But what if Trump is actually heating up our economy by burning all the furniture in the house? It's going to be nice and toasty for us - at least for a while - but where will our kids sleep? What if Trump's tax cuts, deregulation, scrapping of Obamacare without any alternative and military spending surge were actually ill-thought-through, short-term-focused initiatives that all ignored expert opinion - because they mostly emerged from off-the-cuff remarks at Trump pep rallies - and collectively amount to a sugar high that not only will be unsustainable but will leave our economy far more vulnerable in the long term? Loading Let's take that view for a spin: I favour corporate tax cuts - big ones. But I would have offset them with a carbon tax, a tax on sugar and a small financial transaction tax. That way, we'd unleash the energy of our corporations while mitigating climate change, spurring the next great global industry - clean power - curbing childhood asthma and diabetes and not adding to our national debt, thereby making ourselves more resilient as a country. When Trump simultaneously cuts corporate taxes and withdraws America from the Paris climate accord, tries to revive the coal industry by lowering pollution standards and weakens fuel economy standards for US-made cars and trucks, he is vastly adding to the financial debts and carbon debts that will burden our children.

And he is doing this despite many economists warning that increasing the deficit when your economy is already growing nicely is really, really reckless - because you may need that money to stimulate your way out of the next recession. Loading And he is doing this at a time when virtually every climate scientist has warned that global-warming-driven extreme weather events - droughts, floods and wildfires - are sharply on the rise and we are staring through the last window of time to mitigate climate change so that we can manage the impacts that are already unavoidable and avoid the impacts that will be terrifyingly unmanageable. In June, the Associated Press reported on the latest International Monetary Fund survey of the US economy, which concluded that as a result of Trump's "tax cuts and expected increases in defence and domestic programs, the federal budget deficit as a percentage of the total economy will exceed 4.5 per cent of GDP by next year - nearly double what it was just three years ago". Such a "big boost... has not been seen in the United States since President Lyndon Johnson in the late 1960s boosted spending on the Vietnam War at the same time it was adopting Johnson's Great Society programs". Faced with so much debt, which the country will not be able to grow out of, the AP story continued, paraphrasing the IMF report, the US "may need to take politically painful steps", such as cutting Social Security benefits and imposing higher taxes on consumers. (We'll probably also have to limit spending on new roads, bridges and research.)

You might want to let your kids know that. Is President Donald Trump actually heating up the economy by burning all the furniture in the house? Credit:AP There were responsible ways to cut taxes on things we want more of - like corporate investment - while boosting them on things we want less of - like carbon, reckless financial speculation and diabetes - that could have stimulated jobs and growth but also left us more financially and environmentally resilient. But both Trump and the anonymous-Republican crowd rejected them, just as they rejected smart improvements to Obamacare, preferring a total scrapping. Loading So when Republicans say they're disgusted by Trump's ignorance and indecency but love his "deregulations" and "tax reforms" - those very sanitised words - this is what they love: taking huge fiscal and environmental risks - effectively throwing away our bumpers and spare tires that we may soon need to drive through the next financial or climate storm - for a short-term economic and political high.

How different is that from Trump's indecency? Let's be clear, Trump cheated on his wife, but his party's now cheating on their kids. You tell me who's worse. New York Times