AP Photo - Kathy Willens

AP Photo – Kathy Willens

Listen To You Tell Me Texas Friday 12/16/16

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What if those who are predicting a disastrous Trump presidency – a veritable legion that includes very nearly every Democrat, nearly every Hollywood celebrity, nearly every member of the New York-Washington media and more than a few Republicans – are as completely wrong as they were with their predictions regarding his candidacy? What if Donald Trump actually continues to succeed?

What will happen?

Since it’s impossible to disprove a prediction, here is one worth considering: things start going well.

Businesses – particularly small businesses – confident for the first time that at the very minimum conditions won’t get any worse, poke their heads above the hedgerows and think about expanding again. Lower taxes, a repeal of Obamacare and a meaningful rollback of crushing business regulations all serve to re-oxygenate the muscle of American commerce. Revenues  grow robustly for the first time in years.

Growing revenues fund raises and a hiring expansion. Workers come to be in greater demand putting those now idle back in the workforce. Household incomes at last begin to rise – something they haven’t done in more than a decade

Cash sitting idly on company balance sheets begins circulating through the economy again. Local independent banks get relief from the overbearing provisions of the Dodd-Frank banking law, allowing small business lending to pick up.

Buildings get built. Equipment gets replaced. New branches and new territories start being opened up.

Business valuations rebound, making it economically feasible to sell businesses to a new generation of owners. The resulting capital gains get plowed back into the economy rather than sitting locked up in a business that can neither expand nor sell out.

The quickening pulse of the American economy serves to stimulate the animal instincts of entrepreneurs. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends and venture firms more readily advance money to fund the dreams of a proven hard worker with a good idea.

In short, a whole lot of things that have always happened in the American economy – that haven’t been happening all that much lately – start happening again.

The resulting economic growth creates taxable activity that more than offsets any effect of rate cuts – creating tax revenues that reduce federal deficits.

That all happens at home.

Around the world, imagine bad actors in China, Russia and the Middle East starting again to think twice before making mischief – something they’ve gotten out of the habit of doing. Imagine our allies again trusting us and our foes again fearing us. Picture America resuming its leadership role in the defense of peace.

There is no guarantee that any of these things will happen. There is no guarantee that President Donald Trump will succeed in a job for which he has none of the traditional training.

A disastrous presidency remains a possibility.

But so, too, does a hugely successful one  – despite what the sore losers on the left are now saying.

All to say that those making predictions of a failed Trump presidency would do well to remember their predictions about his “doomed” candidacy.

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