By Lallan Schoenstein
Aside from a small bump in after-tax profits, induced by Trump’s tax cuts for the rich and the big corporations, the economy has not recovered since the Great Recession of 2007-2009. According to economist Alan Freeman, “economic growth of the industrialized North has fallen continuously, with only brief and limited interruptions, since at least the early 1960s.”
Donald Trump’s campaign promises to revive the economy by providing jobs ring hollow. The high employment rate he totes is based entirely on contingent, low-paying, temporary and part-time jobs. In the U.S., 17 percent of workers are only employed part time — one-third more than in the 1960s. Many workers have been forced to join the “self-employed” gig economy. Others have fallen out of the job market because they’ve given up looking for work.