Reply With QuoteSo that skyrocketing unemployment line was the economy growing then?
Guess you learn something new every day.
I've been meaning to post this bit for a while, but forgot about it:
FDR presided over economic growth, not collapse.
FDR had an easy time passing super-liberal legislation because things were getting better over his administration. A lot of people rightly blame the Bush administration for things, but that only goes so far - this is why the Democrats are going to lose an assload of seats this fall.The association of progressive reform with the Great Depression sometimes confuses people about this, but if you look at the timeline correctly you’ll see that even though the 1933-37 period was “part of” the Depression it was actually a period of extremely rapid economic growth following four years of epic collapse and preceding a secondary recession. That “everything was terrible and then FDR came in and conditions improved rapidly” dynamic was highly supportive of the president’s legislative agenda.
So that skyrocketing unemployment line was the economy growing then?
Guess you learn something new every day.
I'm guessing '33-'37 corresponds to the ~7% dip in unemployment after the massive peak that starts in '29.
FDR had it easy because he wasn't half-black with a father from Kenya...
He was a plutocrat who personally knew what he was up against. It's why he could tell the bankers he welcomed their hate, rather than simply shaming the bankers taking historic bonuses while they drove their company so far into the ground they needed a bailout.
This. Obama could invent cold fusion and reduce unemployment to 0% and he'd still be reviled for daring to be black AND president.Originally Posted by Eric T Cheng
By some, yeah. But Obama's problems right now are much more than racial. He's gaining a perception (whether accurate or not) of not living up to any of his campaign promises. Many of the people turning on him voted for him. Racism is a very small part of the equation in such cases (if it's any part).
Yeah, he came in just as things started getting less sucky.
Then, after his programs began, things got bad again. Then, war broke out, and all those empty factories had something to do. Then the economy recovered.
Isn't that the basic account, as some see it?
I think it's way more complicated, but I wouldn't dare to try to explain all of the things that happened then. It's way out of my area.
He ran on a balanced budget of all things. Once the recovery began he tried to cut the deficit and bring spending under control, it was too early and his austerity budget precipitated a renewed recession.
Good thing we'd never think about trying that again.
Just so we're clear:
Employment growth is communist!
True.
Stock market growth is communist, too!
Charts are communists!
True. But rational people appreciate the uphill battle he started with, even if they're disappointed with his performance to date. The irrational people are just saying absolutely outlandish and ridiculous shit because deep down, they're angry a black man sleeps in the Presidential Bedroom. It's the only explanation for the sharp uptick in the angry crazy since 2008.
Something has to socialist and/or fascist. Don't use up all the communist in one place.
It was easily predictable, though. 1994 anyone? When the voters allow a single party to control Congress and the presidency, they expect big moves. Obama and the Democrats have done a poor job of pushing through major changes and an even worse job of selling what they have accomplished. So the economic news, while not great, isn't the sole reason for the problems they are facing in the fall.
I wonder if that Money chart is using Bartels work.
The first thing Bartels did was break down economic performance by income class. The unsurprising result is shown in the chart on the right.
Under Democratic presidents, every income class did well but the poorest did best. The bottom 20% had average pretax income growth of 2.63% per year while the top 5% showed pretax income growth of 2.11% per year.
Republicans were polar opposites. Not only was their overall performance worse than Democrats, but it was wildly tilted toward the well off. The bottom 20% saw pretax income growth of only .6% per year while the top 5% enjoyed pretax income growth of 2.09% per year. (What's more, the trendline is pretty clear: if the chart were extended to show the really rich — the top 1% and the top .1% — the Republican growth numbers for them would be higher than the Democratic numbers.)
Posting Permissions