Proof That The Bush Economy Is Even Great For Dems

[Conan71]

In case you hadn't noticed, Mr. Rocket Scientist, the thread is about Alan Mollohan.  It was my childish effort at matching one of Bledsoe's childish posts on Repubs.

[Hometown]

The Baby Bush Economy According to Hometown

Background:  Late Clinton.  Surging investments in technology.  Rising wages for middle and working class.  Full employment.  Budget surpluses.  Paying down of national debt.

Then Republican Greenspan set about raising interest rates when there were no sign of inflation.  Many economists of the time questioned Greenspan's moves.  Greenspan succeeded in killing the New Economy and bringing down the stock market.

When Baby Bush took office he set about "talking us into a recession."  I recall one economic pundit of the time saying he had seen presidents try and talk us out of recession but this was the first time he saw a president talk us into one.

Then Bush set about throwing money at rich people while the livelihoods of the middle and lower classes took a beating.

The Old Economy bites back.
The stock market sinks and commodities take off.  The same energy players that participated in a fraud on the state of California turn their attention to a broader audience with gas and oil fun and games.

After six years stock market returns to where it was in Clinton's second term.  A record high isn't all it's cracked up to be.  You need to take us back to the late Clinton level then add eight percent a year for six years and compound that to get us back to where we need to be.

Oh and balance the budget without destroying the safety net and make some payments on the national debt.

I guess you could say that when you've been held down like we have, even small improvements are cause for celebration.

Bush has been good to the rich and not so nice to the rest of us.

[snopes]

I have to agree that a record high isn't all it's cracked up to be. Just because the stock market is doing well doesn't mean the money is getting into the hands of the working class. In my opinion, it's merely alot of money going through the hands of the well-to-do. I'm not a rich basher, but I definitely see the decline of the middle class in this country over the last several years.

[aoxamaxoa]

quote]Originally posted by snopes

I have to agree that a record high isn't all it's cracked up to be. Just because the stock market is doing well doesn't mean the money is getting into the hands of the working class. In my opinion, it's merely alot of money going through the hands of the well-to-do. I'm not a rich basher, but I definitely see the decline of the middle class in this country over the last several years.
[/quote]

AMEN!!!![

[papaspot]

quote:Originally posted by iplaw

Think about it.  The UN is like any other business that can tolerate late payment as long as it knows it's going to get money in the end, which is the case with the UN.  Most companies can run in the red for extended periods and still stay afloat.  Does that mean that they can survive FOREVER with with a 25% loss of income?  No.  It just mean they can make it short term.

Anyways.  As much as I would love to see us leave that international circus, we never will.  Any system that allows coutries like China and Lybia to hold seats in their council for human rights needs to be disbanded.

Your analogy to business would be valid except for one thing. Businesses CAN get by waiting for payment in the SHORT TERM...several weeks or even several months. But we're talking about YEARS that the U.S. withheld its dues. I'm not saying that it didn't hurt them and they didn't have to cut to cut back on some programs (like the United Nations Children's Fund) but if they were gonna fold, they would have folded.

As far as dropping out of the UN, I think we've gotta decide if we're gonna be a world player or maintain a strict isolationist policy. If the former, then we need to start abiding by the rules that we expect everyone else to abide by. If the later, then we need to stop invading other countries.

[Hometown]

Look what Clinton did for the middle class.

Clinton gave us the $250,000 tax exclusion on the sale of your primary residence.

When you sell your primary residence, you can make up to $250,000 in profit if you're a single owner, twice that if you're married, and not owe any capital gains taxes.  That provision was signed into law by Clinton in 1997.

If you couple Clinton's tax exclusion with the increase in real estate prices, you are talking about the most significant boost to the middle class economic well being in my life time.

[rwarn17588]

I'm not about to jump on Hometown's bandwagon of bashing Alan Greenspan. Greenspan was one of the best Fed chairmen in history.

Sure, Greenspan was a GOP appointee. But Clinton had him for eight years and made no move to replace him, nor should he have. That's because Greenspan was very, very good at his job.

Bush II also should have heeded Greenspan's warnings about deficit spending. The deficits run up on Bush's watch are truly a black eye on the conservative movement.

[YoungTulsan]

quote:Originally posted by rwarn17588

Bush II also should have heeded Greenspan's warnings about deficit spending. The deficits run up on Bush's watch are truly a black eye on the conservative movement.

Bush is very far from being a conservative.  Bush is a business man.  Pretty much every decision made is by "how does this affect business?"

The new GOP has found that it is ok to spend federal dollars as long as you give the contracts to businesses.  Those tax dollars and borrowed dollars just flow right into business profits, so the old idea of a balanced budget is no longer a worry.   Privatizing social security is the last boon they have left to feed into corporate profits.

[Conan71]

I think it's pretty simplistic to attack or attribute the economy to one person.  

The media has done a pretty good job of ignoring the positive signposts of our present economy, and I'm not just talking about the stock market, though that is an indicator of people's confidence in the major players in our economy.

If you get most of your information from left-leaning news outlets, either the economic news is ignored and buried under sex scandal stories or 4.8% unemployment is spun into bad news, because it's not the 4.4% late in the Clinton years.  Those news outlets don't talk about the increased tax revenues of our robust economy and present tax policies, they just compare that there was a surplus late in the Clinton years and now there is a deficit.  Nevermind there have been unforseeable massive natural disasters, an over-haul of national security, and an expensive war on terror.

If you get all your news from right-leaning news outlets, it's all rosy and good.  

The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Without getting into a whole esoteric discussion on economics, there's a *lot* more at work than the actions of one or two people.  You also have to take into account individual management of publicly and privately-held corporations that determine the well-being of the American worker.  Unless you want the Amerikansk government to administer all jobs, and we see how much prosperity that that has brought the workers in other countries.

I'll give the economy of the Clinton era it's props, but I'm not going to give sole credit to Clinton, Greenspan, or the Republican controlled Congress.  Nor do I attribute the present growth soley to Bush, Barnake, or the present Congress.  There's so much more that makes an economy good or bad, but it sure looks good in political advertising around elections for whomever was in power during a growth period.  

I'm not saying that economic policies handled by the Fed, nor the "feel" of the economic climate as attributed to legislators and presidents is irrelevant, but it's not the "be-all/end-all".

People want to bash "corporate monoliths" like Microsoft, but think how much money MS has put back into our economy and how many well-paying middle class jobs they have brought about not only in their corporation, but the demand they have brought about in other companies for IT specialists who work with their products.

People want to bash Wal-Mart, but look at how many well-paying jobs have come from their management structure, and all the jobs it has created in their supply chain, and in construction to put up their new stores.  Before anyone pipes up about the wages of their store employees- it's free enterprise.  The employer sets the wage and workers agree to work for a certain wage.  If they don't like the pay, then get out of retail, re-train and do something they can make more money at.  No one, especially the government puts handcuffs on these people.

People go off on Enron because some of the executives were cozy with Bush II.  The reality is, their greatest period of prosperity and most of their accounting fiascos occured during the Clinton years.  Neither Bush nor Clinton are to blame- it was the actions of a few.  Enron, while it was around created great paying jobs in their own corporate infrastructure and down their supply and marketing chain.

Investment in high-tech?  How much was lost in pension funds and other investment dollars during the "dot bomb" period late in the Clinton years?  It wasn't Clinton's fault any more than it would have been Bush's fault if it had happened while he was in office, yet I'm sure the left media could have put the entire blame in Bush's lap.  It was greedy intrepreneurs and even greedier investors who created that whole debacle.

Bottom line is, if you beleive the government is going improve your personal financial situation, you are going to stay on the dock while others who are self-reliant will sail off with better jobs.  

Unless you have a physical or mental deficiency which would preclude you from improving your station in life, or you have created a domestic situation that will keep you from it, you can participate at any level of the economy as you wish in America.

[Hometown]

Presidents aren't gods but they appoint key economic figures and they provide leadership.

People forget the leadership that Clinton displayed in getting Congress to balance the budget.  That required a lot of difficult decisions and there were Democrats voted out of office because of their votes to balance the budget.

The market really took off after Clinton balanced the budget.

[aoxamaxoa]

The Rose Garden colored glasses

By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/15852915.htm

"But the Dow is not a good indicator of how thing are really going for the majority of Americans."

"Meanwhile, what we see in the economy as a whole is an immense shift of wealth from the poor and middle class to the very rich. It seems a little painful to have to point this out yet again after six solid years of it, but these are lies, damn lies and statistics."

[Conan71]

quote:Originally posted by aoxamaxoa

The Rose Garden colored glasses

By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/15852915.htm

"But the Dow is not a good indicator of how thing are really going for the majority of Americans."

"Meanwhile, what we see in the economy as a whole is an immense shift of wealth from the poor and middle class to the very rich. It seems a little painful to have to point this out yet again after six solid years of it, but these are lies, damn lies and statistics."

Who is Molly Ivins pandering to?

Molly Ivins isn't in touch with the average Amercian either, she's hardly earning middle class wages.  Henry Waxman, cited in her article, represents one of the wealthiest congressional districts in the U.S. as well.

[aoxamaxoa]

quote:Originally posted by Conan71

quote:Originally posted by aoxamaxoa

The Rose Garden colored glasses

By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/15852915.htm

"But the Dow is not a good indicator of how thing are really going for the majority of Americans."

"Meanwhile, what we see in the economy as a whole is an immense shift of wealth from the poor and middle class to the very rich. It seems a little painful to have to point this out yet again after six solid years of it, but these are lies, damn lies and statistics."

Who is Molly Ivins pandering to?

Molly Ivins isn't in touch with the average Amercian either, she's hardly earning middle class wages.  Henry Waxman, cited in her article, represents one of the wealthiest congressional districts in the U.S. as well.

Woof woof.....

[papaspot]

quote:Originally posted by aoxamaxoa

Woof woof.....

Ya know, Aox, I agree with some of the points you make. But, I swear, you sound more like TulsaJames & inteller every day. You've probably noticed that most people just ignore those two any more. Is that what you're working towards?

[aoxamaxoa]

Hey, I consider you an ally. Don't rock the boat for two weeks. OK?

"woof woof"=attack dog...and I was trying to be nice.