BRANDON: Liberal Economists Predicted A Global Recession — Instead, We Have A Trump Boom

Remember when Paul Krugman predicted a global economic recession with no end in sight?

Krugman’s doomsday predictions began after Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2016, when the Dow Jones industrial average hovered around 18,332 and unemployment stood at 4.6 percent.

“If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never,” Krugman wrote in The New York Times the morning after the election. He was wrong, and almost comically shortsighted and dramatic.

Still, there is nothing funny to Paul Krugman about the Trump economy. Because no matter how badly he wants it to be failing — it seems to be thriving. In the past three years, the Dow has surged to 27,899 and unemployment has fallen to a 50-year low of 3.5 percent.

The latest jobs report added 266,000 nonfarm jobs in November, far exceeding the 187,000 that economists expected. Clearly, Paul Krugman’s reports of the death of the U.S. economy have been greatly exaggerated.

The Trump economy is proving what Republicans already know to be true — the economy is built on investment, not spending. When Washington cuts taxes and overturns job-killing regulations, the economy grows. I can only imagine if they combined those reforms with federal spending cuts. What a boom we would see!

Objective data tell us over and over again that free-market economic policies work. This isn’t partisan politics, it’s just math. Yet Democrats insist the sky is falling. It’s a type of data dysmorphic disorder that can only be explained by partisan politics.

Now, Elizabeth Warren is proposing nearly $3 trillion a year in new taxes that she claims will somehow grow the economy. She is joined by several Democratic contenders who predict a recession is just around the corner. And let me guess — only they can save us?

Where President Trump and the Republican Party have cut taxes, Democrats tell us they would have raised them. For every outdated regulation the Trump administration has scrapped, Democrats tell us they would have shut down fossil fuels and locked us back into the impractical Paris Climate Agreement.

When Republicans passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, saving the average middle class family more than $1,000 each year, Democrats pledged to repeal it. Their policies would drag us back to the slow trickles of economic growth seen under the Obama administration, at best.

But at least the Republicans wouldn’t be able to take credit for making life better for Americans across-the-board, and to the Democratic Party that always counts for something.

Fortunately, American voters will have a chance to decide for themselves in 2020 and the choice is clear. Do they want Warren-style tax increases, or the chance to save and invest more of their hard-earned money?

Do they want to make it easier for citizens to create and grow new businesses, or do they want to return to the oppressive regulatory environment that almost snuffed out job growth entirely?

When government gets out of the way, the economy thrives. Voters shouldn’t be looking for candidates with plans to “fix” a booming economy. They should be voting for the candidate who promises to stay out of the way and stay the course.