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Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #1248
04/22/2025
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1) The Mythical “Hollowing Out of the Middle Class”
One of the most persistent myths we are hearing out of Republicans is that the middle class is falling behind in recent decades.
The GOP is weirdly starting to sound like Bernie Sanders.
Here is the official Census data on median household income:
The period 1980 to 2021 saw the largest gain in real median family income in recorded history. Factory jobs have been lost to higher paying jobs - just as 100 years ago farm jobs were replaced by tractors.
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These gains in living standards began with the Reagan era of free trade, lower tax rates, a strong king dollar, and a technology explosion continued under Clinton and Trump.
Real median family income in 1982 was $67,000 and it is now $100,800 - an astonishing 50% gain.
These stats, as measured by the Census Bureau, include some government cash benefits like Social Security and unemployment benefits, but do NOT include food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, or the earned income tax credit. They understate the gains that families have made because they don't include private health benefits, 401k contributions, or capital gains on stock and property.
Trade and technology RAISE median income, they don't reduce it. It's called progress!
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2) Why Is the Trump Administration Trying to Break Up Google?
Last week, a U.S. District Court judge declared ([link removed]) that Google has built "monopoly power" in its online advertising business. The outlandish ruling was yet another reminder of just how far some in the U.S. judiciary have strayed from economic common sense.
Usually for an act to be a crime, there has to be a victim. The lawyers can’t find one here.
While Google has been the largest actor in the digital advertising market for several years, its success has coincided with a multi-year DECLINE in online advertising costs. A study ([link removed]) published in 2022 by Laffer Associates and Unleash Prosperity found that digital ad time and space that cost $100 in 2009 cost $71 in 2022, a decrease of 29 percent. Newspaper advertising only fell 7 percent during that same period. Perhaps the FTC should sue The New York Times.
A recent study ([link removed]) by the Progressive Policy Institute found that from 2010-2022, there was a 27 percent REDUCTION in the price of Internet advertising sales. During the same period, the price of television advertising fell just 1 percent.
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Regrettably, the Trump Justice Department hailed the ruling ([link removed]) as a "landmark victory in the ongoing fight to stop Google from monopolizing the digital public square." Hello, there are thousands of places to advertise online.
Ironically, President Trump signed an executive order requiring foreign nations to stop unfairly attacking America’s dominant high tech companies with discriminatory taxes and frivolous lawsuits. Then why is our own Justice Department doing so?
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3) If We Raise Tax Rates, Progressives Will Still Scream “Tax Cuts for the Rich”
The Left is running around the country and the airwaves falsely claiming the Trump tax bill is a giveaway to millionaires and billionaires. If anyone thought that putting a hike in the top rate would stop this disingenuous attack, we note that at least one liberal group has already jumped the gun:
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Not only is raising the top rate terrible economics, but it betrays the conservative no-tax-hike brand, while gaining nothing from the left politically.
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4) Even in California - Elites Are Out Of Touch with Voters
Last year we released a ground-breaking poll that found a vast gulf between the opinions of Americans in general and an "elite 1%" who had a postgraduate degree, earned more than $150,000 a year, and lived in a high-density area.
For example: Three quarters of elites supported "strict rationing of gas, meat, and electricity" to fight climate change, vs. 28% of everyone else. Two-thirds said teachers and educational professionals, not parents, should decide what children are taught.
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We're pleased to see other polling firms have since borrowed our analysis and published their own findings. The latest is from Politico, with an extensive survey which finds that the quintessential Blue State California has a population that is more moderate than its image or the views of the progressive elites who dominate its politics.
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"The results suggest a disconnect between the policymaking class and voters in an overwhelmingly blue state where Trump made broad inroads in 2024 amid widespread frustrations over crime and a prohibitively high cost of living," Politico concludes. As example: only 45% of voters think the state should set its own strict standards on vehicle emissions, but 82% of policy professionals and elites supported it.
Voters were more likely to support immigrant assimilation, while elites overwhelmingly favor identity politics and sanctuary city laws.
"Golden State voters have no real interest in going to war with Donald Trump. Instead, they seem less enthused than ever about the state's one-party rule and the fruits it has borne," Politico concludes.
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5) Former NBC Star: Deplatforming Trump Backfired
Chuck Todd, the former host of NBC's Meet the Press, has admitted: mainstream media’s attempts to silence or cancel Donald Trump were a spectacular failure and damaged their credibility with the public.
Todd admitted to the podcast "13th And Park" that "All these institutions did want to cancel Trump, did want him inoperable in mainstream public (discourse)." He says he "did not follow the pied piper on this one...You may not like that speech, but speech is speech. This is a First Amendment issue."
Ironically, the media groupthink against Trump backfired. "The decision to deplatform bit the mainstream media in the ass," he told a podcast. "Donald Trump started his own information ecosystem. How do you like them apples now?"
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Todd notes that newsrooms from both print and video outlets are lamenting their declining influence. But he says journalists won't admit that: "You did try to deplatform him. It was a mistake. Somebody oughta come up and say, 'This was a mistake.'"
The major media figures we know are incapable of looking in the mirror and admitting any such fault. So long as that is the case, you can expect more Americans to abandon their platforms and seek out alternative sources of news.
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6) Who’s Ripping Off Whom?
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