Joe Weisenthal published a pretty remarkable chart today, created by Reuters' Scotty Barber, noting economic growth in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe over the last nine years (via Ezra Klein). It's the kind of image that should, if our political discourse tolerated just a little more wonkiness, dominate the 2012 debate.
The left half of the image is pretty straightforward -- all three economies grew steadily from 2003 to 2007, then peaked, then crashed in 2008. What matters more, however, is the right half of the image.
Once President Obama took office and the Recovery Act/stimulus began putting capital back into the economy, the U.S. economy began growing again. In the U.K., the economy started to improve, right up until British officials began implementing an austerity agenda -- at which point the national economy stagnated and slipped back into a recession.
Obama rejected austerity, and as a result, American growth, while fragile and insufficient, is easily outpacing Europe's and UK's, where austerity measures have ruled the day.
Americans should care about this, if for no other reason because of interconnectivity of the modern global economy. But there's also a purely political perspective to keep in mind: namely, the problem of Republican predictions.
In short, American conservatives got everything backwards. When Obama's policies began, Republicans said they wouldn't generate economic growth, but GOP officials got it backwards. When David Cameron's austerity policies began, Republicans were not only certain they would work, they pleaded with American policymakers to follow the Tories' lead.
And we now know GOP officials had this backwards, too.
The remarkable thing is, Republicans aren't the least bit chastened by their track record of failure.
They said Clinton's economic policies would fail miserably, but that's not what happened. They said Bush's economic policies would produce extraordinary prosperity, but that's not what happened. They said Obama's economic policies would make the Great Recession worse, but that's not what happened. They said Cameron's economic policies in the U.K. would work brilliantly, but that's not what happened.
And now these same Republicans are saying they deserve Americans' votes in 2012 because they have credibility on the economy.
It's a strange argument, predicated on widespread amnesia.
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I am reveling in schadenfreude now that the UK is in a double dip recession. But Cameron and his co-conspirators continue to hoover up the poor as he doubles down on austerity.
I have been wondering just why anybody pays attention to what conservatives say about either foreign policy or the economy. I guess they own all of the media. Either that or reporters and bookers are easily bought with some cheap booze.
This will not deter the Republicans from pursuing a policy of cutting the budget. Their real objective is not to balance the budget, but rather to cut taxes and domestic programs. We are cannibalizing our infrastructure to put more money into the hands of the very wealthy. The privatization of government services is corporate welfare at the expense of the taxpayers and the public that receive those services. The single-minded pursuit of putting more money and power into the hands of the wealthy will destroy the country. And then the Republicans will walk away and blame the Dems.
ROMNEY" = "R-M-O-N-E-Y". Now that makes sense to a 1%'er
A-a-a-h-h ! Input Stephanie , more input !! Facts can be fun. Well, unless you are a Republican or live in England right now, that is.
Sub note: Msnbc Political Analyst Karen ( Spunky ) Finney’s appearance on Dylan Ratigan today got my pick-of-the-week for Ain’t-No-Pushover-Status.
All well and good, but the general public won't see this. I wish the Obama campaign would use graphs.
I'm not sure that the republicans recognize facts. Rove said that they make their own reality and he seems to be the one dictating to the party how to present itself to snooker the most voters possible. Just like the right wing concept of morality is totally different from a normal person's, so the right wing concept of a fact is different from a normal person's. They seem to think that facts are just something flying around out there that really don't mean anything, but some of them are pretty to look at, especially if you cut out pieces here and there and twist the remainder kind of hard.
Thomas Mann: "Science strove, on the plane of decent, objective truth, to confute the dynamic lie; but arguments on that plane could only seem irrelevant to the champions of the dynamic, who merely smiled a superior smile. . . . They could scarcely contain their mirth at the desperate campaign waged by reason and criticism against wholly untouchable, wholly invulnerable, belief."
This is a election year and we as voters need to empower by facts, not by sound bites and political pundits who have their own agenda.... Look at who these politicians are representing. Are they standing for the very wealthy or standing with the people... And hold these candidates accountable and stop rewarding lying, bully, immature behavior... We don't need somebody who can talk tough, but ask VP Biden said, "speak softly and carry a big stick."
YEP....It's not getting better in the US....BUT IT'S NOT GETTING WORSE EITHER...!!!!
Reince Priebus said today this is the most important election in our lifetime....and they want us to vote for a Mormon...!?!?!? A Mormon that supports a RISKY TAX SCHEME that has proven NOT to work over the past 13 years.....
You know, if we did not have record deficits and the lowest taxes E-V-E-R...then maybe it would be time to get behind Romney and see what he can do (you know...kind of a Ronald Reagan sort of boost)........HOWEVER....Times are different......The deficit is HUGE.....Tax rates are LOW.....and there are NO JOBS...!!!
The truly conservative choice this election cycle is Barack Obama....slow, steady growth versus a roll of the dice that could lead us down the road to further economic collapse....and eventually SOCIALISM....!!!!!
Bluedog: Correction: Hasn't worked in the last 32 years.
When President Reagan entered office in 1981, he faced actually much worse economic problems than President Obama faced in 2009. Three worsening recessions starting in 1969 were about to culminate in the worst of all in 1981-1982, with unemployment soaring into double digits at a peak of 10.8%. At the same time America suffered roaring double-digit inflation, with the CPI registering at 11.3% in 1979 and 13.5% in 1980 (25% in two years). The Washington establishment at the time argued that this inflation was now endemic to the American economy, and could not be stopped, at least not without a calamitous economic collapse.
All of the above was accompanied by double -igit interest rates, with the prime rate peaking at 21.5% in 1980. The poverty rate started increasing in 1978, eventually climbing by an astounding 33%, from 11.4% to 15.2%. A fall in real median family income that began in 1978 snowballed to a decline of almost 10% by 1982. In addition, from 1968 to 1982, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 70% of its real value, reflecting an overall collapse of stocks.
President Reagan campaigned on an explicitly articulated, four-point economic program to reverse this slow motion collapse of the American economy:
1. Cut tax rates to restore incentives for economic growth, which was implemented first with a reduction in the top income tax rate of 70% down to 50%, and then a 25% across-the-board reduction in income tax rates for everyone. The 1986 tax reform then reduced tax rates further, leaving just two rates, 28% and 15%.
2. Spending reductions, including a $31 billion cut in spending in 1981, close to 5% of the federal budget then, or the equivalent of about $175 billion in spending cuts for the year today. In constant dollars, nondefense discretionary spending declined by 14.4% from 1981 to 1982, and by 16.8% from 1981 to 1983. Moreover, in constant dollars, this nondefense discretionary spending never returned to its 1981 level for the rest of Reagan's two terms! Even with the Reagan defense buildup, which won the Cold War without firing a shot, total federal spending declined from a high of 23.5% of GDP in 1983 to 21.3% in 1988 and 21.2% in 1989. That's a real reduction in the size of government relative to the economy of 10%.
3. Anti-inflation monetary policy restraining money supply growth compared to demand, to maintain a stronger, more stable dollar value.
4. Deregulation, which saved consumers an estimated $100 billion per year in lower prices. Reagan's first executive order, in fact, eliminated price controls on oil and natural gas. Production soared, and aided by a strong dollar the price of oil declined by more than 50%.
These economic policies amounted to the most successful economic experiment in world history. The Reagan recovery started in official records in November 1982, and lasted 92 months without a recession until July 1990, when the tax increases of the 1990 budget deal killed it. This set a new record for the longest peacetime expansion ever, the previous high in peacetime being 58 months.
During this seven-year recovery, the economy grew by almost one-third, the equivalent of adding the entire economy of West Germany, the third-largest in the world at the time, to the U.S. economy. In 1984 alone real economic growth boomed by 6.8%, the highest in 50 years. Nearly 20 million new jobs were created during the recovery, increasing U.S. civilian employment by almost 20%. Unemployment fell to 5.3% by 1989.
This is such ridiculous troll-aganda it would be humorous if American voters were not so uninformed and unintelligent as to be inclined to believe it.
1. Reagan raised taxes 11 times.
2. Reagan stimulated the economy with egregious defense spending -- during an eight-year term that was entirely without war. The uninformed assert his defense spending led to the "defeat of the Commies!" The informed know that its war in Afghanistan left the USSR reeling economically, and Reagan's efforts had a very minor impact, if any at all, upon the Soviet collapse.
3. Reagan's out-of-control defense spending, likely done for the benefit of his big-money supporters in the California arms industry, increased the deficit nearly 300 percent.
4. Nearly every credible economist believes that the 2008 worldwide economic collapse can be traced directly to Reagan's deregulation policies.
Please go troll Politico whose readers are actually likely to believe this nonsense.
People may not have been listening closely to Romney.
The very wealthy accumulate more wealth from recession by purchasing more real estate.
He WANTS the recession to get worse.
Romney DOES understand the economy.
He makes his money from other people's misfortune.
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