Recently, there been some good news bolstering the US economy.
Let’s start with the latest job numbers reported on 4th of October 2024. As per U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. hiring surged to 254,000 in September 2024, blowing past economist expectations and alleviating any concerns about weakness in the labor market. The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1%.
Starting in September 2024, Inflation has slowed dramatically from a peak of about 9% in 2022, to being slightly higher than the Fed’s target of 2%. Wages are up at over 4%, outpacing the rate of inflation.
As per a mid-September 2024 poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research Center, the GOP MAGA Ex-president no longer has an advantage with voters regarding who’s better to handle the US economy over the democrat party’s presidential nominee, VP Kamala Harris. To boost his economic credentials, the GOP MAGA ex-president made the mistake of falsely asserting that the JP Morgan chief executive, Jamie Dimon had endorsed him, but according to a JPMorgan Chase spokesperson, this Trump claim is an absolute falsehood.
GOP MAGA ex-president’s economic plans would reverse any recent improvements for the middle class.
If the GOP MAGA ex-president wins reelection his promise to raise tariffs on all imported goods would end up costing average consumers up to $4,000 annually. It’s the consumers who end up paying the increased prices to compensate vendors for the added costs of tariffs on the products that they sell. It’s an invisible tax that hurts mostly the peoples with lower disposable incomes and it’s inflationary.
But it’s his frequently made promise to mass deport millions of immigrants that could push US into a recession. There’re GOP MAGA pundits who’re downplaying the ex-president’s frequent commitment to mass deport undocumented US residents, even those Haitians who’re living legally in Springfield, Ohio. After his policy to separate migrant families as a deterrence during his first term, I’m choosing to believe him.
As per the October 4, 2024 NY Times op-ed piece by Jamelle Bouie, “Who Wants to Buy the Miracle Tonic of Mass Deportation?:”
Excerpts:
“If Trump is a classic American confidence man, then mass deportation is his miracle tonic — a magical tincture that treats all ailments and cures all maladies. And like any traveling salesman, Trump is careful not to mention the side effects of this potent treatment. But not only are there side effects; the potion doesn’t treat the disease and may kill the patient.”
“A little less obvious is the extent to which mass deportation would plunge the US into economic darkness. According to a new report from the nonpartisan American Immigration Council, a mass deportation plan designed to expel 13.3 million undocumented immigrants over about 10 years would crash the economy, immiserate millions of Americans and siphon nearly $1 trillion from the federal government.”
“During Tuesday’s debate, Vance said the Trump deportation plan would start with about one million alleged criminal offenders. To deport one million immigrants per year, the report says, “would incur an annual cost of $88 billion, with the majority of that cost going toward building detention camps.” Even assuming some measure of “self-deportation,” the federal government would have to build “hundreds to thousands of new detention facilities to arrest, detain, process and remove” all targeted immigrants, at an estimated cost of $66 billion per year.”
“On top of that, the government would need to spend $7 billion per year to conduct the arrests, $12.6 billion per year to carry out legal processing for arrestees and an average of $2.1 billion to remove these immigrants from the country. None of this includes the cost of personnel, which could raise the overall price tag quite a bit. “Even carrying out one million at-large arrests per year,” the report says, “would require ICE to hire over 30,000 new law enforcement agents and staff, instantly making it the largest law enforcement agency in the federal government.” Assuming an average annual inflation rate of 2.5 percent, this deportation program would cost at least $967.9 billion over 10 years.”
“For the cost of this program, the US could build more than 40,000 new elementary schools, construct more than 2.9 million new homes, pay full tuition and expenses for more than 8.9 million Americans to attend an in-state public college for four years, fund the Head Start program for most of the next century and buy a brand-new car for about 20.4 million people.”
“But the cost of mass deportation almost pales in comparison to the direct economic cost of removing millions of people from the economy. Mass deportation, the report contends, would hurt key industries that rely on undocumented labor: “The construction and agriculture industries would lose at least 1 in 8 workers, while in hospitality, about one in 14 workers would be deported due to their undocumented status.”
“Additionally, mass deportation would remove “more than 30 percent of the workers in major construction trades,” nearly “28 percent of graders and sorters of agriculture products” and “a fourth of all housekeeping cleaners.” Without workers, you can’t produce the goods and services the country needs to thrive. The result would be inflation and higher prices. (And that’s on top of the similar effects Trump’s blanket tariffs on goods entering the US.)”
“The country would lose roughly one million undocumented business owners, along with the revenue they produce and the jobs they create. The federal government would lose tens of billions of dollars in federal taxes, including contributions to Social Security and Medicare. States and localities would lose more than $29 billion in tax revenue. Overall, the American Immigration Council concludes, “mass deportation would lead to a loss of 4.2 percent to 6.8 percent of annual U.S. G.D.P., or $1.1 trillion to $1.7 trillion in 2022 dollars.” For comparison’s sake, the country’s G.D.P. shrank by 4.3 percent during the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009. During that time, unemployment peaked at 10 percent. And high unemployment is associated with a broad range of social ills, including higher rates of poverty, food insecurity, addiction and premature death.”
“At the low estimate, then, a mass deportation program would produce — for all Americans — a social and economic crisis comparable to the Great Recession. At the high estimate, it’d produce an economic and social crisis that dwarfs anything experienced by Americans since the Great Depression.”
“Vance tells us that mass deportation would lower demand. It would crash the economy. “
“This observation, crass as it might sound, gets to a larger point. I’ve been discussing mass deportation as if it’s actual policy — as if it’s just one option among many for tackling the nation’s many challenges. But that’s absurd. Whether or not it works to fix the problems at hand, and it doesn’t, the mass deportation of 20 million to 25 million people — which is to say the forced detention and relocation of about 6 percent to 8 percent of the current U.S. population — is a human rights abuse. It would make the US a pariah state. And it’d violate the fundamental principles of the American creed, the core belief that “all men are created equal,” that they’re “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
“American cynicism, political or otherwise, is so ingrained that it’s only too easy to believe that neither Trump nor Vance is serious. Mass deportation might sound cruel and inhumane, but in this view it’s just performance.”
“This is wishful thinking. The mass deportation of tens of millions of Americans has been the centerpiece of Trump’s campaign for the past year. His running mate believes in it. His advisers, like Stephen Miller, have every intention of seeing as much of it through as possible.”
“The former president is running on a promise to commit a moral crime of world-historical proportions. Knowing what we know about his first term in office, what makes anyone think that he won’t try to do it?”
Gronda Morin 
if anyone should be deported it would be the idiots who still believe the Cheeto “won” the last election and want him back again.
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Hi!
It’s those same GOP MAGA folks who’ll be crying the most when they find out what’s life really like under a dictator. Let’s hope they never find out how much worse life can be.
Hugs, Gronda
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Gronda, well done. 30% is a lot, but I thought the construction trade would lose more with mass deportation. When I think of the number industries impacted, landscaping, roofing, farming, restaurant, food processing, services and construction would be hit hard.
We’ve already seen unpicked crops rotting in the fields when states like Alabama cracked down. Businesses and customers would be scrambling with deportation.
Keith
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PS – Be safe with the hurricane.
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Keith, Thanks for the good wishes. My daughter taught me how to rebuke the storm in God’s name and so, I’ve been rebuking away. Let’s see what happens.
So far, all the meteorologists are predicting that the storm surges from Hurricane Milton will be much worse than what happened with Hurricane Helene. The mayor has said that if residents don’t evacuate the coastal areas in Tampa Bay, they’ll not survive.
Hugs, Gronda
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Hi! It’s great to hear from you.
How are you and your family doing after Hurricane Helene hit Charlotte NC? Hurricane Helene did lots of damage to the Tampa Bay coastline areas because of high storm surges. It was not hit directly.
Hurricane Milton will be worse. I left Tampa and am staying in the Orlando area, trying to get a flight out asap.
GOP MAGAs don’t get how dependent the US economy is on immigrants. I’ve seen the effects in Florida when the GOP MAGA FL Governor Ron DeSantis signed SB 1718, the immigration law that went into effect on July 1, 2023. The law imposed such strict penalties to deter the employment of undocumented workers in Florida to where there was a mass exodus. At the time, more than 300,000 worked in the construction sector. Now construction of any infrastructure or remodeling project is much more expensive and delays are to be expected.
He’s costing Florida so much more monies because of his GOP MAGA type thinking. These immigrants are sorely missed.
I’ll probably do a post on what happened to immigrants in Florida to show in a concrete way how this mass exodus in 2023 has cost Florida.
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