BOOK:
…..TRAGIC!
THE DEATH GAP: INEQUALITY IS KILLING AMERICA!
CALL IT OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS OR TRUMPERNOMICS FOR THE SUPER
RICH!
World economy in danger of being “torn apart”
By Nick Beams
13 April 2018
On the eve of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) annual spring
meeting in Washington next week, its managing director, Christine Lagarde,
warned that the international trading system risks destruction because of
growing protectionism.
In a speech at the University of Hong Kong on Wednesday, Lagarde
said: “The multilateral trade system has transformed our world over the past
generation. But that system of rules and shared responsibility is now in danger
of being torn apart. This would be an inexcusable, collective policy failure.”
Lagarde did not specifically cite the actions of the Trump
administration and its plans to impose tariffs on as much as $150 billion of
Chinese goods annually but referred to the claim by “some people” that trade
imbalances were caused by “unfair” trade practices.
While such practices existed, Lagarde said, bilateral trade
imbalances generally were a snapshot of the division of labour across
economies, including global value chains.
The first priority for the global economy was for governments to
“steer clear of protectionism in all its forms”—a call that has been a regular
feature of recent IMF policy pronouncements.
Yet it is a measure of how far and how fast events are moving in
the other direction that a year ago such calls were directed to US opposition
to having a commitment to “resist protectionism” being included in statements
by global economic forums. Today the calls are aimed at actions already
initiated by the Trump administration.
The IMF is expected to maintain its upbeat assessment for global
economic growth when it issues its World
Economic Outlook assessment. Growth in 2017 prompted the view
that, finally, after nearly a decade, the effects of the 2008 financial crisis
were being overcome.
Lagarde said the IMF could still see global momentum and continued
to be optimistic. But while the current global picture remained bright, “we can
see darker clouds looming,”
The reality was that the momentum expected for 2018 and 2019 would
eventually slow, she said. “It will slow because of fading fiscal stimulus,
including in the US and China; and because of rising interest rates and tighter
financial conditions as major banks normalise monetary policy.”
In the longer term, with ageing populations and weak productivity,
“you have a challenging medium-term outlook, especially in the advanced world,”
she said.
There are some indications, however, that even the IMF’s
predictions for solid growth over the next 18 months may not be met. In an
article published April 8 the Wall
Street Journal noted that “cracks” were forming in the global
growth story, with a reassessment of the scenario that growth was “on the verge
of blasting out of a long period of weakness.”
In the recent period “the global comeback has been in a bit of a
rut,” the article said. “In the US, gauges of manufacturing and services
activity have been pulling back. Retail sales have fallen for three straight
months, construction spending decelerated at the start of the year, and auto
sales have largely plateaued.” On top of this, there was a sharp slowdown in
the growth of the US labour market last month.
A recent Financial
Times article also pointed to slowing growth, posing the
question: “Is the global economy starting to splutter?” It stated: “Despite the
healthy employment picture, US retail sales unexpectedly fell in January and
fell short of forecasts in February. European and Chinese retail sales also
came in below economists’ expectations in February, and purchasing managers’
indices have weakened almost everywhere.”
The article cited a Bank of America poll of fund managers last
month in which a record 74 percent concluded that the global economy was now in
its “late cycle” and pointed to remarks by hedge fund manager Stephen Jen that
the present turbulence on stock markets could be the beginning of the end of
the bull run.
According the Jen, the “calm the world has enjoyed was the result
of Herculean policy efforts that will have negative consequences in the
quarters ahead. The calm will probably be followed by a storm.”
Jen was referring to the injection of trillions of dollars into
the global monetary system by the US Federal Reserve and the other major
central banks, which has played the key role in fuelling stock market
speculation, above all in the US. But with banks seeking to “normalise”
monetary policy by lifting interest rates, this could lead to a collapse of the
financial bubble.
Significantly in her Hong Kong speech, Lagarde said that, as a
result of easy financial conditions, global debt—public and private—had now
reached an all-time high of $164 trillion.
Private debt made up two-thirds of the total, with public debt
reaching levels not seen since World War II. Lagarde said if present trends
continued, “many low-income countries will face unsustainable debt burdens.”
“The bottom line is that high debt burdens have left governments,
companies and households more vulnerable to a sudden tightening of financial
conditions. This potential shift could prompt market corrections, debt
sustainability concerns, and capital flow reversals in emerging markets.”
It was necessary to use the current “window of opportunity” to
prepare for the challenges ahead by “creating room to act when the next
downturn inevitably comes.”
Another “downturn,” however, will not be a simple fluctuation in
the business cycle but a major crisis because none of the underlying
contradictions that produced the financial meltdown of 2008 has been resolved.
In many ways, as the debt figures show, they have been intensified under
conditions where the entire international trading and economic order is, in
Lagarde’s words, “in danger of being torn apart.”
Report details massive
growth of inequality worldwide
By
Eric London
10 April 2018
In December, researchers Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel
Zucman released the groundbreaking 300-page World Inequality Report 2018 detailing the growth
of social inequality on a world scale over recent decades. The authors “provide
the first estimates of how the growth in global income since 1980 has been
distributed across the totality of the world population.”
The growth of within-country inequality
The report shows that inequality is worsening in nearly every
country and is therefore increasing on a world scale. As a result, the report
warns: “Where rising inequality is not properly addressed, it leads to all
manner of political and social catastrophes”—i.e., revolution.
The current share of total wealth controlled by the top 1 percent
is 33 percent, up from 28 percent in 1980—a shift that reflects the transfer of
trillions from the working class to the rich. The top 10 percent of the world
now owns over 70 percent of total wealth. The bottom half of the world’s
population—3.5 billion people—owns less than 2 percent of the wealth.
In terms of income, the top 1 percent captured 23 percent of world
income from 1980 to 2016—equal to the total captured by the bottom 60 percent.
The top 0.1 percent captured as much income as the bottom half of the world’s
population.
After decreasing for most of the twentieth century, the income and
wealth share of the top 10 and top 1 percent has increased dramatically since
the 1980s:
If the world’s billionaires continue increasing their wealth at
the present rate, they will eventually “own 100 percent of the world’s wealth.”
Growth of the international working class and homogenization of
incomes across continents
Alongside the growth of inequality, the income levels for the
poorest half of the world have increased substantially. This shows that
billions of people have entered the working class in recent decades, leaving
behind a rural existence as globalization has rapidly transformed social
relations in the former colonial countries.
The greatest transformation has taken place in China, where the
population took just 3 percent of global income in 1980, but now takes 19
percent—surpassing both North America (17 percent) and Europe (17 percent).
Income distribution by region is much more even than in past decades, with India
increasing its share of world income to 7 percent, Japan declining to 4
percent, and the rest of Asia increasing to 18 percent. Africa and Latin
America take only 5 and 8 percent of world income, respectively.
The industrialization of the former colonial countries (especially
across Asia) coincides with a decline of income among the 60th to 90th
percentiles, a group mostly comprised of the working class in the United States
and Europe. Incomes between the 60th and 90th percentiles were stagnant, increasing
less than 50 percent over a 36-year period. The conditions and incomes of
workers across the world are becoming increasingly homogenized.
For example, from 1950 to 2016, the average income of a resident
of Asia was 34 percent of the world average. By 2016, the average resident of
Asia made 79 percent of the world average. For China alone, the figure
increased from 15 percent in 1950 to 89 percent in 2016.
The same figure declined in Africa, where the average resident’s
income was 64 percent of the world average in 1950 but just 41 percent in 2016.
In Latin America, the figure also declined from 140 percent to 91 percent. The
average income of a resident of Europe or the United States has declined
substantially and is much closer to the world average than in previous decades.
This shows that as the working class grows numerically and becomes
increasingly interconnected in the world process of production, the conditions
and incomes of workers across the world become increasingly homogenized.
Impact of the Russian Revolution and dissolution of the Soviet
Union on world inequality
The growth of inequality and divergent rates of income growth are
the product not simply of abstract objective processes. They are the outcome of
the development of the class struggle over the last century.
The report notes that the Russian Revolution of 1917 dramatically
reduced social inequality on a world scale.
The revolution shook the world. The report notes, “In emerging
economies, political and social shocks led to an even more radical reduction of
income inequality. The abolition of private property in Russia, land
redistribution, massive investments in public education, and strict government
control over the economy via five-year plans effectively spread the benefits of
growth from the early 1920s to the 1970s.” Further, “For most of the global
population, the first three-quarters of the twentieth century corresponded to a
very strong compression in the distribution of national incomes.”
In India, for example, “the top percentile income share decreased
from around 20 percent at the end of the colonial period to 6 percent in the
early 1980s, after four decades of socialist-inspired policies aimed at
reducing the economic power of the elite, including nationalizations, government
control over prices, and extreme tax rates on top incomes.” In China,
inequality was drastically reduced as a result of the expropriations and
nationalizations that followed the 1949 Chinese Revolution.
But the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the imperialist powers
and the Stalinist bureaucracy “contributed to strong increases in top
percentile income shares” across the world. In Russia, the top 1 percent now
controls 20 percent of income—equal to the distribution under the Tsar. In
India, the top 1 percent controls 22 percent of income, worse than under
English colonial rule.
In China, the pro-market reforms implemented by the Stalinist
bureaucracy beginning in the late 1970s produced a more drawn-out growth in
inequality. While the bottom 50 and top 10 percent took equal shares of
national income in 1978, the top 10 percent now takes nearly three times that
of the bottom 50 percent.
In Russia itself, the reintroduction of private property “resulted
in massive redistribution and impoverishment for millions of Russian
households, particularly among the retired populations. The share of national
income accruing to the bottom 50 percent collapsed, dropping from about 30
percent of total income in 1990-1991 to less than 10 percent in 1996.”
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, inequality has risen to
levels almost approaching the extreme inequality of the United States.
The rise of oligarchy in the US
In no country in the world does the ruling class possess as much
wealth as in the United States, the center of world imperialism.
Europe’s top 1 percent increased its income share from 10 percent
in 1980 to 12 percent in 2016. In the US, however, the top 1 percent increased
from the same figure—10 percent in 1980—to 20 percent today.
The wealth share of the top 10 percent has increased from 63
percent in 1985 to 77 percent today. But even this masks the massive
accumulation of wealth at the very top. The wealth share of the “next 9
percent” has declined relative to that of the top 1 percent.
High levels of inequality dominate even within the top 1 percent:
“The rise in wealth share of the top 1 percent itself owes almost all of its
increase to the growth of the top 0.1 percent share, which rose from 7 percent
to 22 percent” from 1986 to 2012. The top 0.1 percent now owns as much wealth
as the bottom 90 percent. “The average real wealth of the bottom 90 percent of
families was no higher in 2012 than in 1986.”
The wealth and income of the “next 9 percent” below the top 1
percent has increased dramatically in absolute terms, from an average income of
$586,060 in 1980 to $1.14 million in 2014, while the bottom 90 percent has seen
its wealth stagnate or decline.
The inability of governments to respond to social grievances or
economic crises
The report also charts the growth of private capital and the
decline of public capital over the decades. The process of privatization has
taken place across almost all countries and shows the domination of private
transnational corporations over the world’s economic activity.
The report notes: “The domination of private wealth in national
wealth represents a marked change from the situation which prevailed in the
1970s, when net public wealth was typically between 50 percent and 100 percent
of national income in most developed countries (and over 100 percent in
Germany).”
Private wealth to national income ratios are “returning to the
high values observed in the late 19th century”—i.e., the gilded age of
unregulated capitalist exploitation. The report’s authors conclude, “Today,
with either small or negative net public wealth, the governments of developed
countries are arguably limited in their ability to intervene in the economy,
redistribute income, and mitigate rising inequality.”
This finding contradicts the study’s policy recommendations, which
appeal to the governments to pare back austerity measures and increase spending
on social programs. By the authors’ own admission, the governments have
transferred so much of the state resources to the balance sheets of the
billionaires and millionaires that they lack the resources to carry out the
massive expenditures required to respond to future economic crises or improve
the lives of billions of workers and poor people worldwide.
Conclusions
The report shows the objective basis for revolutionary optimism.
The size of the working class has grown massively, especially in Asia.
Globalization has brought the working class together into the same process of
production, leading to a leveling in its conditions. Increasingly connected by
social media and the Internet, there is every indication that the class
struggle will be increasingly international not only in its content, but also
in its form. For this reason, the capitalist governments of the world are
seeking to censor the Internet and prevent workers from using social media as a
platform for political organization.
The report is also proof of the necessity of social revolution.
The governments are so dominated by the oligarchs in their respective countries
that they are economically unable to respond to economic crisis or the needs of
the working class. Only social revolution—with nationalizations, expropriation
of the wealth of the world aristocracy, and the redistribution of the wealth to
meet the needs of the human race—is capable of wiping inequality and poverty
off the face of the earth.
Paul Ryan’s Globalist Legacy: Ignoring America’s Working Class at the Behest of Billionaire Koch Brothers
As House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) announced that he will retire from public office after his last term in the House, the leader of the globalist wing of the Republican Party is set to leave behind a legacy that ignored America’s working and middle class, while serving up an agenda favored by billionaires Charles and David Koch.
This year — days after Ryan successfully prioritized tax cuts ahead of President Trump’s popular immigration reduction agenda — the Koch brothers donated about half a million to Ryan’s campaign committee.
Ryan’s brand of Republicanism is reliant on pushing unpopular tax and entitlement reform agendas, as when, in 2016, the House Speaker told American workers that tax cuts — not penalties for multinational corporations — were necessary to stop the massive outsourcing of U.S. jobs to third world nations.
The Koch brothers, staunch advocates of mass immigration, geared up alongside Ryan’s tax cuts and the two have marched in lockstep together opposing Trump’s populist fair trade agenda, where he has placed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, as well as on Chinese imports, to help rebuild America’s depleted manufacturing base.
Charles Koch most recently said that he and his brother’s network of organizations were “working hard against” Trump’s trade agenda.
“We’re working hard against all these other protectionist trade barriers that are just different forms of corporate welfare which, other than a few special interests, will make Americans worse off,” Koch said.
Ryan, like the Koch brothers, came out of the gate opposing Trump’s fair trade agenda, denouncing the plan by saying he was “extremely worried” about a mainstream media-hyped “trade war.”
Wisconsin voters, Ryan’s constituents, have been opposed to the House Speaker’s free trade as religion, with a majority telling pollsters in 2016 that free trade was responsible for taking U.S. jobs away from them. The poll revealed that only 33 percent of Republican voters said free trade creates jobs in the U.S.
President Barack Obama shakes hands with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R) as Vice President Joe Biden looks on before the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill January 12, 2016 in Washington, D.C. In his final State of the Union, President Obama is expected to reflect on the past seven years in office and speak on topics including climate change, gun control, immigration and income inequality. (Photo by Evan Vucci – Pool/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, Ryan has credited his tax cuts for Trump’s economic success. Republican voters, though, have repeatedly said that tax reform is not a priority for them. The biggest priority for GOP voters, month after month? Reducing immigration, an initiative supported by Trump but opposed by Ryan and the Koch brothers.
In the latest Harvard-Harris poll, 42 percent of Republican voters said immigration was the most important issue facing the country. The same amount of Republicans said national security, too, is the most important issue.
Meanwhile, only 25 percent of Republican voters said the national debt was the biggest issue in the country, while only 12 percent of Republicans said the same of taxes.
Reducing immigration was a bigger priority for GOP voters than tax cuts, repealing Obamacare, getting the U.S. out of the Iran Deal, destroying ISIS, and expanding family leave.
Immigration is so important to Republicans that it even surpasses the economy and jobs as being the biggest issue.
Supporters of President Trump’s say reducing immigration should be the second biggest priority for the White House, just after stimulating American jobs.
Nonetheless, the Koch brothers have remained opposed to cutting the current inflow of low-skilled foreign nationals to the country, where more than 1.5 million illegal and legal immigrants enter the U.S. every year.
Ryan, too, has opposed cutting legal immigration levels, favoring the Washington, D.C.-imposed cheap labor economic model where businesses import foreign workers to compete with American workers at low wages.
The opposition to reducing legal immigration, though, is not in-line with Ryan’s constituents’ views on immigration, For example, most recent polling shows that a plurality of Wisconsin voters wants legal immigration cut in at least half.
Even in Ryan’s retirement announcement, he did not mention any plans for the Republican-controlled House to push Trump’s popular agenda of immigration reduction. Instead, Ryan said he would “keep at it” on trying to cut entitlements for Americans as foreigners continue pouring into the country.
With Ryan’s agenda to push entitlement reform just ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, the Koch brothers are investing up to $400 million in trying to get globalist-friendly GOP candidates elected to Congress who will vote to continue mass immigration to the U.S. About $20 million of the Koch funding will go towards selling Ryan’s tax reform.
Ryan’s tax cuts, while getting more money back in the pockets of Americans, does not have a lasting impact on voters. Last month, 50 percent of swing voters told pollsters that the tax reform legislation would have “no impact” on their decision as to whom to vote for. Immigration, for swing-voters, remains more important to their midterm election vote than tax reform.
Still, Ryan’s control of the House has put the Trump administration in a bind when it comes to pushing their popular immigration reform agenda, which not only includes reducing immigration, but building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and ending the Diversity Visa Lottery program which imports 50,000 random foreign nationals every year.
In the most recent spending bill, signed by Trump, Ryan worked with Democrats to expand the number of low-wage foreign workers entering the U.S. for the big business lobby. The spending bill also did not include any border wall funding, increased the “Catch and Release” program that allows illegal aliens to be released into the interior of the U.S., and did not add any new deportation agents to help deport illegal aliens living across America.
Trump, though he signed the spending bill, called it a “ridiculous situation” – a blow to Ryan’s speakership.
The Koch brothers’ biggest critique of the spending bill, unsurprisingly, was that it did not include amnesty for illegal aliens.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Enemy of the American Worker, Speaker Paul Ryan Will Not Run for Re-Election
House Speaker Paul Ryan told Republicans that will not run for re-election, according to his senior adviser Brendan Buck.
“This morning Speaker Ryan shared with his colleagues that this will be his last year as a member of the House,” Buck said in a statement to reporters. He confirmed that Ryan would serve out his full term and retire in January.
“After nearly twenty years in the House, the speaker is proud of all that has been accomplished and is ready to devote more of his time to being a husband and a father,” Buck continued.
A press conference is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. Wednesday.
The news was first reported by Axios on Wednesday, citing sources close to Ryan who say the speaker is concerned about Republicans losing the House of Representatives in the November mid-terms and does not want to serve as minority leader.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy may be considered as the next Congressman to lead Republicans or House Majority Whip Steve Scalise — both of whom enjoy a good relationship with President Donald Trump.
On Fox News, Scalise described the reports about Ryan as just “a lot of speculation” but confirmed that the Speaker would make an announcement later on Wednesday.
Ryan’s announcement comes after he has raised over $54 million from donors for the Republican 2018 midterm elections.
9 Times Paul Ryan Put American Workers Last, Foreigners First
Getty Images
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) has announced that he will retire from Congress at the end of his term, leaving the door open for an economic nationalist Republican to take over as Speaker.
Here, Breitbart News looks at Ryan’s pro-immigration, wage-crushing, big business-first record, whereby American workers have been left behind by multinational free trade and mass immigration.
1. Ryan’s Mass Immigration-Packed Omnibus of 2018
This year, Ryan sent President Trump a spending bill that was packed with goodies for big business interests and the open borders lobby. The omnibus spending bill allows the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to expand the H-2B visa program, whereby low-skilled nonagricultural foreign workers are imported to take blue-collar and working-class U.S. jobs.
Ryan’s spending bill also did not include any border wall funding, while increasing the “Catch and Release” program that allows illegal aliens to be released into the interior of the U.S. Neither did it add any new deportation agents to help deport illegal aliens living across America.
2. Ryan’s Opposition to Trump’s Pro-American Worker Tariffs
When Trump announced he would place tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to help rebuild America’s manufacturing base, which has been devastated by free trade deals like NAFTA and KORUS, Ryan immediately began spouting his opposition to the pro-American worker initiative.
“I think the smarter way to go is to make it more surgical and more targeted,” Ryan said. [Emphasis added]
“What we’re encouraging the administration to do is to focus on what is clearly a legitimate problem and to be more surgical in its approach so that we can go after the true abusers without creating any kind of unintended consequences or collateral damage,” Ryan continued. [Emphasis added]
NEW: Speaker Paul Ryan, who has been critical on Pres. Trump's tariffs announcement: "There is clearly abuse occurring...I think the smarter way to go is to make it more surgical and more targeted." abcn.ws/2D5uAzD
Meanwhile, American workers thanked Trump for placing the tariffs on imports, noting how free trade had come at the expense of their manufacturing jobs, as Breitbart Newsnoted.
3. Ryan Using Nikki Haley to Trash Trump’s Popular Immigration Reform Agenda
Breitbart News’ Neil Munro reported in 2016:
House Speaker Paul Ryan used President Barack Obama’s final State of The Union speech to trash Donald Trump’s popular pro-American immigration platform — and to call for a radical, wage-cutting, open-borders plan.The hit was delivered via the GOP response-speech, presented by South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Her speech — which was almost certainly approved by Ryan — dumped on Trump and touts Ryan’s preference for a “any willing worker” economy.That “any willing worker” term is used to describe nationwide employment rules which would allow any employer to hire any willing foreign workers if American workers decline to take the jobs because the offered wages are too low. President George. W. Bush worked with GOP leaders to push those rules in 2006 and 2007, but saw his poll ratings crash and his plans defeated.
4. Ryan’s Attempt to Slip Amnesty for Illegal Aliens into Year-End Spending Bill
Last year, Ryan attempted to slip an amnesty for illegal aliens into a year-end spending bill, a move that would have attempted to force an amnesty at the expense of American workers or have the federal government shut down.
Just as Trump’s labor market was tightening at the end of the year, securing historic wage gains for America’s workers, Ryan’s amnesty plan would have crushed those salary increases, giving big business an immediate new flow of cheap, foreign workers.
Ryan’s failed secret plan to attach amnesty to the spending bill came less than a month after Breitbart News confirmed that a DACA recipient allegedly murdered a high school student in South Carolina.
5. Ryan’s Refusal to Cut Legal Immigration to Raise American Workers’ Wages
This year, Ryan made a rhetorical shift when he announced that he, like Trump, supports a merit-based immigration system. But, the system Ryan supports does not include actual reductions to legal immigration levels, wherein the U.S. imports more than 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants every year.
Instead, Ryan prefers to keep importing millions of foreign nationals every year, but through a merit-based system – a plan that would not raise American workers’ wages, as it would continue flooding the U.S. labor market at the benefit of big business.
Meanwhile, when pro-American immigration Republicans asked Ryan to promote legislation that reduced legal immigration to the U.S., he refused to help the initiative, allowing it to die in the House despite its popularity among the American public and Republican voters.
6. Ryan’s Shooting Down of the RAISE Act
In 2017, there was no legislation that encompassed more of Trump’s economic nationalist agenda than Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-AR) “RAISE Act,” which would have cut legal immigration in half, delivering wage increases for American workers, but also reducing the foreign competition that U.S. workers have had to endure.
From the beginning of the rollout of the RAISE Act, Ryan opposed the plan, favoring the current Washington, D.C.-imposed cheap labor economic model.
“I just think arbitrary cuts to legal immigration don’t take into effect the economy’s needs as the boomers are retiring,” Ryan told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “With baby boomers leaving the workforce, we’re still going to have labor shortages in certain areas and that is where a well-reformed legal immigration system should be able to make up the difference.”
7. Ryan Defending Globalization to American Workers
Breitbart News Political Editor Matt Boyle reported in 2016:
House Speaker Paul Ryan headed to friendly territory in his home district — Wisconsin’s first, which most in state politics expect him to win — to campaign for the final day before blue collar voters who will determine his fate.But perhaps more importantly than that—Ryan shoring up what is supposed to be his base—Ryan was forced by workers in the two Wisconsin factories he visited on Monday to answer for globalization.…In addition to pushing his “A Better Way,” agenda which has come under fire during the primary, Ryan made a direct pitch that the way to keep jobs in America—to prevent outsourcing—is to do tax reform. Ryan said:This business is taxed at the personal level, so their top tax rate here is 44.6 percent. You know what the companies doing this in other countries are taxed at, like the Canadian companies that produce the same kind of stuff? They’re taxed at 15 percent. China is at 25. Ireland is 12.5. England is 15. The average in the world is about 23. So when we tax our American made products, our American manufacturers much higher tax rates than our foreign competitors are taxing theirs, they immediately lose. So one of the things we are trying to do is make it so we are in a better position to keep jobs here in America, to keep manufacturing here. So we have proposed a complete overhaul of our tax system to number one get those tax rates down to about the average, 25 [percent]. Number two, we want to give businesses the incentive to hire more people and to build more buildings and to buy more machines.
8. Ryan Squeezing More Imported Foreign Workers Out of Trump Administration
Last year, Ryan was effective in squeezing an additional 15,000 imported, cheap foreign workers for his big business donors out of Trump’s DHS chief at the time, Gen. John Kelly. The H-2B visa, which the foreign workers use to enter the U.S., has proven to be used as a cheap labor visa whereby businesses can readily import low-wage workers rather than having to find American workers to hire.
9. Ryan Falsely Claiming He Passed Legislation to Pause Somali Refugee Program
Breitbart News’ Julia Hahn reported in 2016:
During the interview, O’Reilly criticized Ryan for failing to message on immigration controls and asked Ryan specifically about the Somali refugee crisis in Minnesota.O’Reilly: “We have a Somali problem up in Minneapolis-St. Paul. [We] have a problem there and those are refugees from Somalia. And if, God forbid, some refugee comes in and blows people up, it’s going to be grisly.”Ryan replied by explaining that he passed a bill to pause the refugee program. Ryan said: “Right. Right. That’s why– just so you know that’s why we passed a bill pausing this refugee program, because we don’t think the refugee program works. That’s why we don’t want it to continue right now.”However, Ryan did no such thing. The bill Ryan championed did not in any way pause the Somali refugee program– it applied solely to refugees from Syria and Iraq.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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