Re: OT - The Incredible Shrinking Obama



Hachiroku ハチロク wrote:

On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 07:00:54 -0400, dr_jeff wrote:

On 4/16/11 11:22 PM, Conscience wrote:

"...if Barack Obama had matched Ronald Reagan’s post-recession
recovery rate, 15.7 million more Americans would have jobs."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/incredible-shrinking-obama_557490.html

Unfortunately, Obama also has a deficit left over from Bush to deal with
as well as a mortgage crisis (if you haven't noticed, there are millions
of mortgages in danger of default, in default or on other foreclosed or on
the way to foreclosure). So the housing industry is down. Neither of these
are Obama's fault.

Guess you don't remember 1979, when there was pretty high unemployment,
interest rates were ~15% for a mortgage and up to 25% for car and personal
loans, we had what at the time was a large deficit and things were
generally lousy.

Regan came in and spent money, but instead of giveaway programs he bought
stuff. The puts people to WORK, and not make them dependent on the
government.

But, we were actually making a lot of our own stuff then.

The recession of 1981-82 wasn't Reagan's fault but the fault of of
OPEC and previous US presidents, especially Nixon, who implemented
wage-price controls to combat roaring 4.2% inflation and thereby hurt
the economy for a decade. But that recession was intentional and was
meant to wring out inflation, unlike the Great Recession caused by GW
Bush's reckless disregard of fiscal responsibility. Once Fed
chairman Paul Volcker (appointed by Carter, reappointed by Reagan)
solved the inflation problem, the economy was able to resume its
normal growth, but it grew no better than when Jimmy Carter was
President, and job creation per year was more anemic, 2.0M per year,
compared to 2.6M per year with Carter. You can verify the numbers
yourself from this Wall Street Journal blog:

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/

How much do you think Reagan's 11 tax increases affected the economy
during his presidency? Reagan raised taxes during 6 of his 8 years in
the White House, and his administration invented the euphemism
"revenue enhancement" to refer to tax increases. Do you remember that,
or did you conveniently forget it? BTW the net Reagan tax cut ended
up being the same size as the one Carter proposed in 1980.

.

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