How Good Is the Trump Economy, Really?

In response to a NY Times article discussing the non-sensical hype surrounding Trump and the economy, How Good Is the Trump Economy, Really?, my post received over 600 Recommended clicks, the equivalent of likes:

I see several major issues with the Trump economy:

The current economy is really an extension of the Obama economy.
Obama inherited a miserable situation created by Republicans, the same Republicans that prevented the economy from regrowing by implementing austerity measures, in effect harming many people.
Whatever exuberance beyond that is the irresponsibility of tax cuts and deficit spending that Republicans are going to use to eventually harm Medicare, Medicaid, and Socal Security.
The good of the economy is mostly for the upper end of the income spectrum. Even though there is low unemployment, most Americans are not really thriving.

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Review - The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies

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In the end, the failure of this deal lays at the feet of Cuomo and De Blasio. It's a deal that should have never been made or should have been done in a way that wasn't filled with one-sided giveaways. As Amy Liu, vice president and director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, describes, Virginia worked with local constituents to address concerns, negotiated a deal that required jobs from Amazon in exchange for incentives, and put more money into developing an education-focused job pipeline, rather than a simple giveaway to Amazon. Many people are going to blame a vocal minority for the failure when the problem was the deal itself. It could have been done to satisfy the critics, or at least mollify them, while still delivering for New York. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/business/amazon-economy-taxes.html?comments#permid=30664506

Happy New Year! May Your City Never Become San Francisco, New York or Seattle - Responses

#1 I'm a long-time New York resident, have watched the real estate market for years, and wonder about the cause and effect of high prices. My sense is that developers develop for the high-end because that is where the profits are. Not justifying the inequality, but over time, the only place to make major profits has been to either reduce costs at a huge scale, e.g., Amazon and Walmart, or to focus on smaller opportunities but aimed at the affluent, e.g., the luxury retail sector. Yes, it is not that simple, since cost is affected by regulations and taxation, but on its face, the high costs of developing in Manhattan, and maybe anywhere in NYC, force developers to focus on the luxury segment. At one time, significant government investment and support in affordable housing made it profitable for developers to build for average incomes, but much of that has been wiped away, along with other supports for the middle class over the past few decades, driving much of our inequality, th...

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