Sounds like we broadly agree on the types of tax cuts. I would say comparing median income numbers from 2008 (which reflected the high water mark right before the crash) to 2012 is a bit disingenuous. A more accurate comparison would be, say 2013 ($52,250) to 2016 ($57,616) which is the 3 years prior to Trump versus 2016-2019 ($65,712) for the next 3 years under Trump ((
https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=median household income by year&tid=ACSST1Y2016.S1903&hidePreview=false). Doesn't tell nearly the same story; I'm not sure that deficit really bought us much compared to the price and the steady state of the 3 prior years and in fact that the curve had been steadily bending up ever since we pulled out of the Bush recession so really all three of the numbers you cite were just extrapolations of what was already happening. Also, I'm not sure where your GDP growth number come from, 2018 U.S. GDP growth was 2.9% by every source I could find which merely equaled Obama's 2015 numbers. (
https://www.statista.com/statistics/188165/annual-gdp-growth-of-the-united-states-since-1990/). Best I can tell you're cherry picking a single quarter number, which for a variety of reasons isn't a valid judge of a big policy change like the tax cuts and again is somewhat disingenuous.
Even if you compare 2013 - 2016 (an increase of $5,366) vs. 2019 - 2016 (an increase of $8096), that's still significant. But a better metric would be 2017 - 2020 which is an increase of almost $10k in 3 years. Just about double what happened under Obama from 2013 - 2016. Although I suspect some of the 2020 gains were due to C19 payments as many were making more sitting at home than they were working. Again, using the same data as earlier for median income:
https://dqydj.com/household-income-by-year/. I could not load your data.census.gov link, said no results found. Also, these numbers do not take into effect the corporate profitability. Earnings for S&P500 companies are also significantly higher than they were at the end of Obama's term. Same with market caps. I won't dispute that much of that is due to central bank support and low interest rates forcing money into anything with a yield, but it is wealth. Even if you average all the GDP growth numbers from when Trump took office until just before C19 hit (can't blame Trump for C19, it was a global pandemic), Trump was still able to generate higher economic growth than Obama (if you exclude 2009, it's about the same). Given that Obama took office right when the S&P bottomed, he should have been achieving much higher growth as it is much easier to grow an economy when it is just coming out of a bad recession vs. when it is late cycle which I suspect is where we are now.
Should have provided references inline, sorry. The cost numbers come from
https://earth.stanford.edu/news/how-much-does-air-pollution-cost-us#gs.kg98f7 just because I have an affiliation there. Lot's of others out there that vary slightly but order of magnitude are all right in the same area. I admit the lost work days number I quoted wasn't accurate, I was remembering the number of lost work days the Trump Clean Air Act rollback will cause (disingenuous on my part, sorry). The estimated lost work days from power plants specifically, which is probably the more intellectually honest number to use for purposes of this discussion is about 1.6M per year (
http://www.catf.us/resources/publications/files/The_Toll_from_Coal.pdf) Keep in mind that you and I are lucky that we don't suffer from asthma or other respiratory issues that are sensitive to pollution. What can be an almost unnoticeable amount of pollution for us can cause a debilitating asthma attack in one of the 1 in 13 adults in the U.S. living with asthma(
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/asthma.htm), so our anecdotal experience of what we've noticed isn't really relevant in calculating cost to our economy. Regardless, there is a real GDP and productivity gain from replacing polluting power with clean power; you claimed there wasn't and that's simply not true. You can certainly argue that compelling weight loss in obese people is a better use of our money, that's a completely different discussion though that really has nothing to do with if your claim was true or not.
Although I agree with your on clean power, I think the transition is already happen naturally as the price of solar falls. Private industry and innovation is driving that, no need for government subsidies. The first sentence in your article states: "Damages from air pollution have fallen dramatically in the U.S. in recent years, shows new research." Also, the article mentions, "The highest costs come from early deaths, attributable to exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5)." The green new deal stuff is primarily focused on reducing carbon emission from burning fossil fuels and perhaps animals. As more manufacturing leaves the US and heads to China or other places where government doesn't care about the environment, the air quality in the US will only improve. The article claims: "Air pollution negatively impacts the U.S. economy, costing the U.S. roughly 5 percent of its yearly gross domestic product (GDP) in damages ($790 billion in 2014)." But they do not provide any reference on where that 5% number came from. When did a quick Google search for most common causes of missed work, I found this article:
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/070513/causes-and-costs-absenteeism.asp
I don't see air pollution mentioned anywhere. Why would they omit a factor that accounts for 5% of GDP as the Stanford article claims if it were really true? Also, many jobs provide extra sick days that are use it or lose it...usually people find a way to use it.
As far as the student loan forgiveness, it is important I think to be on the same page on basic math. If you give a person $100 for any reason, no matter if it's a good, bad, or indifferent reason, it has exactly the same economic impact of if you cut their taxes by $100. Money's fungible, so any time you save someone $100 somewhere they have an extra $100 to spend on anything else. Do we disagree on that?
Only if they pay taxes. But you are ignoring the economic impact that results from that policy in the first place. Resources are finite. $100 allocated to build a road in the middle of nowhere that no one will ever use, or fund a study proving that gravity exists, or fund a college degree that does not lead to a higher-paying job that could not have been obtained without that degree are all wastes of finite resources that could have been allocated to better purposes.
I get it, you don't think they should have spent the money on education, but that's your value judgment and doesn't provide any information on if helps GDP or productivity. It's interesting that you don't judge the economic impact of what the person who got the exact same $100 from a tax cut spends their money one. Which could just as easily be on education, or they could have stuffed it under their mattress or most likely they spent it all on Chinese products which definitely doesn't help U.S. GDP or productivity more than spending it on a service provided in the U.S., like education. Again, you're claiming that forgiving student loans doesn't help GDP or productivity and that is simply false. The relative merits of education or useless degrees is just as irrelevant as obesity is to a discussion on pollution impacts to determining if your claim is true or not.
Stop putting words in my mouth. I never said that I don't value education. My claim is that if one pursues an economically beneficial degree and completes the degree in a cost-effective manner (maybe go to community college for the first year, then state university), then they will have no trouble paying off the loan and won't need to beg some hard-working fellow American who managed to do fine despite not having a college education to bail them out. Why should a truck driver working hard and making $50k per year have to pay taxes to bail out a financially irresponsible individual who got a gender studies degree from a low-ranked university, got stuck with debt, and now works at Starbucks? That video in my last post shows many examples of that.
Bernie Sander's campaign manager, Chuck Rocha (who is Latina) tweeted out "I told you so".