Robust economy – except for this debt thing

YOU’VE heard a lot of applauding about the US economy. Some muted cheering has even come from this column.

Now I’d like to present the other side of the economy. And this is even more important for America’s future than the fact the economy may be growing right now at a rate of 4 percent a year.

This other side of this story is called the US debt level.

The final day of business for Washington’s 2018 fiscal year was last Friday.

The Treasury Department hasn’t put the official numbers out yet. And I had no success in getting someone there to comment on how much more money the US spent in 2018 than it took in.

But all you have to do is a little arithmetic to figure it out. On Sept. 30, 2017 — the end of the previous fiscal year — the US had $20.244 trillion in debt. On Wednesday, the figure was $21.456 trillion.

That’s an increase of $1.21 trillion, which is an enormous, frightening and unsustainable amount of debt. And when interest rates go up, Washington’s borrowing will become even more expensive and the debt numbers will be mind-boggling.

In contrast, the US budget deficit was “only” $666 billion in fiscal 2017. So, this year’s deficit is almost twice as large as 2017’s.

Why the big jump? The easy answer is that the US spends too much and takes in too little in taxes — if you can believe that. But the big thing that changed in 2018 was the tax cut put through by the Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration.

I thought — and still think — there are better ways to stimulate the economy than cutting people’s taxes and telling them to go out and spend.

As I’ve said before, you might as well apologize to your kids and grandkids now. This burden will be on their backs forever.

There are only two more employment reports before the congressional elections. One of them is coming Friday.

Wall Street is guessing that 180,000 new jobs were created in September, although that number might go up because of a private report that came out Wednesday.

The financial community also thinks the unemployment rate will decline to 3.8 percent from the 3.9 percent recorded in August.

At 180,000, the level of job growth predicted for September would be acceptable but nothing that will send people cheering in the streets.

In August, the Labor Department announced that 201,000 jobs had been created, so the “experts” are predicting a slight pullback in September.

Optimists were given some hope this week when ADP and Moody’s Analytics announced that private companies added 230,000 jobs to their payrolls in September.

If you’ve ever had a baby, there is a good chance you know about onesies, those one-piece outfits that you slip your kid into and out of after he’s thrown up all over the front. Great concept! What you probably didn’t know is that onesies are the source of an ongoing controversy. Why? Because Gerber, the company that also makes the food that your infant spits up, has a trademark on the name “Onesies.”

Some of you are saying, “Who knew?” (Others, I suspect, are saying, “Who cares?” Well, I do!)

I found this out from a reader who runs a company that used the phrase onesies on products and got smacked down by Gerber Childrenswear, a subsidiary of Gerber which, in turn, is owned by Nestle, the chocolate company. (Don’t get me started on kids and candy bars.)

I contacted Gerber for more information and I’m waiting to hear back. But on the internet, there are plenty of references to how the company aggressively protects this trademark.

Here’s how Fred d Lavner, who is the corporate counsel of Novelco LLC when he’s not reading my column, explains his run-in with Gerber.

“We’ve been producing onesies for over 20 years. We buy onesies from dozens of apparel manufacturers,” Lavner wrote to me. “A onesie is a generic article of clothing. How they [Gerber] were able to slip this through the US Trademark & Patent Office in 2014 without objection is a mystery.”

But, apparently, Gerber does have the right, even though “A Brief History of the Onesie” that I found on the internet says this product, in the form of an adult jumpsuit, was first worn in Britain in the 17th century.

Don’t worry, I’m going to get to the bottom of this. I don’t know whether Donald Trump was screwing around on his income taxes like The New York Times alleges or not. But a very good source tells me that Trump’s purchases at places like Tiffany, Van Cleef & Arpels and Bulgari were scrutinized as part of a widespread New York state sales tax investigation in the 1980s. And the investigators found that Trump did nothing wrong. It seems that a lot of rich folks then were having their purchases shipped to states with lower sales taxes. And a number of them ended up having to pay the tax and a penalty to make New York happy. (I’d like to give you names, but a confidentiality agreement was part of the deal.) My source, who was part of the investigation, says that Trump actually paid all the sales tax he owed.