Science Is Trump actually losing mental competence?

Is the media losing mental competence?

http://fortune.com/2017/10/12/donald-trump-stock-market-national-debt-fact-check/

President Donald Trump argued Tuesday that gains in the stock market under his watch have helped reduce the national debt, a claim that economists said was head-scratching.​

NO HE DIDN'T ARGUE THAT.

In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Trump noted that the stock market has done well during his first year in office, then claimed that “maybe in a sense we’re reducing debt.”

“You know the last eight years, they borrowed more than it did in the whole history of our country. So they borrowed more than $10 trillion, right? And yet, we picked up 5.2 trillion just in the stock market,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in an interview on Tuesday. “Possibly picked up the whole thing in terms of the first nine months, in terms of value. So you could say, in one sense, we’re really increasing values. And maybe in a sense we’re reducing debt. But we’re very honored by it. And we’re very, very happy with what’s happening on Wall Street.”
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Capital gains taxes on the rising stock market prices do, in fact, offset spending that would require borrowing to pay for it. In a sense. Maybe. It remains to be seen what the capital gains amounts collected are.

The point he made is the Stock Market gained a massive $5.2T in a few months, which buys about 1/2 of whatever Obama borrowed $10T and spent.

“A rise in the stock market does absolutely nothing to reduce the national debt directly,” Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard economics professor and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, told Fortune. “It [stock market gains] reflects a stronger underlying economy that will eventually help reduce the national debt through higher tax revenues but there is just no connection.”
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"In a sense," there is.

 

And this guy gets it:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-is-right-to-link-national-debt-to-assets-2017-10-12

Opinion: Trump’s comments about stock gains reducing debt aren’t as crazy as they sound


Now we’ve got him.

President Donald Trump went on his second-favorite television show, “Hannity,” on Wednesday, and discussed one of his favorite topics, the stock market:

“The country, we took it over and owed over $20 trillion. As you know, the last eight years, they borrowed more than it did in the whole history of our country. So they borrowed more than $10 trillion, right? And yet, we picked up $5.2 trillion just in the stock market. Possibly picked up the whole thing in the first nine months, in terms of value. So you could say, in one sense, we’re really increasing values. And maybe in a sense we’re reducing debt. But we’re very honored by it.”

What a maroon!

Except ... it’s not an entirely crazy way to look at the issue.

Yes, the debt burden, to the extent that it actually matters, is spread across every taxpayer, while stocks are not widely held and, in fact, are concentrated among the rich.


And stock-market gains are on paper (though one can borrow against them without selling). Plus U.S.-traded stocks are not 100% owned by Americans.

Still, to a degree, the ability to service the debt has improved because of the stock market’s rise. Some portion of that $5 trillion or so will make it into the hands of Americans, who will both increase economic activity as well as ultimately pay taxes on it to Uncle Sam.

 

>Its crazy. Typically when a politician wins he goes on. He can't let it go!.

 

So he essentially claimed we're reducing debt via the stock market.

 

He essentially claimed the stock market has gone up 1/2 the amount Obama added to the debt.

His economic plan, scored by CBO, is built on higher tax revenues from increased economic growth and lowering the debt.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/us/politics/cbo-trump-budget.html



(CBO won't use Trump's 3% GDP growth figure, which is why the results differ.

 

Bill Clinton's pollster.

http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/355066-why-the-polls-are-still-wrong

Why the polls are still wrong

The polls that failed to detect the full strength of President Trump on Election Day continue to underestimate the president’s support for the job he is doing, paying way too much attention to the Twitter wars and ignoring the public support for many of the actions is undertaking.

This can create some serious misjudgments by organizations like the NFL and some Republican senators, who find out later that they buck the president only to their own detriment. And nothing was more devastating to Democrats than believing the election was over when it wasn’t.

Polls show the president’s approval rating all over the lot. An Associated Press poll put it at 32 percent and suggests that only 24 percent see the country as going in the right direction. This strains credulity given what happened in the special elections against the Democrats.

... Another group of polls has Trump’s approval in the low 40s, and Harvard-Harris Poll, which eliminates all undecideds, has it at 45 percent, similar to Rasmussen.

Generally, the president does best with voters polled online, as opposed to with live operators. He got 46 percent of the electorate in the election and little has changed since then as 90 percent of his voters support him, unchanged over many months.

When we break down his approval ratings by specific areas, we get a more complex picture of his image. The president gets 65 percent approval for hurricane response and 53 percent approval for the economy and fighting terrorism. He gets his lowest marks for the way he is administering the government. And he is a divider when people want a uniter.

No question that 68 percent or more say they would like to see Trump stop tweeting, but is measuring that really reflective of his underlying political power compared to what’s happening in the economy? In the end, will voters cast ballots on tweets or jobs?

We see the same dynamic being played out over and over again: The president grabs the spotlight with strong statements (typically on Twitter) of his policies, for which he is savaged as over the top on social and mainstream media. Then, over time, he often wins the underlying policy argument. You can see how this played out on the economy and taxes, the national anthem, attacks on bad trade deals and calls for more border controls.

Remember, Americans liked President Obama for his way with words and his calm leadership style. They just opposed many of his policies, so Obama’s numbers gave a false sense of approval. Trump is the mirror opposite. People are put on edge by his words while favoring a lot of the positions he is taking on issues.

...

he failure to understand the 2016 election was in large measure not a failure of the final polls, many of which showed a close race, but a failure to understand the powerful storyline of Trump’s appeal with his respect for cops and the military, taking a more aggressive position against our enemies, and pushing for tax and health-care reform. His style is not what won him the presidency. It was, remarkably, his substance.

I, frankly, didn’t at the time see his rise in the Republican primary as realistic. I don’t believe he has advanced his coalition from Election Day, and rank-and-file Democratic opposition has hardened. But he hasn’t lost his support either, and taking on “The Swamp” only empowers him further.

It is by watching the underlying public sentiment of what he is doing, and not his methods, that you see how polling better watch out here, as reality versus research will again be tested, and reality always wins.

Mark Penn is co-director of the Harvard-Harris Poll and was a pollster for Bill Clinton during six years of his presidency.

 

Goose. Gander.

 

^^^ the ridiculous lengths you go to.

 

I'm going to declare myself the president of the Virgin Islands and show up to the White House for a meeting with Trump.

 

King of the Virgins!

barfo

 

I'm not the King this forum deserves but the King this forum needs.

 

Deserve's got nothin' to do with it...

barfo