Duck Burns Gouge

Screw you Scrooge, and you too, McDuck!

The Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive think tank in Washington, produced a report at the beginning of this year that said corporate profit margins are responsible for about half of inflation. While inflation has come back down to three percent, the first time since 2021, American consumers are still hurting.

No matter who was inaugurated on January 20, 2021, we were going to be hit with inflation. A large part of the inflation we were hit with after Donald Trump begrudingly left the White House (sic), was because of the pandemic. Who tried to play down the pandemic? Who largely ignored it? Who gaslighted and lied about it? Who exacerbated the problem? All those questions have the same answer, Trump.

Donald Trump inherited President Barack Obama’s roaring economy and took credit for it. He put that great economy into a shithole and later blamed President Joe Biden. Remember when Obama inherited Bush’s crappy economy and Republicans started to blame him, and then they either shut up as he fixed it or cried that he wasn’t fixing it fast enough. My friend and fellow cartoonist Michael Ramirez labeled it the “slowest recovery ever,” ignoring which party caused the need for a recovery.

That’s what Republicans always do, lie and gaslight.

In 2022 and 2023, during the height of inflation, corporations were boasting about their profits. Sure, they needed to raise prices, like when the nation was running out of eggs and the supply chains were running low, but did corporate America need to raise prices as much as they did? No.

Remember when oil companies volunteered to help American consumers during the economic downturn and cut their profit margins? Me neither. In 2023, the combined profits of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP totalled over $100 billion. Americans didn’t blame the oil companies for increasing gas prices. They blamed Biden.

I’m sure Corporate America saw inflation as an opportunity to gouge this nation and let President Joe Biden take the blame. Republicans blamed Biden even while they’re responsible for most of it.

By the way, do you remember who was president when we couldn’t stock toilet paper? Remember when grocery stores were limiting how much TP you could purchase? How was that not socialism?

Now, part of Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic plan is price control. How will it be implemented? We' don’t really know yet. By the way, it’s not like Donald Trump gives us any details on his policies. Remember when he promised to replace Obamacare with “something better?” Remember when he and Republicans tried to repeal Obamacare without “something better” being found yet? Last week, he said we can keep Obamacare (awww, thank you for being so generous, Tiny) unless we come up with…wait for it…”something better.”

I don’t expect to have full price control on U.S. capitalism, but Kamala Harris is working to help the poor and middle class. She can relate. Donald Trump? He’s working for the rich.

Donald Trump added $17 trillion to our debt by giving himself and other billionaires huge tax cuts. If returned to the White House (sic), he’ll do it again. He’s promising to give himself and all his chums (as Mr. Burns would call them) another tax cut. Hey, reemember when Donald Trump made corporate tax cuts permanent but those for the middle class had an expiration date? Those tax cuts will expire next year and if Harris wins the election, guess who’s going to be blamed for “raising” taxes.

Trump is also promising to raise tariffs on Chinese imports up to 20 percent. This is a tax hike. China does not pay tariffs, American consumers do. Trump will basically add 20 percent to your taxes while giving billionaire assholes tax cuts.

For some reason, voters give Trump the edge over Harris on the economy. That doesn’t make sense since Trump is the first president since Herbert Hoover to leave office with fewer jobs than there were when he came in. The stock market is doing better under Biden than it ever did under Trump. He’s promising to raise prices on Americans. Is Trump too stupid to understand raising tariffs raises prices or does he know exactly what he’s doing and just doesn’t care about the poor and middle class?

When Herbert Hoover ran for reelection, it was in the midst of the Great Depression. His campaign train was pelted with eggs and rotten fruit. Why isn’t the Trump Train being barraged with eggs and rotten fruit? You would think he’d have been pelted with a rotten yam at this point.

This inflation is partly because of Trump. How is Trump going to fix the economy when he wrecked it? This is why fire departments don’t call arsonists to put out house fires.

And why are people voting for trickle-down economics again when it didn’t work under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, or Donald Trump? Is the fifth times the charm?

Critics howl at Harris that price control is socialism and my response to that is, “yeah, so what?”. We already have socialism in this country and most people seem to like it without even knowing it’s there. We will always be a capitalist nation and we should be, but we don’t need runaway capitalism that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.

A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for America while a vote for Donald Trump is just a vote Donald Trump, Scrooge McDuck, the Monopoly Man, and Montgomery Burns. I don’t want to hear Burns say “excellent” on election night.

Drawn in 30 seconds:

Watch me draw with a voiceover.

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