There are lots of reasons to think President-elect Donald Trump’s tax plan, emerging as the centerpiece of his economic agenda (as it becomes clearer he won’t build a wall on the Mexican border), is a bad idea.

For starters, the $6.2 billion proposal gives 47% of its personal-tax cuts to the top 1% of earners, (according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center) while raising taxes on about 9 million working-class folks, mostly single moms. Great for the Hamptons’ housing and art prices, not so good for people who make Chevys in Ohio, or their customers.

Then, there’s the projection that the plan will boost the national debt by $5 trillion in the first 10 years. Not to mention the way President George W. Bush’s tax cuts slashed deficits and staved off 2008’s disaster, making one leery of Republicans bearing fiscal magic.

But the reason that sticks is bad timing. Say what you want about Bush’s tax cut: It stimulated an economy that was losing jobs and heading into recession. That’s the exact opposite of now.

Look at the data. The economy grew 3.2% in the third quarter, with the fourth quarter standing a good chance to deliver nearly the same. There is nearly full employment, led by the 216,000 jobs gained in November reported Wednesday by payroll processor ADP. On Friday, the unemployment rate for November fell to just 4.6%, the lowest level in nine years. Workers’ earnings are up at a 2.5% annual rate.

Little wonder that consumer confidence is at Reagan-era levels, with inflation nearing the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, both good signs for next year.

So why cut taxes now?

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The question means more because it was posed by Dean Maki, chief economist at Point72 Asset Management, a two-time Republican campaign donor whose analysis has been politically inconvenient at times.

Now Maki poses the simple question: Why throw stimulus at a near-full employment economy, especially when structural fiscal challenges have to be addressed during the years when Trump will be our leader? And when inflation and interest rates are already rising?

“All of this [stimulus] makes sense when inflation is unusually low,” he said. “This will become more of an issue down the road.”

A tax cut might have made sense in 2011 or even 2013, when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was hinting to Congress that a little fiscal stimulus might let the Fed raise interest rates above zero. Unemployment was above 8% until September 2012, and the 10%-plus drop in median incomes the recession caused didn’t meaningfully reverse itself until 2015.

Instead, Congress passed the Budget Control Act of 2011, cutting spending and helping tank the S&P 500 stock index for months.

The Bush tax cuts didn’t exactly work as advertised. The economy didn’t add private-sector jobs in either of Bush’s two terms — that’s never happened before. Wages and productivity growth stagnated as the effects of the late-1990s Internet boom wore off, and economic growth never approached 1990s levels.

“We didn’t see the growth we expected. It was pretty anemic and ended in a nice crash,” Tax Policy Center economist Roberton Williams said.

The Trump tax cuts won’t drive growth, but will make deficits surge, the Tax Policy Center says. In exchange for a $5 trillion-plus addition to the national debt by 2025, we’ll get about half a point of extra gross domestic product growth each year (which Wall Street economists say will be offset by Trump’s trade policies).

And immediate expensing of investment will, if the history of the Reagan tax cut repeats itself, drive unsustainable investment in commercial real estate and elsewhere.

Having run off the cliff of the early-’90s commercial-realty bust as if he were Wile E. Coyote, Trump might be expected to know about incentives distorted by tax policy.

Nah.

All this would matter little if Trump were inheriting the economy he thinks he is — but he isn’t.

Pre-election, he said the economy was growing 1% a year and would be in recession soon. The markets and Fed see an economy growing between 2% and 2.5% a year and accelerating slightly. That’s the difference between living in a market-driven world that rewards being clear-eyed about data and being right, and living in a political one that rewards telling people what they want to hear.

In his political world, Trump’s policy will distort incentives and plant the seeds of the next recession, while making long-term fiscal problems much worse. Just like Bush.

It’s enough to make you cling to the one grip on power the election left Democrats, and pray for gridlock, Williams said.

“They don’t have a filibuster-proof Senate,” he said.