Donald Trump has made bold claims about creating jobs and addressing crime. In his February 28 speech to Congress he spoke of a 2015 murder rate that "
experienced its largest single-year increase in nearly half a century". While it is true that the percent change from 2014 to 2015 was unusually large, the 2015 rate of 4.9 was still lower than at any time between 1965 and 2009. When I was a kid in the 1990s, the general consensus seemed to be that Democrats are the compassionate ones, but when you need to get the economy moving you need a Republican. The mythology of Ronald Reagan as an economic genius seems rather perplexing, as both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama achieved better reductions in the unemployment rate. Moreover, he achieved a decrease in unemployment at the cost of a massive increase in the national debt (even as a ratio to GDP). Trump now seems to have a similar economic plan to Reagan. Like Reagan, he plans to increase spending while decreasing taxes. Also like Reagan, the area he is most fond of increasing spending is the military. The other spending spree he wants to go on is border security. Whatever your opinion is on immigration, you have to admit that these types of spending are unlikely to generate any economic return (aside from the direct economic activity of government checks going to border patrol agents and wall building companies). At least if we spent money on infrastructure and education we would get some long term economic return. Spending it on border security will just give us a wall to stare at while we watch more and more of our tax dollars going to pay interest on the debt.
