LyrArc Article Gist
Krugman reflects on the discontent in Europe reflected in anti-EU opinion at the time of the elections to the European parliament in 2014.

LyrArc Article Gist
Julia Preston of the NYT looks at Mr. Trump's speech on August 31, 2016 in Pheonix, Arizona, and compares what one can discern about the Trump policies on immigration with that of president Obama. She points out that it is similar to the deportation that was conducted under president Obama in some ways, but is more extensive in its dimensions. It includes sanctioning sanctuary cities, expanding the deportation law enforcement personnel, and deporting about 2 million people with criminal backgrounds. The estimate under the Obama administration is for about 176,000 people with such backgrounds. The Trump estimate appears to include people with minor offenses says Preston, because it is so much higher. As a result this could also include people who have no criminal background and disrupt families on a large scale, with hundreds of thousands of longtime residents and families deported. Under the sanctuary example of Trump, Denver, New York and counties in California would be places where Trump would cut off federal funding. On the wall itself, Mexico's president Nieto says he told Trump Mexico would not pay for the wall, and Trump says exactly the opposite that Mexico would pay for the wall in his speech to supporters.  A Gallup poll shows that 76% of Republicans, 91% of Democrats favor a path to citizenship for those here in the U.S. illegally. For the whole population only 15% oppose giving illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship and 84% support doing this. Which suggests that Trump is only appealing to his base of support, not adding to it, as Cillizza points out in the WP fact check.   ...

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Krugman points out that the federal tax rate for the top 1% is 34% in 2013, according to the Congressional Budget Office, because president Obama let the high end Bush tax cuts to expire. It is the number to remember says Krugman- 34. In 2008 the figure was 28.2. Under Hillary Clinton the average tax rate for the top 1% would go up by 3.4 percentage points, according to the Tax Policy Center. Some of this would help pay for the tution plan to provide access to the middle class to public universities. Under populist Trump, Krugman points to the elimination of the inheritance tax and tax rates going down substantially, and no such programs to promote the upward mobility that everyone is talking about, and no way to pay for a big infrastructure building effort for growth and jobs- upward mobility that is the focus of every candidate's election campaign including Sanders, Trump in appealing to older white working class families, Clinton, Ryan, Bush, and others in both parties.   ...