Bernie Sanders: Trump’s economy is great for billionaires, not for working families Don't buy the lies. Trump and his billionaires might be doing well. But the economy is not the best it's ever been, at least not for working families.

Bernie Sanders | Opinion contributor

Over and over again, President Donald Trump tells us the U.S. economy is “absolutely booming,” the “strongest we’ve ever had” and “the greatest in the history of America” thanks to his leadership and his leadership alone. Unfortunately, like virtually everything that comes out of his mouth, Trump is not being truthful with the American people.

The good news is that over the last several years, long before Trump became president, the unemployment rate has been steadily going down. Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. unemployment rate went down from 10 percent in October of 2009 to 4.8 percent when he left office. Now, it’s at 4 percent.

This is not just a U.S. phenomenon. As much of the world continues to recover from the great recession of 2008, we’re seeing major economic gains in country after country. The unemployment rate in Germany is down to 3.4 percent and Japan’s unemployment rate is just 2.2 percent. The unemployment rates in Canada and the United Kingdom are the lowest they have been in about 40 years.

The economy isn't as good as it appears

The low unemployment rate is the good news. The bad news is that poverty in our country remains unacceptably high and tens of millions of Americans are struggling to keep their heads above water. Despite Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax giveaway to the wealthy and large corporations, wages for average workers have actually gone down, not up, by five cents an hour since June of last year after adjusting for inflation.

In addition, as the American middle class continues to collapse, the Federal Reserve reported that 40 percent of Americans lack $400 in disposable income to pay for an unexpected expense like a medical emergency or a car repair. The truth is that in America today, 43 percent of households live paycheck to paycheck and can't afford to pay for their housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and their cell phone without going into debt. Further, about half of older Americans have no retirement savings and no idea how they will be able to retire in dignity. In terms of our young people, hundreds of thousands are unable to go to college because of the cost and millions are dealing with oppressive student debt.

As the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all, over 30 million Americans have no health insurance and even more are under-insured. As part of our dysfunctional health care system, one out of five Americans can’t afford the medicine prescribed by their doctors.

Income inequality is rising

While the very rich continue to get much richer, our country has more income and wealth inequality than at any time since the 1920s. In America today, the top 0.1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. The three wealthiest people in this country own more wealth than the bottom half of Americans — 160 million people.

Meanwhile, the median household in America has less wealth than it did 35 years ago after adjusting for inflation, and the average wealth of those in the bottom 40 percent is virtually zero. The wealth gap between white Americans and African-Americans has more than tripled over the past 50 years. Shockingly, the median white family has almost 10 times as much wealth as the median black family today.

All of this may sound like a “booming economy” to Donald Trump, but it sure doesn’t sound like it to me.

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Of course, not everyone is hurting. While American workers have seen their compensation stagnate over the past 40 years, corporate CEOs have seen their incomes go up by as much as 937 percent. Over the first four months of this year, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, saw his wealth go up by $275 million — each and every day. While low-income workers at Walmart are forced to rely on food stamps, Medicaid and public housing to survive, the Walton family is now worth over $175 billion.

While the very rich are getting even richer as half of our people continue to struggle economically, Donald Trump’s policies are moving this country in exactly the wrong direction. There is no moral justification for Trump to be supporting massive tax breaks for billionaires, and then present a budget which would force enormous cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security Disability Insurance, education and nutrition. We can and we must do better.

Bernie Sanders is an independent senator from Vermont. Follow him on Twitter: @SenSanders