Where's Smasharoo? The Dow closed at a record high todayFollow

Mark it down! After trumpeting the economic prowess of the Presidents Clintons and comparing it to the supposedly lackluster financial abilities of GWB, ol' Dubya surpassed the master(s) and now holds the record.* Time to eat some crow, Poker-boy.

Totem






*I said back then and I still say now that the economy is largely out of the hands of American presidents. The reality is these men do nothing one way or another to influence our country's financial picture outside of small incremental nudges brought on by taxes or psychological boosts in the form of "ecomonic packages."

I knew Smash, Posted with Smash, even kicked Smash's *** on occasion.

You Sir, are no Smasharoo.

Lol. If we lived in the 15th century the concept that if the rich do well, the poor aren't would make sense. In a modern industrial nation, it's a pretty good bet that the workers do better on average if the businesses are doing better...

Just saying.



Then I suppose the fact that the average CPI change over Bush's term so far is lower then during Clinton's should answer your question. Clinton's average CPI index change over his 8 years was 2.612%. Bush's average CPI change over his 5 years so far has been 2.560%.

So yeah. Things are going well, both for workers and business owners.

It's not. The two of them are not necessarily related. Real wages have actually gone down since 2001 in most "modern industrial nations". The ones doing better are the very rich and the very poor. The middle class is not, and they are the onse being squeezed.

Most menail jobs can't be taken abroad. You can't take a toilet's cleaner's job to India. Ot the guy flipping burgers at MacDo.

However, most jobs above the menial category can be taken abroad, and a lot of them are.

I do agree this has very litle to do with the President, though.

Ok. But is that due to outsourcing? Or some other factor? When you say "most modern industrial nations", which ones specifically are you talking about? Have real wages gone down for the middle class in the US? France? The UK? Spain? Because there are other factors at work then just outsourcing. I'd typically argue that it's not just that a nation is "modern" and "industrial", but that it also allows capitalism to function correctly in order for that relationship to work. But then I'd have to repeat one of my long diatribes about how high government taxes ultimately hurt the middle class instead of the wealthy that they are ostensibly aimed at.



Again. While there's a whole lot of talk about outsourcing, there's very little data to support that supposition that it has the kind of impact on jobs that you are implying. At least here in the US, it's more or less a wash. We outsource some jobs. We "insource" some jobs (how many people in the US work for Sony, or Toyota for example...?). The overall impact is pretty minimal and some argue that outsourcing in principle isn't a problem, it's a matter of how attractive your employment laws are to businesses that matters.




Sure. But if the economy was in the toilet, you can bet people would blame Bush (heck, there's another thread right now where some are trying to do that by creating a measurement to show the economy's doing poorly!). While I agree that presidents typically have only a small overall impact on the economy as a whole, they do tend to get blamed or praised based on the performance of the economy during their terms. How many times have we heard people talk about how "Clinton ran a surplus", but somehow it's never "the Republican controlled congress that took power in 1995 created a surplus". Even though the latter arguably had more influence on the generation of that surplus, everyone still gives it to Clinton...

I'm not saying this to make a Republican v Democrat statement. By the same token, Carter got bashed to death back in the 70s for the recession that occured during his presidency. Reagan got bashed for the unemployment rates caused by his "Reaganomics" plan in the 82/83 time period (then praised in the late 80s for the economic growth, then bashed in the early 90s because of the S&L crashes). Economic outcomes are maybe 1/3rd congress, 1/3rd executive (mostly decisions made by the Fed), and about 1/3rd random factors that pretty much no one can predict or take credit for.

Goddamnit, you're incisive!

Indeed.

"Trenchant" is a word I don't use enough

My sister has been waiting for the same thing.....for several years.

You should. Cheese-eating-surrender-monkey words ftmfw.