions. (The program is jointly funded.) SNAP spending in 2016 totaled $71 billion for 44 million beneficiaries. TANF is the smallest program of the group, with spending of $31 billion for 3.9 million recipients. Second, the debate over the work requirement excludes older and disabled Americans. No one is suggesting that the elderly or disabled be forced to work. The focus would be on able-bodied and non-elderly people between 18 and 64. Disability status would be determined by classification under two major disability programs: Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) or the Supplemental Security Income program (SSI). In 2013, reports a new CEA study, there were about 17.2 million adult Medicaid recipients who were neither disabled nor elderly. The comparable figure for SNAP was 18.6 million beneficiaries. In both cases, about half the recipients didn’t work at all and nearly another 20 percent worked fewer than 30 hours a week. This strikes Trump officials as bad and unfair. It’s bad because it isolates low-income workers from the labor market and makes it less likely that they’ll develop the skills that will enable them to improve their living standards. It’s unfair because it violates popular norms. “Society generally expects ... non-disabled working-age adults” to work, the CEA report says. At another point, the report notes: “As women’s role in the work force [has grown], so [have] social expectations of work for single mothers on welfare.” Although the report doesn’t propose a detailed work requirement, it provides enough information to imagine what one would look like. Suppose, for example, Medicaid and SNAP recipients were required to work at least 30 hours a week. Crude calculations suggest that about 25 million recipients would fall under the work requirement, though there would be some double-counting between programs. Hold it, say critics. In practice, an expanded work requirement would hurt the poor. The complexities of any program would result in people not satisfying the requirement and, as a result, losing benefits. Studies of the TANF work requirement also raise doubts about how much long-term employability of the poor improves. The CEA report, says LaDonna Pavetti of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research and advocacy group for the poor, “says nothing about the realities of the low-income labor market. There’s a lot of movement in and out of jobs. Workers don’t get benefits. They can’t control their hours.” The CEA study “doesn’t acknowledge what it takes to get into the market,” she says. Workers need child care and job training – both are expensive; neither is broached extensively in the report. Moreover, some critics argue that the number of welfare beneficiaries who don’t work is overstated, because the economy has improved since 2013, when the survey data was collected. So let the political wars over welfare begin. The House of Representatives has already passed legislation imposing new work requirements for SNAP; the Senate has not. There’s plenty to argue about. Is this a problem in search of a solution? Or a solution in search of a problem? Robert J. Samuelson is a columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group

Now we know why President Donald Trump complained about former intelligence officials being paid as cable analysts. On Monday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump was looking into whether to revoke the security clearances of some of his chief intel and law enforcement critics for, among other things, “politicizing” and “monetizing” their past positions. Here’s who Sanders listed:

“In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran.” That was Donald Trump tweeting in 2011. This was President Trump tweeting late Sunday night: “To Iranian President Rouhani: “NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!”

Smack them with their own bat. That was the gist of “Hey Democrats, Fighting Fair is for Suckers,” a provocative jeremiad that Politico ran on Independence Day. In it, writer Rob Goodman argued that, after Republicans have killed all the old political norms – denying a Supreme Court nominee a hearing, for example – it’s silly for Democrats to go on playing by the rules. Why obey the law in a lawless world?

Surely, now, we can concede that letting Trump be Trump has exhausted itself – even among the smugly credulous. For a year and a half, we’ve heard his supporters say: Watch what he does, not what he says. Sure, he’s rude and crude, they said, but he’s going to make America great again.

If President Trump wants to shut down the critics of his performance this week in Helsinki and strengthen U.S. national security, he can do so with one bold move: Announce he is moving out most U.S. forces currently stationed in Germany and sending them to Poland. The Polish government recently presented Trump with a formal proposal to move U.S. troops from Stuttgart, Germany, to a new permanent U.S. military base in Poland. Trump should take up Warsaw on this offer.

A few months ago, I cautioned that Americans should be patient before deciding what effect President Donald Trump’s tax cuts have had on the economy. It takes a while for companies to make investment decisions, more time for those decisions to be implemented and even more time for the resulting changes in labor demand to bid up workers’ wages. It therefore takes months or even years before the full impact of the tax bill will be known. But it’s also important to evaluate policies like Trump’s tax reform as quickly as possible. Not only is this critical for deciding whether to change course, but as more time goes on, the effects of a policy can become harder to assess. Two years from now, plenty of other things will have had time to affect the economy, including Trump’s trade war and natural economic forces. And now that the tax cut has been in effect for a half-year, the results are starting to trickle in.