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 Originally Posted by BananaStand
Huh? You know things got so bad by the end of that period that we were rationing gas.
So your mom bought low and sold high. Well played. I don't see how you can credit Obama for that though. The only reason the market was so low was because of a banking bubble that burst. Back in the 90's, democrats under Clinton decided that home ownership was a "right". And he implemented new regulations (or de-regulations, depending on how you look at it), that forced banks to make loans to people who were not creditworthy. In other words, Clinton forced the people at the top, to loan money to people at the bottom. Banks weren't allowed to discriminate based on someone's ability to pay, because that disproportionately affected poor people. And by poor people, we really mean black people. So the "racist" banks now had to be "inclusive" with their lending policies.
Poor people, who couldn't pay their bills, didn't do much better when you gave them more bills to pay. And the bubble burst.
Also, once Obama had the election sewn up (McCain was out of it long before November), investors saw tax hikes and government regulations on the horizon, and that triggered a sell off. It's no coincidence that the opposite happened when the market foresaw tax cuts and deregulation after a Trump win.
False, the money still moves through the economy. You're right that securities increase faster than wages, and that disproportionally affects those who hold securities. Fine, if you don't like it, buy stock. But you're argument seems rooted in the premise that rich people just keep their money stuffed in a mattress doing nothing. Their money is out there, working, and fueling economic growth.
In 1945, our debt/gdp % was 120%. By 1981, it was 32%. By 2017, our debt-gdp it was back over 100% (I believe, do fact check me). I think we can both agree, that something changed dramatically in the US's timeline, to go from paying off the WWII debt, to getting our debt levels back up to close to what they had been in 1945.
Despite the higher taxes of the era, we had a much more robust economy for the average citizen, a more powerful country, we pretty much annually balanced the budget. Except for a slight increase in debt under the Nixon/Ford term of 0.2%, between FDR/Truman's term from 45-49 and Carter's final year in office, every post WWII President of that era balanced the budget and helped pay down the WWII debt, and American's wages rose, when productivity and GDP per Capita went up, unlike what's been going on ever since 1981.
1981-2017 is when Reaganomics got ushered in, and is still fiscal/economic policy, of Republicans to this day.
The wealthy got a lot wealthier, but wages stagnated, we had the worst economic crisis in 80 years, we had a bad recession also in the 80's as well and a weak recovery. American manufacturing jobs were shipped overseas, and now due to automation aren't coming back.
The repeal of the Glass-Steagal, as part of Republican doctrine on supporting all forms of deregulation, while signed off by Neoliberal Bill Clinton, was authored by 3 Republican Senators, and supported by the Republican majority of the time period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%...0%93Bliley_Act
Besides Clinton, the Republicans wanted to repeal this act, that was made in response to massive bank failures of 30's. Within 10 years of it's repeal, what happened? Massive bank failures of 2000's. That is no mere coincidence.
Also NAFTA, again Bill Clinton ditched what liberals wanted, it was the Republican party and Centrist Democrats, who largely supported NAFTA, and Bill went with them, now deemed a very bad trade deal for America. Up until Trump, Republicans always supported free trade, even if it meant the gutting of manufacturing jobs and union jobs in this country.
"In the House, NAFTA passed 234-200; 132 Republicans and 102 Democrats voted in favor of it. The Senate approved NAFTA 61-38, with the backing of 34 Republicans and 27 Democrats."
We've only balanced the budget 4x, in the last 36 years. That's a horrible track record, especially when juxtaposed to the time period of 1945-1981.
If wealthy people getting wealthier, made everyone else wealthier, we wouldn't have 51% of US workers making a wage that leaves them in poverty or close to it at a time when the wealthy are the wealthiest they've been in roughly 90 years.
By all means, I've lost, I have fuckin' lost. I mean believe me man, your economics has won, over the past 36 years. Trump, I assume, nothings happened so far, is going to pass further tax cuts on the wealthy, and we'll see how that plays out. Reagan he had an ok economy, but he increased the debt by 200% (#'s of dollars wise, not % of GDP) from what it was to achieve what he did. Then the Savings and Loans Crisis hit.
Clinton put in a large tax increase on wealthy households in 1993. You can credit a good economy, and lower gas prices as well, but the fact remains that for 4 years out of Clinton's 8, the large tax increase that happened in his 1st year in office, was soon followed by the only stretch of time that we balanced the budget in the last 36 years. GWB got in, he passed 2 large tax cuts, and 2 big wars with no War tax to pay for them. America USE to finance it's wars, now we borrow money to finance our wars. And we haven't balanced a single budget since GWB's first year in office.
Obama has not put in a large tax increase on the wealthy, except a 4% or so increase on households pulling in incomes over $450,000, and this was to pay for the ACA. And we've had an economic expansion creating over 10 million jobs over the past 8 years, and he lowered the deficit from the $1.6 trillion all time high of 2009, down to $552 billion today, a 66% decrease. I'm covered under the ACA. If the ACA gets repealed, what am I gonna do? I don't know, looks like my family will have to shovel more money to the Pharmaceutical industry and Healthcare industry for me to gain coverage again.
That might be good for the CEO's who run the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry, but it won't be good for me as a citizen.
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