Are you better off now than you were in 2016?

Recently Trump touted the stock market’s rise, which was rising before 2016. He claimed we're “so lucky to have me as your president.”

Pew Research Center facts show only a small share of Americans (14%) are invested in individual stocks. While another 38% of American families have some indirect investment in stocks via retirement accounts such as 401(k)s.

Wealthier households are more likely to invest in stocks and also have retirement accounts. Not everybody is lucky to have benefited from stock investment or some sort of personal, employer or union related retirement funds in the past 4 years. Plus Trump’s tax reform doesn’t have much long-term value for most Americans because it basically further enriched the wealthy and large corporations while violating the principles of good tax reform to be simple, fair and efficient. The wealthy and corporations had more money to invest in the market or stock buybacks to increase their net worth or profits.

Sure, some investment occurred and some wages increased but this supply-side economics doesn’t work for low or middle classes. Tax cuts skewed for the wealthy do not make for better economic equality among Americans. There's been no federal surplus since the Clinton-era Congress increased tax rates for the wealthy, with some spending cuts, that raised revenues.

Are you better off now than you were in 2016?  If not, it’s time for a change - hope over fear, unity over division, science over fiction.

STEVEN ANDERSON

Sagle