Jim Hightower, the 8th Agriculture Commissioner of Texas has spent his life fighting for progressive change, being involved in politics from the late 1960's when he began working as a legislative aide to Texas Senator, Ralph Yarborough. Hightower is a nationally syndicated columnist which is carried by seventy-five independent weekly newspapers and other publications. "The Hightower Lowdown" has more than 125,000 subscribers and focused heavily on the, what Hightower sees, as the corruption that existed within the Bush administration, claiming the former President was tied to large corporations and right-wing extremists. Well, he's got a point.
All of his speaking and writing accomplishments wasn't what stood out to us when we first came across Mr. Hightower, it was a political concept that he created and that desperately needs to be spoken about much more within this political climate. Here it is.
The Doug Jones Average
The Doug Jones Average is the proposal that in order to gain a true indication on the health of the American economy, it is much less useful to look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average than it is to check up on how Doug Jones down the street is doing. If Doug Jones is on welfare, cannot feed his family, is blowing his savings and is three weeks behind on his bills, the Doug Jones average is "down".
If Doug Jones just got a raise, can pay his bills and his family are looking into owning a nice but not too expensive house, the Doug Jones average is "up".
You will be able to find the full version here, which was posted on "The Hightower Lowdown" and it is one excellent read, we fully recommend the piece, even though it may be twenty-four years old, it stands true to this day.
Right, enough fawning over Jim Hightower and let's explain how this relates to politics today. As you can see on President Donald Trump's twitter feed - do not go there, it is a terrifying area of the web - his tweets are a constant ego boost, getting his daily encouragement from Fox Business as the pretentious Stuart Varney reads out the stock market numbers and as Mr. Trump seems to believe that he gets credit for Barack Obama's successes from the very second he was sworn in to become the most powerful person in the world.
Of course, we can debunk this in a few seconds. Donald Trump retweets a shared article from Drudge Report of all places, a far-right conspiracy website, which claimed Trump had added 235,000 jobs to the economy on March 10th 2017. Now, while that seems good to anyone who reads a headline, assumes it to be true and will use said article to try and beat you pathetic Liberals in a social media argument, it is factually false. In the remaining three years of his presidency, Trump may be able to improve the economy even though history tells us otherwise. He will just create a Boom-Bust-Cycle, in which all the growth is essentially a bubble growing until it bursts, exactly what happened in 2008.
The simple fact of the matter is, no matter how good a president Trump could be by 2020, in the space of what was a few weeks, with his inauguration on the 20th of January 2017 and his policies having any actual effect on the economy by the end of February 2017 is just impossible.
What does this show us? It shows us that while President Trump can brag on social media to his deluded followers that the jobs being created and stock market highs are because of how great he is in office after a single month, he has no idea when his economic policy would kick in, because it is all about 'winning' for Trump, even if he didn't do the work.
We can look to the stock market and see how large corporations and other institutions are doing and of course we need these large employers to perform relatively well to ensure there are jobs being created, but not at the expense of the average joe American, or as Hightower puts it, how Doug Jones down the street is doing.
Doug Jones, trying to keep the lights on and put food on the table for his family is not concerned about stock market numbers or how many points Nike has risen by and generating them insane amounts of profit. Doug Jones has to survive. Here, the Doug Jones Average comes into play as the people at the top may well be richer than ever before, but if Doug is on welfare and struggles to pay his bills, the American economy simply isn't doing very well for those who need help the most.
Of course, we can debunk this in a few seconds. Donald Trump retweets a shared article from Drudge Report of all places, a far-right conspiracy website, which claimed Trump had added 235,000 jobs to the economy on March 10th 2017. Now, while that seems good to anyone who reads a headline, assumes it to be true and will use said article to try and beat you pathetic Liberals in a social media argument, it is factually false. In the remaining three years of his presidency, Trump may be able to improve the economy even though history tells us otherwise. He will just create a Boom-Bust-Cycle, in which all the growth is essentially a bubble growing until it bursts, exactly what happened in 2008.
The simple fact of the matter is, no matter how good a president Trump could be by 2020, in the space of what was a few weeks, with his inauguration on the 20th of January 2017 and his policies having any actual effect on the economy by the end of February 2017 is just impossible.
What does this show us? It shows us that while President Trump can brag on social media to his deluded followers that the jobs being created and stock market highs are because of how great he is in office after a single month, he has no idea when his economic policy would kick in, because it is all about 'winning' for Trump, even if he didn't do the work.
We can look to the stock market and see how large corporations and other institutions are doing and of course we need these large employers to perform relatively well to ensure there are jobs being created, but not at the expense of the average joe American, or as Hightower puts it, how Doug Jones down the street is doing.
Doug Jones, trying to keep the lights on and put food on the table for his family is not concerned about stock market numbers or how many points Nike has risen by and generating them insane amounts of profit. Doug Jones has to survive. Here, the Doug Jones Average comes into play as the people at the top may well be richer than ever before, but if Doug is on welfare and struggles to pay his bills, the American economy simply isn't doing very well for those who need help the most.
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