Posted on 11/17/2003 1:05:14 AM PST by prisoner6
By Jerry Bowyer
Forgive the vanity, but I wanted to give a head's up to a book I've found VERY usefull in debating the ratz recently, especially here in the socialist cesspool of Western Pennsylvania.
FYI, Jerry Bowyer is a local, conservative morning radio host on WPTT (1360AM, Pittsburgh), but has done a lot more for the cause through The Allegheny Insitute think tank as well as writing several books backing conservativism.
His latest - well I think it's his latest, he's very prolific - is "The Bush Boom: How a 'Misunderestimated' President Fixed Our Broken Economy", and as soon as I read it I knew it would come in handy when the ratz started buggin me about "jobless recovery", "horrible economy"..oh you know The Drill.
From the back cover...
"Within weeks of winning the Oval Office, President George W. Bush faced recession and economic upheaval. As the economy headed for a tailspin, he pursued an economic policy that included unprecedented tax cuts. What’s the result of Bush’s low-tax economic program? Jerry Bowyer confronts the critics and offers clear and convincing evidence that the Bush Administration fixed a broken economy, boosting the fastest economic turnaround since President Ronald Reagan."
From Slate...
"Open-minded Liberal Dan Gross has written a fair and (reasonably) balanced analysis of The Bush Boom, both the phenomenon and the book. Enjoy:"
"In Bush Boom, Bowyer argues that markets and investor activity can tell us more about the economy's health than the backward-looking government data upon which we usually rely. As evidence for the boom, he points to personal income, which has grown at a 5 percent clip since the third quarter of 2001, strong productivity, and reduced taxes on investment. (OK, OK, and OK.) Employment growth, he argues in the antidisestablishmentarian vein, is happening under the radar screen. (Maybe.)"
Ok there are lots more reviews , but here are a couple of execrpts. Sorry I can’t figure out how to post the graphs from PDF, and my scanners out to lunch.. Maybe later, they’re impressive!.
“In the graph below we have taken the inverse of the Cost of Government Day; in effect we’re graphing the number of days that you work for yourself. This is superimposed on a graph of changes in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The results are rather startling: Starting in 1993—the first year of President Clinton’s administration— the reader will notice identify three distinct phases.
The first, the early years of the Clinton administration, is marked by a noticeable decline in the proportion of days that Americans work for themselves, and it is also marked by uncertainty in the stock market. The second phase, which begins with the election of the Republican majority in the United States Congress and ends the year before the election of 2000, is marked primarily by a decrease in the cost of government, and punctuated by one of the great bull markets in American history. The third phase begins shortly before the election season and continues through the election, and through President Bush’s term until today.”
and
“ In addition, since last fall, the rate of growth in personal income has been accelerating. We conclude that despite mixed results in the equity markets, the first Bush tax cut has been good for the fundamental economics of the American household. That said, the American economy is capable of greater growth, which is likely to occur if there are further tax cuts. These statistics, along with the recent rallies in the U.S. stock market, indicate that the mixed picture in the equity markets was clearly due more to the fog of war than to any alleged decline in the economic viability of American households.”
If it sounds interesting and useful…trust me it IS…check out more at jerrybowyer.com
Or check out “The Bush Boom” at Amazon, B&N, and such..
prisoner6
prisoner6
The economy was crap in '93 and '94. Then something happened . . .
That was the year Clinton's deficit reduction plan passed. 93, right? And that was when Rush said it was going to be like the Carter years all over again. Fact is, he was dead wrong. Clinton raised taxes but the economy still roared.
If the GOP did not take Congress we would have had malaise that would have boogled even Jimmy Carter's mind.
It was doom and gloom. Clinton destroyed the Reagan boom (the biggest boom in American history) that he inherited, and it brought us the Clinton recession at the end of his term. Had it not been for Y2K fears and survival spending, it would have hit during Clintons presidency.
Bush warned us this was comming, too, when he was campaining for the presidency, and once he got into office got us the tax break to repair the damage done.
Rush and many GOPers predicted that the enacted tax increases would devestate the economy. But the economy boomed. The GOP didn't undo Clinton's 93 policies, did they? I don't recall any cut in the taxes until after Clinton left office. So I have a hard time understanding what the GOP control of the Congress did to change economic policy. What did they do? Cut spending? Ha! Well look at them now? Spending is out of control. Do you predict economic doom? See, it just doesn't add up.I think that we are talking about tax rate differences of a couple of points, and growth rates in spending of a couple of points, and that in the end it doesn't make much difference. Because in the 90s, we raised taxes and the economy boomed.
Sounds like spin to me. First of all, there was a market crash in 87. Right? There was an economic recession worse than this one in 91, under Bush 1. Under Clinton, we had deficit reduction, market boom, economic boom, and lots of jobs. At the end, there was a recession.
So? There was a recession at the end of Reagan's term, too. I can't see where Clinton's tax increase did any harm to the economy.
It did devestate the Reagan economy!!
We went into a recession at the end of Clintons term, even after the invent of the internet and Y2K, we still went broke !!!
You do recall the recession of 91-92, right? And the stock market crash of 87? The Reagan economy was over.
So? There was a recession at the end of Reagan's term, too. I can't see where Clinton's tax increase did any harm to the economy.
You must not understand national economics.
Reagan gave us a big tax break- like sugar water - to feed a starving hive. That money went into the private sector - to feed the worker bees. The private sector now had money to rebuild and innovate - make honey. These things take time. It doesn't happen overnight. The bigger the relief to the worker bees, the more honey they make - AND, the more tax revinue they create. The upper class bees took the sugar water they were given and were building the comb, laying the eggs, hatching the young.
Then came Clinton, who saw all the bees breeding, and the honey being made and it's revenue, and stole it. The bees then had no money to build. They were being starved again. The hives started to use up their honey stash to get by, like bees use up their honey stash over the winter.
The internet was invented , or a new hive was brought in. It made honey, but it was bad quality honey, and wouldn't nourish the bees for very long. Eventually, that hive started to die off. The honey was bad. The stocks were worthless. The nation thought it was making tons of honey for the winter, but it was decieved.
As time went on, the honey started to dry up. With no new flowers planted, or no sugar water givin, the other internet hive was dead, there was no way to sustain the colony. The bees started to die, the hives started to become empty.
Then Bush was elected. He brough in sugar water to feed them as they started to once again rebuild. Now they're making honey again.
It is spin. And if the house of cards can be propped up for another twelve months, then maybe the GOP can get away with it. But it seems awfully dangerous to "take credit" for an economy with a stock market teetering on the brink - maybe it will defy gravity for a while longer, but maybe not.
Clinton raised taxes. Economy boomed. Growth outpaced spending. Surpluses ensued. GO GO stock market leads to speculation and fraud. Market crashes. Recession ensues.
That's what actually happened.
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