The Bush Economy

[jaxmike]

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The fact is that, assessed over the course of his presidency, job growth has been very slow,

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Yes, that is one way of looking at it. However, take into account that we lost something like 2 million (or more) jobs on one day (9/11) alone.

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the deficit has increased dramatically,

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A terrorist attack unprecidented in our nations history and two wars can do that.

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energy policy has been an incoherent mess,

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As it has been for the last 3 decades or more. At least in this term he is actually putting forth an energy policy that will (if adopted) attempt to do something about our energy problems. I really don't care if you agree with his suggestions, you have to admit he is the first President in DECADES to push a policy that will try to actually CHANGE things.

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and he has potentially set us up for a very dramatic problem of currency depreciation if certain fragile equilibria don't keep holding.

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Again, I don't think this is HIM that's causing the problem. I think its a combination of many factors. Not the least of which is our trade deficit. We really need to do something about that, and SOON.

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The good news is that productivity has increased, but that is completely out of the hands of the president (as are, to some degree, these other things listed above of course, but signficiantly less so).

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I think he is just as responsible for the rise in productivity as he is for the sun rising and setting. At the same time, I think he is just as responsible for the things you listed above for the moon being where it is in the solar system.

The President's job is to preserve, protect, and defend our Constitution, not to make jobs. That's OUR job. Start putting SOME of the blame on the people whose fault it is the most, the people of this country.

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So, yeah, other than all those things, he's been great.

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I agree, he has been great.

[Utah]

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The fact is that, assessed over the course of his presidency, job growth has been very slow

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When he assumed the presidency job growth was shrinking dramatically. 9/11 certainly had an effect. I am not sure what the next number is, but job growth has exploded and the point it took off was when Bush cut taxes. Causation or correlation?

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the deficit has increased dramatically

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I dont believe that is true in percentage terms. In fact, I believe that the deficit has just shrunk for 3.6% or GDP to 3.1% of GDP. I believe this is what supply siders say will happen with tax cuts.

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energy policy has been an incoherent mess

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Yes. It is absolutely terrible. However, I am not sure of the economic effects.

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he has potentially set us up for a very dramatic problem of currency depreciation if certain fragile equilibria don't keep holding.

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I have heard comments like this for 15 years for every president. It is hard to judge a president on what might happen.

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The good news is that productivity has increased, but that is completely out of the hands of the president (as are, to some degree, these other things listed above of course, but signficiantly less so).

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I respectfully disagree. Encouraging capital investments helps productivity. There is a big lag component to this and it is quite possible that current productivity gains are a result of Clinton policies.

[Dead]

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Bush controls monetary policy through the fed.

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I don't doubt that. But talks about how tax cuts will improve the economy are just ridiculous imo.

Serious damage and serious success can be found through the Fed.

[lehighguy]

I didn't vote for Bush in the last election because of his economic policies. Nevertheless, the economy has been doing pretty well, though how much is attribitual to Bush is in question.

The Economy: Doing pretty well. Job creation numbers are adequet. Our labor force participation rate and unemployment rate were way better then thier long-run rates at the end of 2000. I'm not surprised it took 3+ years for that bubble to deflate. The 5.2% or whatever unemployment is now its pretty consistent with the 5.5% long run average.

Productivity is way up, which is great. Inflation is pretty low. But the budget and trade deficiets are a complete mess.

Bush: Cutting taxes, while it was definately correct to provide fiscal stimulus post 9/11, eventually needed to be followed up with spending reductions. The tax cuts are the easy part, he's done a miserable job with the hard part. Hence why should I vote for a weak president who can't get things done. The trade deficiet is largely fueled by the budget deficiet.

Inflation is beginning to creep up because of oil and delcining dollar, both faults of Bush (less so oil, but he cut funding to the national science foundation which could have researched alternative fuels).

Though I think his actions post 9/11 helped prevent a deeper recession hes done nothing since then.

If Kerry hadn't been such a protectionist, tax raising, do whatever the focus group tells me liberal I might have endorsed his economic policy (some of his health care ideas were good). But the only ones worse then Bush are the democrats, who can't even understand eco 101 most of the time.

[Dead]

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I didn't vote for Bush in the last election because of his economic policies.

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Voted for Kerry? Or was it Badnarik? Or did you not vote at all?

[BCPVP]

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...less so oil, but he cut funding to the national science foundation which could have researched alternative fuels

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You're gonna fault the man for not giving enough money to maybe have an alternative fuel, nevermind that this fuel would have had to be implemented long enough ago to dent the price?

[sam h]

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When he assumed the presidency job growth was shrinking dramatically. 9/11 certainly had an effect. I am not sure what the next number is, but job growth has exploded and the point it took off was when Bush cut taxes. Causation or correlation?

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I don't have the numbers in front me me right now, but it is my understanding that even in the last couple years job growth, after indexing for population growth, has not been that impressive for a recovery period. Certainly supply-side logic would say that cutting taxes would help jobs, but that is of course just a theory and many people have made counter claims that those sort of tax cuts are not that efficient in catalyzing consumption or productive investment.

On the 9/11 question, I don't think anybody has a really convincing way to estimate the effects on the economy, at least not that I have seen.

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I dont believe that is true in percentage terms. In fact, I believe that the deficit has just shrunk for 3.6% or GDP to 3.1% of GDP. I believe this is what supply siders say will happen with tax cuts.

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Certainly in absolute terms we are way further in the hole than in 2000. I am not sure about percentage terms, although I think a lot of these figures are the result of creative accounting anyway, so it is really hard for me to tell. You could be right.

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I have heard comments like this for 15 years for every president. It is hard to judge a president on what might happen.

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This is a serious problem that Bush has really made it difficult for anybody at the Treasury to try and deal with. It didn't use to be a fundamentally bad bet for Asian central banks to buy dollars, since the dollar wasn't falling. Now it is a very bad idea, and the only things that are making them buy more dollars are A) Worry that if they stop, their own dollar holdings will depreciate too much and B) Worry that if they stop, our economy will tank and kill their export-led growth. That is a very precarious situation that did not characterize the Clinton years. For most economists, it is not a question of whether we will have a major depreciation that will seriously mess with the economy in the next few years, it is only a question of whether it will be a "hard landing" (potentially quite bad) or a soft one (hopefully not so disruptive).

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I respectfully disagree. Encouraging capital investments helps productivity. There is a big lag component to this and it is quite possible that current productivity gains are a result of Clinton policies.

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I agree that capital investment helps productivity, but it is unclear how much compared to other factors and it is unclear how much control the president can have over capital investment. The conventional wisdom would be that the tax cuts would induce capital investment, but on the other hand you have people saying that other fiscal and monetary policies are not inducing confidence. So it is hard to say.

[sam h]

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Yes, that is one way of looking at it. However, take into account that we lost something like 2 million (or more) jobs on one day (9/11) alone.


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I have seen many claims like this, but I have never seen convincing evidence for them.

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A terrorist attack unprecidented in our nations history and two wars can do that.

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See above. Those wars were also policy decisions not fait accompli.

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As it has been for the last 3 decades or more. At least in this term he is actually putting forth an energy policy that will (if adopted) attempt to do something about our energy problems. I really don't care if you agree with his suggestions, you have to admit he is the first President in DECADES to push a policy that will try to actually CHANGE things.

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I agree that energy policy has been a mess under other administrations too. But for obvious reasons, the further along we go in time the more this becomes a problem and the more an administration has to be held accountable for it. To me the Bush energy policy seems incoherent and I don't see him putting anything into place that is actually a departure or new approach. But maybe I am not informed well enough, as you indicate otherwise.

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Again, I don't think this is HIM that's causing the problem. I think its a combination of many factors. Not the least of which is our trade deficit. We really need to do something about that, and SOON.

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Well, its certainly not all him. But I'm not sure he has given anybody at the Treasury or Fed the policy leaway they need to deal creatively and effectively with these problems.

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The President's job is to preserve, protect, and defend our Constitution, not to make jobs. That's OUR job. Start putting SOME of the blame on the people whose fault it is the most, the people of this country.

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One of the president's jobs is to make good economic policy such that the people of the country can go about that business of creating jobs. I don't think he's done this.

[lehighguy]

I voted for Badnarick. I thoguht about it for a really long time too. But I couldn't bring myself to vote for someone who I didn't trust to run the country, even if I'm "throwing my vote away". If more people voted for the people they actually want representing them, rather then voting out of fear of the other guy, I think we'd get better results.

[lehighguy]

I'm going to fault the man for not giving money to the NSF when math and science will be the driving force of the next century. I can fault the man for not preparing us for the 21st century economy when it is such a small part of the national budget. We have a serious math and science deficiet with Asia and that isn't helping.