Why Experts Fail to Understand the Trump Phenomenon

ZH |  The percentage of people who are business owners relative to the overall employed population, is at an all time low.

The Fast Company, Shark Tank echo chamber would have you believe that entrepreneurialism is in a bubble.

It’s not.

Unprofitable, tech-centric gimmicks that are fueled by loosed monetary policies from the Fed are in a bubble. Legitimate businesses that produce cash flow and grow the middle class are not being created much, if at all.

Because the US has been waging war on the self-employed since the 1950’s, we not only have very few self-employed people in the workforce, we also have multiple generations of journalists who have ZERO experience engaging with those who run an actual business.

This is why NO ONE in the media gets Trump or the impact of his policies.

None of them have ever had to make payroll or create something from nothing. They’ve spent the last eight years literally kowtowing to a man who openly told the self-employed, “you didn’t build that.”

The same can be said for economists.

Time and again, you will see academics like Paul Krugman write op-eds suggesting that Trump is going to collapse the economy. Krugman has never once had to actually run a business. His entire career has been one of writing the equivalent of glorified book reports for other people who write glorified book reports to read.

If you ran a McDonalds or plumbing business implementing anything Krugman claims, you’d be broke within six months. The man lives in a world of excel spreadsheets and faculty meetings, not the world of revenues and payroll.

So what is Trump doing?

First off, Trump is getting rid of regulations.

Economists don’t understand the impact of this because none of their models include regulations. According to an economist, you simply “start a business.” These people have no concept of the business costs of licenses and the like.

Business owners care far more about regulations than taxes. Get ride of stifling regulations and you can start growing your business more aggressively.

I can tell you, business owners would happily pay more in taxes if they were doing 50% more in revenues. No business owner feels successful paying less in taxes on a business with zero growth.

Regarding taxes themselves, Trump understands them better than anyone in politics in the last 30 years.

Why?

Because as a business owner, Trump has been paying more taxes than the media or politicians can believe. This is why the obsession with Trump’s personal taxes is beyond moronic.

As a business owner, Trump has been paying taxes on property, payroll tax, taxes on some products, excise taxes, and a slew of others than journalists and economists don’t even know exist.