The current economy has been praised by many, including (and reluctantly so) many of the current administration’s detractors. But is the economy really doing well for everyone? And even if so, are we headed for a crash? One of the things the current economy has been praised for is how well it’s done in terms of the Dow Jones. Besides the fact that the Dow has many inaccuracies and only really accounts for huge companies, it also recently plunged over 900 points. While this can be recovered from with relative ease, the huge drop seems to be a foreboding sign of what’s to come. Even without this, the market does not in any way represent how the people are doing. This is because when the stock market is doing poorly, the people suffer. Yet when the stock market is doing well, the people don’t do any better. This shown by the fact that the rich have long recovered from the last crash, but there are still many communities devastated by it.

Another aspect of the U.S. economy that has been praised is the low unemployment. There are a couple of problems with this. For one, the current data being used is completely inaccurate. As pointed out on the Trump’s campaign trail (yet completely ignored by him now), the U6 method that is not being used is much more accurate. According to thinkprogress.org, the U.S. actually has had 93,000 jobs outsourced in the last 2 years. The current method completely ignores those who haven’t been without work for a very long time and those who are no longer looking for work. For this reason the unemployment rate is much higher than projected. Even without those facts, unemployment is actually much less significant than many think and really doesn’t show how well the people are doing. A superior way of conveying the success (or lack thereof) of the middle class is looking at wages. Wages are dismally low and have been stagnant since the 80’s. A startling statistic is that half of workers are currently making 30,000 dollars per year. The people in right to work states  also make 1,000-1,500 dollars less per year than those in union states. To make it worse, most of the higher paying jobs that are being outsourced and have actually been replaced, are being replaced with very low wage jobs.

Tax cuts that have been very popular among many of those in lower classes are also much more deceptive than many know. 83% of the benefits in the last tax bill went to the top 1%. On top of that the amount that the average person’s taxes are being cut at the moment is completely temporary and will eventually be increased, while the tax cuts for the rich are permanent. This is literally redistribution of wealth from the common people to the rich. This is all a part of the huge problem of extreme wealth inequality. The 6 richest people in America have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population (huffingtonpost.com). The current system is lacking many things that need to change in this department including a raise in the minimum wage and a pro union bill. This class warfare continues to go unchanged in a significant way because almost everyone in government is bought and paid for by huge corporations and businesses like big pharma, Wall Street, the military industrial complex, and for profit health insurance companies. All these monied interests make it so the government does not exist to serve the people, but instead for corporations. The infrastructure of the United States is a dismal D+. In the last 2 years, 4 million people have lost health insurance. 30 million people over all are not covered and this number continues to increase due to the raising of premiums.

Now that it has been established that the economy is doing much worse than many think, the question still remains is whether or not America is really headed for another economic crash. For those who are very aware of the economy, it seems very obvious that the U.S. is in a bubble that could pop at any time. This is because the tax cuts for the rich and deregulation bills that has been enacted as of late will create a bang bust economy. This means that the economy will do extremely well (for the rich) for a period of time. However, because of this overly sped up growth and a lack of regulation on companies, the market inevitably crashes which is devastating for the people. There are very recent examples of this in American history. In the Roaring 20’s the economy flourished with tax cuts and deregulation, but then there was that inevitable crash that will always happen when corporations are left unregulated. The Great Depression lasted until World War II and was devastating. F.D.R. helped fix the economy with The New Deal. After the Great Depression, America’s economy grew at a steady and healthy rate. This was until the 1980’s, when Ronald Reagan repeated the mistakes of the Roaring 20’s. Once again taxes were cut and companies deregulated and as a result there was a recession. Finally, from the combined efforts of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in once again deregulating and cutting taxes for the rich, and the seemingly apathetic attitude Obama showed towards the obvious bubble, the result was very predictable. The subprime mortgage crisis occurred, and what did the Obama administration do? It bailed out the people actually responsible for the crisis, Wall Street. This further encouraged dangerous casino capitalism by giving almost no consequences to the rich and doing nothing for the people. After this Obama immediately made the same mistakes by doing nothing to remedy the situation, reinflating the bubble throughout his presidency. Now trump is speeding up this process with his recent actions, Repeating the same mistakes that have been being made for so long. Peter Schiff, an anarcho capitalist economist who predicted the subprime mortgage crisis spoke about the current situation, “Donald Trump inherited a big fat ugly bubble from Obama, and all he’s done is blow more air into it”. There could be many causes of the next market crash, but no matter what the evidence seems to show that a crash is indeed inevitable.