phillyfan26
Blue Crack Supplier
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Is there anyone out there wondering about the potential Bradley Effect in this election?
Is there anyone out there wondering about the potential Bradley Effect in this election?
^ I think you just deflated all of STING's GWBush GDP posts.
Those post were simply economic facts from the years they were in office. You can argue all you want about what produced a certain unemployment level, or poverty level during a given administration or a given year, but thats what the average American was dealing with in that year or administration regardless if you think the current President was responsible for that, or some President from decades earlier.
More importantly, numbers on unemployment, GDP growth, Debt as a percentage of GDP, inflation rate, and the poverty rate are the statistics that are usually used determine how well the economy is doing or if the economy is in a recession or a depression. The Stockmarket can impact these statistics, but is not generally used to determine the true economic performance of the country.
Here are the Bush years VS. The Clinton years on the important economic statistics of average annual GDP growth per year, debt as a percentage of GDP per year, inflation rate per year, poverty rate per year, and the unemployment rate per year:
The Average National Federal Debt as a percentage of GDP:
Clinton Years 64.5%
Bush Years 61.9%
Average GDP growth rate:
Clinton Years 5.4%
Bush Years 4.8%
Average Annual Poverty Rate:
Clinton Years 13.3%
Bush Years 12.3%
Average Annual Inflation Rate:
Clinton Years 2.60%
Bush Years 2.69%
Average Annual Unemployment Rate:
Clinton Years 5.21%
Bush Years 5.20%
The average annual poverty rate under W. is the 3rd lowest of any Presidential administration in US history!
Rather than averages which can be terribly misleading, I'd like to see the numbers shown:
What Clinton inherited
What Clinton left/Bush inherited
Where are we now
May be more meaningful
Is there anyone out there wondering about the potential Bradley Effect in this election?
Thats just two points in time 8 years apart. It tells you next to nothing about what on average it was like to live in the United States during those 8 years. The numbers can go up and down do to various crises's and economic booms in just one year.
If your going to accurately look at the economic performance of any President or the condition of the economy while they were President, you have to look at the ENTIRE time they were in office, not just the month they came in and the month they left.
An average doesn't tell me squat, for example if Bush inerited say a 30% debt to GDP ratio and it's in the 90's when he leaves, that could be an average of 60-ish making it seem similar to what Clinton had, but the reality would be that he let it go to hell in a handbasket.
As you correctly point out, there are "other factors" at play in all of this, which kinda makes the task of showing performance just based on these metrics almost impossible, whether using averages or the way I mentioned.
Maybe show a graph of the trend on a monthly basis with extenuating factors/majorly stupid decisions highlighted (9/11, invasion of Iraq, Asian Currency crisis of the mid-90's, etc) in the timeline.
5. National Debt as a Percentage of GDP - While its true that because debt can build up over time, this can be one area where it might make sense to compare the starting point with the end point, but again, the starting point and end points could be influenced by dramatic events at that particular time. To get a real feel for this area's impact on the country and the administrations performance in this area, you need to look at all the years and take the average.
But since you asked for the individual years for the national debt as a percentage of GDP, here they are:
National Federal Debt as a percentage of GDP:
Clinton Years:
1993 66.2%
1994 66.7%
1995 67.2%
1996 67.3%
1997 65.6%
1998 63.5%
1999 61.4%
2000 57.8%
Bush Years:
2001 57.4%
2002 59.7%
2003 62.4%
2004 63.7%
2005 63.8%
2006 64.5%
2007 65.2%
The Average National Federal Debt as a percentage of GDP:
Clinton Years 64.5%
Bush Years 62.4%
The 2008 figures are not in yet. Even when we go into the individual years, we discover that Bush's highest year so far in 2007 of 65.2% is still lower than Clintons first 5 years in office. National Debt as a percentage of GDP went up every year of Clintons first term despite the fact that the country was at peace, there were major cuts in defense spending, and gas prices were relatively low compared to where they are today. Gas prices dropped to their lowest level in history in 1999 in the 2nd to the last year of the Clinton administration helping to fuel the economic boom in the United States which in turn helped to reduce debt as a percentage of GDP.
By contrast, Bush experienced a recession and 9/11 in his first year in office. The country has then been engaged in two of the longest wars in its history, plus having to deal with rising global oil prices, some of the highest in history. Despite all that on Bush's plate, most of his years in office have involved a national debt as a percentage of GDP that was lower than the Clinton years.
Nearly all extended wars in the USA's history have led to an increase of national debt as a percentage of GDP. In 1940, national debt as a percentage of GDP was just 42.4%. By 1946, it was 122% of GDP.
These figures are more interesting. But rather than saying that the average is so important, I place more value on the trend of the debt curve. Yes, Clinton had a higher average debt of GDP %, but he started with a higher debt than Bush ever had and he managed to bring it down. In fact, he managed to bring it down with 8.4 %points during his presidency (comparing the beginning to the end).
Under the Bush presidency, however, the trend of the curve reversed, going up. In fact, the debt went up every year. In those 8 years, Bush managed to undo all the debt reduction that Clinton had achieved. So Bush might have a lower average, but the curve is now going in the opposite direction.
These figures are more interesting. But rather than saying that the average is so important, I place more value on the trend of the debt curve. Yes, Clinton had a higher average debt of GDP %, but he started with a higher debt than Bush ever had and he managed to bring it down. In fact, he managed to bring it down with 8.4 %points during his presidency (comparing the beginning to the end).
Under the Bush presidency, however, the trend of the curve reversed, going up. In fact, the debt went up every year. In those 8 years, Bush managed to undo all the debt reduction that Clinton had achieved. So Bush might have a lower average, but the curve is now going in the opposite direction.
Again, look at the "era's" in question, the Clinton years were generally better than the Bush years were they not???
I think the fact is that the Clinton years improved from start to finish. Would the graph look the same under Bush, or would be on the down slope of the bell curve?
I can hear an irritated counterthrust already. The president has not driven the United States into a recession during his almost seven years in office. Unemployment stands at a respectable 4.6 percent. Well, fine. But the other side of the ledger groans with distress: a tax code that has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; a national debt that will probably have grown 70 percent by the time this president leaves Washington; a swelling cascade of mortgage defaults; a record near-$850 billion trade deficit; oil prices that are higher than they have ever been; and a dollar so weak that for an American to buy a cup of coffee in London or Paris—or even the Yukon—becomes a venture in high finance.
And it gets worse. After almost seven years of this president, the United States is less prepared than ever to face the future. We have not been educating enough engineers and scientists, people with the skills we will need to compete with China and India. We have not been investing in the kinds of basic research that made us the technological powerhouse of the late 20th century. And although the president now understands—or so he says—that we must begin to wean ourselves from oil and coal, we have on his watch become more deeply dependent on both.
Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on claimant for the mantle “worst president” when it comes to stewardship of the American economy. Once Franklin Roosevelt assumed office and reversed Hoover’s policies, the country began to recover. The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.
Remember the Surplus?
The world was a very different place, economically speaking, when George W. Bush took office, in January 2001. During the Roaring 90s, many had believed that the Internet would transform everything. Productivity gains, which had averaged about 1.5 percent a year from the early 1970s through the early 90s, now approached 3 percent. During Bill Clinton’s second term, gains in manufacturing productivity sometimes even surpassed 6 percent. The Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, spoke of a New Economy marked by continued productivity gains as the Internet buried the old ways of doing business. Others went so far as to predict an end to the business cycle. Greenspan worried aloud about how he’d ever be able to manage monetary policy once the nation’s debt was fully paid off.
This tremendous confidence took the Dow Jones index higher and higher. The rich did well, but so did the not-so-rich and even the downright poor. The Clinton years were not an economic Nirvana; as chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers during part of this time, I’m all too aware of mistakes and lost opportunities. The global-trade agreements we pushed through were often unfair to developing countries. We should have invested more in infrastructure, tightened regulation of the securities markets, and taken additional steps to promote energy conservation. We fell short because of politics and lack of money—and also, frankly, because special interests sometimes shaped the agenda more than they should have. But these boom years were the first time since Jimmy Carter that the deficit was under control. And they were the first time since the 1970s that incomes at the bottom grew faster than those at the top—a benchmark worth celebrating.
By the time George W. Bush was sworn in, parts of this bright picture had begun to dim. The tech boom was over. The nasdaq fell 15 percent in the single month of April 2000, and no one knew for sure what effect the collapse of the Internet bubble would have on the real economy. It was a moment ripe for Keynesian economics, a time to prime the pump by spending more money on education, technology, and infrastructure—all of which America desperately needed, and still does, but which the Clinton administration had postponed in its relentless drive to eliminate the deficit. Bill Clinton had left President Bush in an ideal position to pursue such policies. Remember the presidential debates in 2000 between Al Gore and George Bush, and how the two men argued over how to spend America’s anticipated $2.2 trillion budget surplus? The country could well have afforded to ramp up domestic investment in key areas. In fact, doing so would have staved off recession in the short run while spurring growth in the long run.
But the Bush administration had its own ideas. The first major economic initiative pursued by the president was a massive tax cut for the rich, enacted in June of 2001. Those with incomes over a million got a tax cut of $18,000—more than 30 times larger than the cut received by the average American. The inequities were compounded by a second tax cut, in 2003, this one skewed even more heavily toward the rich. Together these tax cuts, when fully implemented and if made permanent, mean that in 2012 the average reduction for an American in the bottom 20 percent will be a scant $45, while those with incomes of more than $1 million will see their tax bills reduced by an average of $162,000.
The administration crows that the economy grew—by some 16 percent—during its first six years, but the growth helped mainly people who had no need of any help, and failed to help those who need plenty. A rising tide lifted all yachts. Inequality is now widening in America, and at a rate not seen in three-quarters of a century. A young male in his 30s today has an income, adjusted for inflation, that is 12 percent less than what his father was making 30 years ago. Some 5.3 million more Americans are living in poverty now than were living in poverty when Bush became president. America’s class structure may not have arrived there yet, but it’s heading in the direction of Brazil’s and Mexico’s.
The Bankruptcy Boom
In breathtaking disregard for the most basic rules of fiscal propriety, the administration continued to cut taxes even as it undertook expensive new spending programs and embarked on a financially ruinous “war of choice” in Iraq. A budget surplus of 2.4 percent of gross domestic product (G.D.P.), which greeted Bush as he took office, turned into a deficit of 3.6 percent in the space of four years. The United States had not experienced a turnaround of this magnitude since the global crisis of World War II.
Agricultural subsidies were doubled between 2002 and 2005. Tax expenditures—the vast system of subsidies and preferences hidden in the tax code—increased more than a quarter. Tax breaks for the president’s friends in the oil-and-gas industry increased by billions and billions of dollars. Yes, in the five years after 9/11, defense expenditures did increase (by some 70 percent), though much of the growth wasn’t helping to fight the War on Terror at all, but was being lost or outsourced in failed missions in Iraq. Meanwhile, other funds continued to be spent on the usual high-tech gimcrackery—weapons that don’t work, for enemies we don’t have. In a nutshell, money was being spent everyplace except where it was needed. During these past seven years the percentage of G.D.P. spent on research and development outside defense and health has fallen. Little has been done about our decaying infrastructure—be it levees in New Orleans or bridges in Minneapolis. Coping with most of the damage will fall to the next occupant of the White House.
Although it railed against entitlement programs for the needy, the administration enacted the largest increase in entitlements in four decades—the poorly designed Medicare prescription-drug benefit, intended as both an election-season bribe and a sop to the pharmaceutical industry. As internal documents later revealed, the true cost of the measure was hidden from Congress. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical companies received special favors. To access the new benefits, elderly patients couldn’t opt to buy cheaper medications from Canada or other countries. The law also prohibited the U.S. government, the largest single buyer of prescription drugs, from negotiating with drug manufacturers to keep costs down. As a result, American consumers pay far more for medications than people elsewhere in the developed world.
You’ll still hear some—and, loudly, the president himself—argue that the administration’s tax cuts were meant to stimulate the economy, but this was never true. The bang for the buck—the amount of stimulus per dollar of deficit—was astonishingly low. Therefore, the job of economic stimulation fell to the Federal Reserve Board, which stepped on the accelerator in a historically unprecedented way, driving interest rates down to 1 percent. In real terms, taking inflation into account, interest rates actually dropped to negative 2 percent. The predictable result was a consumer spending spree. Looked at another way, Bush’s own fiscal irresponsibility fostered irresponsibility in everyone else. Credit was shoveled out the door, and subprime mortgages were made available to anyone this side of life support. Credit-card debt mounted to a whopping $900 billion by the summer of 2007. “Qualified at birth” became the drunken slogan of the Bush era. American households took advantage of the low interest rates, signed up for new mortgages with “teaser” initial rates, and went to town on the proceeds.
All of this spending made the economy look better for a while; the president could (and did) boast about the economic statistics. But the consequences for many families would become apparent within a few years, when interest rates rose and mortgages proved impossible to repay. The president undoubtedly hoped the reckoning would come sometime after 2008. It arrived 18 months early. As many as 1.7 million Americans are expected to lose their homes in the months ahead. For many, this will mean the beginning of a downward spiral into poverty.
Between March 2006 and March 2007 personal-bankruptcy rates soared more than 60 percent. As families went into bankruptcy, more and more of them came to understand who had won and who had lost as a result of the president’s 2005 bankruptcy bill, which made it harder for individuals to discharge their debts in a reasonable way. The lenders that had pressed for “reform” had been the clear winners, gaining added leverage and protections for themselves; people facing financial distress got the shaft.
from December of last year:
Breaking News!!!
The Supreme Court Just smacked down the Ohio lower court's ruling in favor of the Republicans to throw out those 20,000 or was it 200,00O Newly Registered voters!
The Supreme Court is allowing the greatest voter fraud in American history and is unraveling the very threads of democracy!!1!