I don't think anyone would say that the Obama economy is perfect, but 73 months of unprecedented...

[MisterBeale]

The whole thread seems a waste of time.


The FED and congress have more to do with job growth than administrations do. . . .

congress ??those do nothing republican pos sitting on their hands for 8 years?? Yes the fed played a large role

So tell me, how does the admin. get any credit for job growth with out any new programs, laws, or budgeting items passed?

By waving a magic fucking wand?

By hiring caterers at State dinners?


If they hadn't passed anything, Obama can't sign anything. He only enforces what has been passed. He doesn't create shit.



No president gets any credit for doing anything. They do nothing at all without congress.

Don't be obtuse.



I swear, it's like no one on this board has had an elementary government class.

 

[MisterBeale]

The whole fucking system is rigged. Jesus.

Debating about what puppet is better.


What a damned senseless waste of time.

 

[DavidCayJohnston]

The U.S. economy has recovered the 8.7 million jobs lost during the Great Recession and its unemployment rate is now the lowest it's been in almost six years. But David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, author and visiting lecturer at Syracuse University's law school and business school, says the economy would be a lot stronger if not for the Bush tax cuts.

Americans have lost $6.6 trillion from 2001, when the tax cuts first took effect, through 2012, according to Johnston. That's more than one-third of the country's annual GDP.

The tax cuts did not necessitate the 3 trillion in borrowing because the tax cuts did not result in 3 trillion less in revenue not even close

Hey look at this. You are correct for once.
Tax cuts under bush and carrying on under obama didn't cost three trillion. It was over six trillion.

 

[DavidCayJohnston]

This thread does off on tangents because the original poster did not make clear just what I wrote and whose accuracy no one has shown is wrong.

Let me explain the background and the math and then maybe instead of people writing foul comments this thread will turn into a debate about facts and their significance.

Americans -- NOT the government, but the incomes of people -- fell during the 12 years that the Bush tax cuts were in effect. The total income not realized was $6.6 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars. I'll explain the official data source I used and the methodology below. But first how this began...

The Bush campaign in 2000 promised that if elected his tax cuts would make the economy prosper. The promise was not just that you would pay less income tax, but there would be more jobs and rising incomes because of tax cuts. The campaign chose 2000 as its base year -- not me, they chose that year and said they would make us better off than we were in 2000.

In October 2000, when I was at The New York Times, I called the Bush campaign to ask about the candidate and surrogates saying we were in a recession, which they identified using Gore's name.

Did the campaign want to hedge its bets? I asked, noting that because of the Clinton-Gore recession (which had in fact begun) it might take awhile for the tax cuts to take hold, perhaps even a few years. Absolutely not, I was told and after carefully going over the nuances and the fact that events not under the control of any president might make us worse off the net answers was no ifs, ands or buts, elect George W. Bush, enact his tax cut plans and Americans will prosper through lower taxes and a robust economy with more jobs and rising incomes.

I then patiently waited until the data started to become available and tracked it year by year.

After I retired from The NYT in 2008 and began writing a column for the nonprofit, non-advertising magazine Tax Notes I looked back at the eight years of the Bush presidency. Incomes were down -- and by a lot.

The data are from the annual IRS Table 1.4 -- widely used by economists -- and adjusted for inflation and changes in the number of taxpayers. I created a year-by-year chart. This was updated when I moved on to be a columnist for the financial news service Reuters and when I moved to on to Al Jazeera America. I now write opinion columns that break news for The Daily Beast, Investopedia, USAToday and Tax Notes, among others.

The Bush tax cuts lasted 12 years. Over those 12 years Americans reported $6.6 trillion less income than if we had stayed at the level of 2000 -- the year which candidate Bush chose as his base for comparison. The fact is that we were not better off, but unlike those who argue about this or that I patiently waited for the data and then reported what it shows.


That's $48,000 per taxpayer if you average. It is enough money to have paid all the income, Social Security and Medicare taxes and with the after-tax residue to pay off every car loan, every credit card debt and every student loan in America. And after that each taxpayer would still have $17,800 left in cash.

Now to be clear those are statistical averages done to give people a sense of scale since trillions are meaningless. But no matter how you slice it incomes were down for 10 of the 12 years -- and up only a smidgen in the other two years.

You can see the final year-by-year chart and the full story from my last report on this here:

OPINION: Americans have lost out on $6.6 trillion

I also write annual detailed analysis of wages, work that no one else does.

The median wage has been stuck, after adjusting for inflation at about $28,000 or $550 a week since 1998. The median means half earned more, half less. The average wage has grown, but 77% of the wage growth from 2000 to 2012 went to the 7% of workers making $100,000 to $400,000 in 2012 dollars. Jobs above that fell in number and average pay, jobs below were basically stagnant.

Two of my reports on wages are here:
OPINION: Amid job stagnation, a prosperous class grows

OPINION: Compensation shrinks for all income groups – except the very highest

My reporting is closely read -- and critiqued -- by many of America's most informed authorities on tax policy, economics and in corporate offices. (My 1996 exposes on hidden aspects of executive pay changed the way journalists report executive compensation.)

No one -- not one person -- has shown any error in my computations. If they had I would have corrected promptly and forthrightly, as I always do.

Since I wrote my first investigative story at age 18, almost 50 years ago, my articles have saved taxpayers tons of money and prompted officials to block tax deals that Congress officially valued at more than $250 billion (note that B).

For that work I have won not just the Pulitzer and many other journalism prizes, but honors from accounting and business schools. Both Presidents Clinton and Bush made significant changes in regard to tax because of my work. Congress, and the Oregon legislature, passed laws based on my work and the California Public Utilities Commission stopped a plan to force residents to pay a tax that does not exist in law, money that would have been a stealth subsidy to one of the biggest companies in America. And despite not being a lawyer I am brought inn to lecture at accounting, business and law schools across the country and have taught tax, property and regulators law for eight years at a Syracuse University College of Law and Whitman School of Management.

I cite these facts not to boast but so that people not familiar with my work have some sense of the regard in which it is held by those deeply knowledgeable about economics, tax policy and accounting.

I am sure it is jarring for some Americans to be told that total incomes fell in 2000-2012, but that is what the official data show. And whether measured using W-2 reports on wages, IRS statistics, Census estimates or indirect measures like bank deposits and cash flows, the data are consistent in showing that Americans were worse off in 10 of the 12 years the Bush tax cuts were fully in effect with the worst results during the first Obama administration.

Our tax system does not operate the way politicians and newscasters talk about it. Had I not started an intense study of how the system actually operates more than 21 years ago I would have continued to believe what I have shown is official nonsense.

You can read how our tax system actually works in my critically acclaimed bestseller PERFECTY LEGAL, winner of the 2004 investigative book of the year award. More is in FREE LUNCH, which in 2007 revealed massive hidden subsidies to big corporations and rich individuals like Warren Buffett, and THE FINE PRINT, which is about declining competition in the market and the rise of monopolies and oligopolies.

My next book will a complete rewrite of the federal tax code tentatively titled THE PROSPERITY TAX: A New Federal Tax Code for the 21st Century Economy.

So please, how about debating the $6.6 trillion of income that people lost -- $48,000 per taxpayer -- in the years that the bush tax cuts were in full effect.

[email protected]

 

[TooTall]

...job growth is anything but a "bad economy ".

I mean okay, the labor participation rate is pretty low and that does matter, but for republicans to pretend that means the economy is shit is just disingenuous bullshit. I mean, Christ the Great Recession began under Bush and ended 6 months into Obama's presidency. Most of that can be directly attributed to Obama's stimulus package. According to the CBO, the stimulus created 3 million private jobs. Since then, we have had NON STOP Jon growth. That is unheard of.

And sure, wages are low under Obama. However, like the labor participation rate, they began to decline BEFORE obama's presidency. Obama tried to fix this by raising the minimum wage to a very reasonable 10.10 per hour.

Face it repubs. Your party is a joke.

According to the CBO, we should have had 24 million more people on ObamaCare than we do now.

Regarding Job Creation, or more accurately THE LACK THEREOF: The population of the United States has increased at a faster rate than the economy has created job in the Age of Obama. In other words, we're sinking under the weight of Obamanomics. If we had just maintained the Labor Force Participate Rate that was in effect at the end of Bush's 2nd term (and in the depths of the Recession), Millions and Millions more people would be gainfully employed instead of consigned to the Despairing Ranks of Obama Admin Dependents.

Lol since when has any job growth streak kept up with population growth? It sure has hell didn't under Bush.

*Sigh* ^^^ The heartbreak of historic and economic illiteracy on Parade ^^^

Reagan and Obama both "inherited recessions". I put together the following table based on BLS.gov data. The Civilian Population grew 10% during Reagan's two terms; Employment grew 17%. 17% growth is fast than 10% growth. The Labor Force Participation Rate during this time increased by 2.6 points.

Contrast that with Obamanomics: The Civilian Population has grown 8% through March 2016. Employment has grown 6%. 6% is smaller than 8%. The Labor Force Participation Rate dropped by 2.7 points. This is after years of binge spending, excessive debt, tax increases, ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank and ZIRP. The Keynesian Wet Dream soaked the mattress through to the bed springs.

Two Severe Recessions. Two Very Different Outcomes.

IOW, if Obama had achieved Reagan's ending Labor Force Participation Rate or at least maintained Bush's, at least 15 MILLION MORE workers would be gainfully employed. Just leaving the economy to work via market forces would have achieved 5 times the job creation of the pathetic stimulus' 3 million jobs (a highly dubious amount at that) that you are crowing about.

If you Progs had any synapses to fire between your few and far between active brain cells and a shred of intellectual honesty, you'd admit that Progressive Policies crush the economy.

View attachment 70592

Lol good ole St. Reagan comes to save the day again! Don't you think it's kind of pathetic that this is the only president you people can turn to as justification to vote republican? I mean think of the job growth under Clinfon and Obama. The private jobs created under Obama was more than the jobs created under both Bushs COMBINED. That's pretty sad. If you want to talk history, you should be able to see that job growth under democrat presidents on average exceeds that of republicans.

When the unemployment rate was a little over 5%, as it was with Bush, there is very little need to 'create' jobs.

 

[Campbell]

The economy was better the day Bush left office than at any time in Obama's first term.

LMAO. Sure he did. At least in your pea brain Bush left a great economy.

Another idiot who can't read a graph

It's nice to see some "true confessions" for a change!

 

[Contumacious]

...job growth is anything but a "bad economy ".

I mean okay, the labor participation rate is pretty low and that does matter, but for republicans to pretend that means the economy is shit is just disingenuous bullshit. I mean, Christ the Great Recession began under Bush and ended 6 months into Obama's presidency. Most of that can be directly attributed to Obama's stimulus package. According to the CBO, the stimulus created 3 million private jobs. Since then, we have had NON STOP Jon growth. That is unheard of.

And sure, wages are low under Obama. However, like the labor participation rate, they began to decline BEFORE obama's presidency. Obama tried to fix this by raising the minimum wage to a very reasonable 10.10 per hour.

Face it repubs. Your party is a joke.

Bush II drove the economy into the ground - from there . there is only ONE place to go.....up. It would have been better and faster if he had use FREE MARKET POLICIES.

Yeah, Democrats in control of the legislative branch had nothing to do with it.

Fact remains, Dems in control of Congress economy goes down, Reps in control of Congress economy goes up.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2008/09/lew-rockwell/bush-the-socialist-and-destroyer/
Bush the Socialist and Destroyer



Anyone who has read a good economics book would be quickly reduced to laughter and tears by George Bush’s ridiculous economic address to the nation. He put on his 9-11 suit and tried to warn Americans about the impending disaster: that their access to an infinite stream of paper money might be imperiled if they don’t cough up hundreds of billions immediately. It is very tempting to go line by line and shout back.

“I’m a strong believer in free enterprise, so my natural instinct is to oppose government intervention. I believe companies that make bad decisions should be allowed to go out of business.”

And this is why he nationalized airport security, created huge new bureaucracies, spent more than any president in American history, centralized control of education, put up more protectionist barriers than Clinton and his father combined, bailed out airlines, presided over the Sarbanes-Oxley reign of terror, unleashed anti-trust regulators, intensified health-care controls, and pretty much used every headline as an excuse to demand more money and power?

 

[TooTall]

...job growth is anything but a "bad economy ".

I mean okay, the labor participation rate is pretty low and that does matter, but for republicans to pretend that means the economy is shit is just disingenuous bullshit. I mean, Christ the Great Recession began under Bush and ended 6 months into Obama's presidency. Most of that can be directly attributed to Obama's stimulus package. According to the CBO, the stimulus created 3 million private jobs. Since then, we have had NON STOP Jon growth. That is unheard of.

And sure, wages are low under Obama. However, like the labor participation rate, they began to decline BEFORE obama's presidency. Obama tried to fix this by raising the minimum wage to a very reasonable 10.10 per hour.

Face it repubs. Your party is a joke.

Bush II drove the economy into the ground - from there . there is only ONE place to go.....up. It would have been better and faster if he had use FREE MARKET POLICIES.

Yeah, Democrats in control of the legislative branch had nothing to do with it.

Fact remains, Dems in control of Congress economy goes down, Reps in control of Congress economy goes up.

Bush the Socialist and Destroyer



Anyone who has read a good economics book would be quickly reduced to laughter and tears by George Bush’s ridiculous economic address to the nation. He put on his 9-11 suit and tried to warn Americans about the impending disaster: that their access to an infinite stream of paper money might be imperiled if they don’t cough up hundreds of billions immediately. It is very tempting to go line by line and shout back.

“I’m a strong believer in free enterprise, so my natural instinct is to oppose government intervention. I believe companies that make bad decisions should be allowed to go out of business.”

And this is why he nationalized airport security, created huge new bureaucracies, spent more than any president in American history, centralized control of education, put up more protectionist barriers than Clinton and his father combined, bailed out airlines, presided over the Sarbanes-Oxley reign of terror, unleashed anti-trust regulators, intensified health-care controls, and pretty much used every headline as an excuse to demand more money and power?

...job growth is anything but a "bad economy ".

I mean okay, the labor participation rate is pretty low and that does matter, but for republicans to pretend that means the economy is shit is just disingenuous bullshit. I mean, Christ the Great Recession began under Bush and ended 6 months into Obama's presidency. Most of that can be directly attributed to Obama's stimulus package. According to the CBO, the stimulus created 3 million private jobs. Since then, we have had NON STOP Jon growth. That is unheard of.

And sure, wages are low under Obama. However, like the labor participation rate, they began to decline BEFORE obama's presidency. Obama tried to fix this by raising the minimum wage to a very reasonable 10.10 per hour.

Face it repubs. Your party is a joke.

Bush II drove the economy into the ground - from there . there is only ONE place to go.....up. It would have been better and faster if he had use FREE MARKET POLICIES.

Yeah, Democrats in control of the legislative branch had nothing to do with it.

Fact remains, Dems in control of Congress economy goes down, Reps in control of Congress economy goes up.

Bush the Socialist and Destroyer



Anyone who has read a good economics book would be quickly reduced to laughter and tears by George Bush’s ridiculous economic address to the nation. He put on his 9-11 suit and tried to warn Americans about the impending disaster: that their access to an infinite stream of paper money might be imperiled if they don’t cough up hundreds of billions immediately. It is very tempting to go line by line and shout back.

“I’m a strong believer in free enterprise, so my natural instinct is to oppose government intervention. I believe companies that make bad decisions should be allowed to go out of business.”

And this is why he nationalized airport security, created huge new bureaucracies, spent more than any president in American history, centralized control of education, put up more protectionist barriers than Clinton and his father combined, bailed out airlines, presided over the Sarbanes-Oxley reign of terror, unleashed anti-trust regulators, intensified health-care controls, and pretty much used every headline as an excuse to demand more money and power?

George Bush had a little help from Congress in propping up the airline industry.

"WASHINGTON (CNN) --President Bush signed into law an emergency aid package for the U.S. airline industry Saturday, saying that "the terrorists who attacked our country on September 11th will not shut down our vital businesses or thwart our way of life."

The measure provides $5 billion in direct federal aid and $10 billion in loan guarantees for an industry that has announced tens of thousands of layoffs since the terrorist hijackings.

The measure also offers the industry federal help with rising insurance costs in the wake of the terrorist strikes, and limits airline liability in any federal lawsuits that could result from the deadly hijackings.

The House approved the measure late Friday night, 356-54. The Senate passed the package earlier in the day, 96-1. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, R-Illinois, was the only senator to vote against the bill."

He also had a lot of help from Congress to create the TSA.

"S. 1447 (107th): Aviation and Transportation Security Act
House vote
Ayes 410
Nays 9

Senate vote
Ayes 100
Nays 0"

And, Obama has outspent Bush every year since he took office.