With the ink barely dried on Trump’s $5 trillion tax cut for investors, businesses, and the wealthiest 1% households this past January, he and his stacked-deck Republican Congress are now preparing another big investor tax cut before the November 2018 midterm elections. In the last tax cut, signed into law in January 2018, the total tax cuts for business was $5 trillion. Two trillion $ was raised on middle class tax deductions. Another $1.5 trillion was ‘disappeared’ with absurd assumptions about US economic growth averaging more than 3.5% for every year for the next decade (and of course no recession). That left the ‘official line’ of a tax cut of only $1.5 trillion, which the mainstream media promoted as well as Trump’s mouthpieces at Fox and elsewhere. In the January tax cut, capital gains taxes were left at levels where George W. Bush left them–at 15% and 20%. Now they are coming back for a second ‘bite at the apple’, to cut capital gains taxes still further, at a cost of another $1.5 to $2.0 trillion. During the election in 2016 Trump had promised to cut taxes if elected by $10 trillion more over Bush. (See my early 2016 post,’$10 Trillion Tax Cuts; Another 410 Trillion Coming’). Another tax cut and he’ll be more than half way there.
Listen to my Alternative Vision radio show of June 22 during which the coming further tax cuts under Trump is discussed. Also discussed are the US Federal Reserve’s bank stress tests, with an explanation why they are ‘phony’. Other updates on past shows are also discussed.
(Tune in to my show on the Progressive Radio Network on June 29, 11am pacific time, for my explanation of what’s called the ‘YIELD CURVE’ and why it is now predicting US recession in 2019–as it has 17 times before accurately in the past.
To Listen to Trump Tax. Cuts 2.0, GO TO:
https://alternativevisions.podbean.com
SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT
Rasmus reveals plans by Trump-Congress to cut taxes still further on investors and businesses before the November elections. Also ongoing incremental tax cutting involving corporate pension fund contributions and dismantling of funding for Obamacare. The Fed’s latest bank stress tests, how they’re phony and why some US banks are still financial fragile. Rasmus also discusses the pending Teamster-UPS contract and how workers’ wage hikes will be eaten up by reductions of overtime pay and inflation. A new five year agreement will mean real pay cuts. The show concludes with latest updates on Europe, Italy’s debt, Greek debt, 3rd party critiques of the US Labor Dept.’s Alternative Work survey, and Trump’s phony trade war with Europe (and real one with China).
Dr. Jack Rasmus @drjackrasmus
Jack Rasmus 
Excellent post. You appear to be one of the few commentators who really understands Trump as chilling as that understanding may be. In addition, it was very helpful for me to review the distinctions between an open shop, a union shop, and an agency shop. I will probably listen to the post again to make sure I have the distinctions correct but it brings to mind the film On the Waterfront which was really a propaganda piece vilifying union shop hiring. I never really understood that the Taft-Hartley act was at least in part an antiunion act which helped destroy the union shop and union hiring. It is disheartening to connect the dots between Taft-Hartley, On the Waterfront, and the HUAC.
Yes, Taft-Hartley was the codifying in law the new class relationship created in the post-war transition period; ‘On the Waterfront’ was part of the anti-union ideological offensive; and HUAC represents the ‘political agent’ of the Congressional committee to label anyone that resisted the class relations restructuring in the 1944-50 period a ‘commie’ or ‘red’. (I will be writing about US class restructurings in my forthcoming next book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism’. The first major restructuring occurred 1908-14, the second 1944-50, and the third, sometimes called ‘neoliberal’ 1979-1988 (and continuing). The third, neoliberal US capitalist restructuring continued to evolve with Clinton and GW Bush. It almost broke down with Obama, who couldn’t restore it. Trump should be viewed as a restoration of neoliberalism, but now in a more virulent, aggressive, 2.0 form. Most writers of neoliberalism fail to fully understand it historically in class terms. They also typically see it only as a form of fiscal policy (austerity, tax cuts for business, attack on unions and wage labor). It’s of course all that, but much more. They fail to understand its global economic characteristics–i.e. free trade, deficits, national debt, ‘twin deficits’, US dollar exchange rate policy–and the relationships between these dimensions and the political restructurings that accompany it: restrictions on civil liberties, narrowing of democratic rights, party realignments, institutions and practices to ensure global hegemony over other competitor capitalist classes, gerrymandering, Citizens United and direct entry of billionaires in politics, militarization of police forces, corporate concentration of the media, increased state surveillance of citizens, rise of nationalism (Us v. Them appeals), and development of new ideological justifications of all the above.