Posted on 10/13/2020 5:22:53 AM PDT by Kaslin
The great Jackie Gleason once said, "The past remembers better than it lived." And so it is, apparently, with the Obama years.
There was no economic "boom" as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are misremembering. This was an economy that skidded into a financial ditch and seemingly never pulled out of it and got back on the prosperity hot lanes until Donald Trump won the election in November 2016.
You can mark the real recovery -- an economic inflection point almost the day after that surprise election outcome.
Every liberal forecaster and most academic economists had guaranteed America that, if Trump were elected, the stock market would crash; workers would be flattened; and, as New York Times economist Paul Krugman famously predicted, the economy would "never" recover.
Instead, the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared by 257 points the morning after the election (that's some crash), and it rose for the next three years, as it has again over the last several months. A few days after that election, small-business optimism surged by its most considerable amount ever measured, going back many decades. Family incomes surged to record-high levels in 2017, 2018 and 2019 as deregulation and tax cuts fueled a powerful engine. In three years, ordinary people had made more income gains than in eight years under the Obama-Biden administration.
But now we are being told a fairy tale that the Obama economy was booming and Biden miraculously fixed it and Trump "blew it."
Here's the reality check. Under Barack Obama, the economy barely grew 2% -- rather pathetic for a "recovery." The people who made the preposterous bullish claims that Obama saved the economy are the ones who now say the Biden economic plan will gain millions of jobs.
In the last year of Obama's presidency, growth shrunk to 1.6%, and the concern was the possibility of another recession. That's some boom.
If the Obama recovery had been as rapid as the average recovery, we would have had at least $1 trillion more GDP by 2016. If we had experienced a Ronald Reagan-style recovery, the GDP would have been $2.5 trillion larger when Obama left office. It is almost equivalent to the size of the entire output of the state of California gone missing.
The first four years of the Obama presidency were abysmal. The Obama-Biden $800 billion stimulus plan left unemployment higher every year than their economists had predicted if we did nothing. What bailed out Obama, ironically enough, was the shale oil and gas revolution that added millions of jobs despite the Obama-Biden hatred of fossil fuels. Most of the employment growth came in Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota. Meanwhile, most of the green energy subsidies went into failed and now-bankrupt companies such as Solyndra. And now Biden promises another $2 trillion for "clean energy" corporate welfare subsidies.
Throughout nearly all of the Biden-Obama presidency, roughly 1 out of 3 people in the United States rated the economy as "good" or "excellent." Most of the rest rated the economy "fair" or "poor." That number surged to about 65% rating the economy as "good" or "excellent" within a year of Trump's presidency.
People can debate Trump's handling of the virus and the mistakes that have been made. It now looks like under any scenario, except an airtight sequestering of those over the age of 75, smokers, diabetics and severely overweight people, we would have seen the same or worse results.
Now the question is which game plan gets the economy and employment back to normal as quickly as possible. Biden promises a $4 trillion tax hike on almost all U.S. businesses and investors. That's roughly 5% of everything we produce that gets snatched away in higher taxes. If you believe that this will get America back on the fast track, you probably believe Obama caused an economic boom.
Regardless of how they try to spin the failed Obama presidency, like BJ Clinton if it was ever what it was hyped up to be afterwards the Dems would have swept the following elections. Both 2000 and 2016 were very close, but they wouldn’t have been if the alleged “booms” had occurred.
Jimmy Carter had the correct word: Malaise.
Excellent post! Great points for Trump speeches.
Even the President says it was a slow recovery. There was no recovery. Obama was destroying the economy Brick by Brick piece by piece business by business. Destroying not recovering. I’m so sick of our side saying recovery. There was no recovery it was a economic destruction on purpose.
We clawed our way back out of that deep hole in spite of Obama economic and fiscal policies, not because of them.
Democrats have done this all along, and we have discussed it here on FR before. As soon as Trump’s economy started to come back, democrats started to claim he was taking credit for obama’s fantabulous economic recovery. Which was an outright lie.
Obama’s last 2 quarters, economic growth was 1.9% then 1.8%. Thats recession level. As soon as Trump was elected, hadn’t even done anything, things started to look better. And democrats claimed he was taking credit for obamas “accomplishments...
Liars and frauds.
It is a wonder how much money the Bidens paid Obozo for his endorsement? Biden must have paid the Democratic National Committee Members millions to be placed on the ballot as the presidential nominee and then paid Obozo millions to receive an endorsement from an empty suit. The billions China paid the Bidens has made the DNC rich......
there is a perception in the general public that Democrats are good for the economy and Republicans bad.
But it’s based on a misconception:
The markets and/or the economy doesn’t wait until the new president takes office in January to react. The market “guesses” who will win and reacts WAAAAAY before the election. So here is what happens has typically happened.
If a Republican is president, and the democrat is poised to win, the economy tanks in anticipation of the liberal. The makes the last 6 months of the Republican bad. And that’s peoples last impression of the administration.
The opposite is true with liberals. When democrat is president, and a Republican is poised to take over the economy surges during the last 6 months in anticipation of the the coming Republicans administration, thus leaving the impression of prosperity for the exiting Lib.
To the detriment of America, the Obama Africanization boom continues under the guise of BLM, the NBA and the NFL
I LIVED it! What a NIGHTMARE 0bummerCare was for we employers!
I don’t know how we lived through it with the cuts ‘corporate’ was having us make to staffing and hours and benefits to be in compliance!
It. Was. Hell.
I can totally relate to any small business owner going through this Wuhan Flu phony-baloney plastic-banana good time rock and roll MISERY brought on by Mother Government - AGAIN! (To loosely quote Rush!)
So glad to be retired. So glad to have dropped out of society for the most part. :(
In economic cycles “recovery” comes after “recession”. So we did have a recovery while Obama was President...in spite of the things he did.
It was the slowest, weakest recovery since the Great Depression.
The article correctly shows that, without fracking, the anemic recovery would have been worse or nonexistent.
I agree. I was a travelling sales rep and watch my customers cut back hard on their spending. I was driving 3,000 miles a month covering my territory with $4/gallon gasoline.
I had to leave that job in 2015. Not worth it anymore.
Vastly increasing the food stamp rolls during the Obama era is Not an “economic boom” - although Pelosi would argue that this creates jobs.
My blood runs cold at the thought of another Obama style “boom”.
I’m guessing Joe means his family’s personal boom. After all, his personal $900K from Ukraine, plus Hunter’s $1.6 Billion from China, $3.5 million from a Russian oligarch’s wife, and $83K per month from Burisma ain’t exactly chicken scratch. Not to mention Joe’s brother Jim’s $6 Billion for a construction project in Iraq....having never so much as driven a nail or looked thru a transit in his life. And let America pound sand. Go Bidens!
I was grateful that before 0bummerCare hit us between the eyes that I had an excellent crew in place who all thought of one another as family. That helped.
Older, Retirees that worked for me gave some of their hours to the younger set that needed a certain amount of hours to stay above water.
We full-time people LOST our Flex accounts for healthcare, though Corporate kept us on a decent health insurance plan and we weren’t forced into 0bummerCare.
32 hours a week as Full Time? Yeah, right! In our busy season at a Garden Center (April 1 - Father’s Day) we’d have 32 hours in already by Wednesday! We had 3 full time staff (me and two others) and the rest were part-time/seasonal.
Somehow, we managed to pull it off, and continued our winning streak as far as sales went. But it was exhausting.
Excited to see what happens next session for SCOTUS because they are finally taking up 0bummerCare.
Kill the beast! Kill it with FIRE! ;)
Prior to obamacare: $300/month premium with $5,000 deductible.
After obamacare: $3,000/month premium with $10,000 deductible.
It’s insanity! And your story is not the only one I’ve heard!
Again, cannot WAIT to see what SCOTUS does to 0bummerCare this time around. They’ll work on it in November but we won’t know their decision until 2021.
Roberts needs an @ss-kicking!
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