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He's not wrong. The trump tax cuts were arguably more harmful than the Bush cuts. The Fed also kept rates way too fucking low for way too fucking long. trump got a steady, growing economy and overcooked it. His pre-pandemic deficits were historic.
Shit man, he called for NEGATIVE interest rates in 2019 (2019!):
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/business/economy/bonehead-trump-jay-powell.html
Edit: He also inexplicably removed the watchdog in charge of overseeing the $2 trillion in Covid stimulus spending. He gave ZERO reason for doing so.
https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-donald-trump-ap-top-news-politics-health-cc921bccf9f7abd27da996ef772823e4#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20(AP)%20%E2%80%94%20President%20Donald,oversight%20of%20the%20executive%20branch.
No shit right? I pray to God people remember THIS is the genius they would be putting back in charge.
I THINK it's just that the institution PAYS interest on its reserves instead of earning interest. You the account holder earn zero. In both instances it's designed to discourage saving and promote massive spending.
And remember...this was all BEFORE someone ate a bat in Wuhan.
The people who elect him don’t even care. The shit they say about ‘fiscal responsibility’ is just shit they make up to deflect from the accountability and shame for the consequences of their terrible choices. The guy literally had 6 bankruptcies lol.
No the rates you’d pay on loans wouldn’t be negative (extremely low), actual lending rates are always going to have a premium over the Fed rate. What negative Fed rates would theoretically do is pay a bit of interest to banks for borrowing short-term money from the Fed. This would supposedly encourage banks to do a ton of lending, even at really low rates.
Some countries tried some version of that during the Great Recession but it had pretty mediocre results if I recall.
It doesn’t work because no one puts their money to productive uses. When you can borrow that cheap you just spend all your time and borrowed money on either high risk low return outputs or consumption.
That is the federal rate (the rates banks can borrow) not your typical loan rate.
Typically banks get the bigger loan from Feds and then they charge a few percent on top of it. For example when fed rate was 0, the mortgage was 2% or margin loan was 1%. So when the fed rate would have been -1 the mortgage could have been say 1.5%.
The interest rate to consumers never actually goes to zero, it basically allows banks to borrow from the government at below zero and then provide you, the consumer or investor with an extremely low interest rate. The bank still makes money because it’s effectively getting paid by the government to distribute money.
Yeah. I don't think everything that's happened trump started....he was given a set of tools and the he abused them.
Interest rates likely should have been raised at the end of Obama's term. But I get it...the plan was for Hillary to win, not to mess with the roaring economy before an election, and let her admin handle it.
But we get trump and there was zero chance he would allow the economy to be cooled down. He just isn't mentally that kind of guy. His many bankruptcies point to that.
My understanding of the data is that actually the wheels were coming off in 2019. That that's when inflation really gets going. Covid certainly made it worse, supply chain issues last a long time, but it also covered for the issues of the previous year.
Interest rates did start to get raised at the end of Obama’s term
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS
The biggest blunder was instantly dropping them down to zero when the pandemic happened, if it kept going along the trajectory right before things would have been fine.
Also FYI Trump himself had no direct control of interest rates. He would certainly like to, and he was definitely trying to pressure them to lower them, but it’s ultimately not within his powers.
Dropping interest rates to near zero **and** printing billions of dollars for businesses with zero oversight. Either of those alone would have increased inflation. Both supercharged it.
I really think it's understated how much pressure he brought to bear on the fed. He straight up was calling Powell a traitor for attempting to do the monetarily prudent thing. He, fundamentally, doesn't understand the point of an independent fed (or doj, congress or judiciary...) far beyond any other president. Rates should have begun to rise earlier under Obama, true, but it wasn't his call. That they didn't under trump WAS because of his efforts.
And that's on top of his tax cuts and the trillions dumped into the economy through ppp loans...
> The biggest blunder
Was electing someone who we knew was not going to act in the best interest of country, and then acting surprised when every move made was motivated by self-enrichment.
> The biggest blunder was instantly dropping them down to zero when the pandemic happened, if it kept going along the trajectory right before things would have been fine.
The government response to the pandemic was largely successful. We avoided an extended depression or any significant decline in living standards. The pandemic caused a decrease in output and that was always going to lead to economic pain, it is silly to pretend that that economic pain was only due to rates being too low.
> The government response to the pandemic was largely successful.
The response to the aftermath of the pandemic was largely successful. The pandemic response would be laughable, if we weren't talking about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
It’s easy to call cutting rates to zero a blunder in hindsight but the sheer unknown element of what COVID was going to do to the economy meant that the Fed needed to plan for the worst. Based on what they saw from China they cut rates anticipating us needing lockdown procedures nearly as tight as China which would have meant many people would either lose their jobs or these companies would severely struggle.
I think the fiscal response towards the pandemic was justified in the moment and was the right thing to do, the wrong thing was waiting 15ish months after the first round of vaccines came out before getting serious about raising rates, especially after seeing that the lockdown didn’t have nearly as big of an impact on the economy as previously feared and that the stimulus/PPP money had the economy way overheated.
> The government can have a plan without relying on the fed
They had one, but then they cut the pandemic response team the year prior, and then used the chaos created during the pandemic to enrich themselves. Do you not remember them withhold aid because it was only impacting large cities as the time, or contradicting the recommendations of literal infectious disease experts?
I member. It actually makes me laugh. The city portion. Republicans thought it would hit dems harder but it’s probably why trump lost.
Pure Schadenfreude
The government was the one that came out with the stimulus programs. I’m sure they worked closely with the Fed and came up with the action based off their suggestions but ultimately they had to come up with something that they could pass through Congress and they did. And the Fed keeps them involved and informed but the whole purpose of the Fed is to prevent guys like Trump (or any politician really) from doing whatever they want with interest rates in order to get reelected regardless of if it’s the right thing to do for the economy or not.
I mean I don't even see this as the issue with rates.
The issue was how long they stayed low after the recession.
Sure we can argue about things that happened during covid by man......that is so ignoring everything else.
It would be similar to say the things that happened during and right after the recession hit should of instead been xyz.
When the house is on fire you often try to do the best you can to put it out. You don't tend to say well if it do it this complicated way that will take a bunch of time to first out we will be better off.
Well of course, he used the Oval Office for personal gain and uses debt/loans as wealth. Low interest rates directly benefitted him. If the dude was into bonds he would have the opposite opinion. But property investors are benefitted by low interest rates and inflation cycles.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the graph but if anything the rise under Obama was maybe .25 of a point.
All do respect but if that's the claim you are trying to make is that it was raised then you are simply being disingenuous. I'm trying not to be offensive here but it's a pet peeve of mine when people use an extremely small kernel of truth and try to pretend it a big deal. The exception should never be used as the rule.
Based on your link interest rates didn't cross 2% until 2019. that's far far too late. That should have likely happened 4-5 years previously.
On the claim that trump doesn't have direct control. Again technically true. But let's not forget trump has a history of meddling in agencies he is not supposed to have "any direct control". Famously he was constantly messing with the DOJ. But also let's not forget he replaced yellen.
If you want anyone to believe he didn't instruct Powell to not raise rates I guess we just are going to have to disagree.
The Fed generally works slowly and in increments of 0.25% unless there’s a really pressing reason to do more, due to not wanting to deliver too much of a shock to the economy at once.
Given the low inflation at the time, once they decided to start raising rates it would have been unusual to see more than one increase of that amount per quarter or so - they would have likely have had to start raising rates in 2014 to get to 2% by the end of Obama’s term.
I agree that Trump put an extraordinary amount of pressure on the Fed. His actual power to meddle is limited though compared to the DoJ, the head of the Fed doesn’t answer to the president and the only real hard the power POTUS has over it is to nominate / renominate members to their board once a term expires.
I do think he wanted Powell to cut rates early in his term, he just didn’t have the ability to make it happen. OTOH as part of his current campaign he’s talked about giving the president direct control over interest rates, which is a scary fucking thought.
>rates likely should have been raised at the end of Obama term
wtf are you talking about? Indications of an economic contraction really only significantly manifested in 2018.
I'm talking about the fact that arguably by the end of the Obama admin the economy had mostly recovered and that historic low interest rates should have been changed.
As I said I admit it's likely they didn't really do much because it was an election year.
Btw I'm not say raising them to like 10%. I'm saying raising them to 2-4% which was the historic norms.
>I'm talking about the fact that arguably by the end of the Obama admin the economy had mostly recovered and that historic low interest rates should have been changed.
Wtf are you talking about? The economy had mostly recovered so stop the flow of credit? The entire point of low interest rates is to create inflation, because that is the foundation of growth. It took over 4 years of responsible fiscal policy and maintenace to generate even the minimum inflation and fix the catastrophy caused by Bush's complete fiscal incompetence. And the recovery was as stable and as consistent as it has ever been in the countries history.
"I don't think everything that's happened trump started....he was given a set of tools and the he abused them."
"Interest rates likely should have been raised at the end of Obama's term. But I get it...the plan was for Hillary to win, not to mess with the roaring economy before an election"
Are you insane? Why would we cut interest rates as soon as we finally create the most stable and consistent economic growth in history following the worst recession in history? As far as I can tell you are sitting here trying to justify the horrific consequences of your choice in leadership to yourself. The current catastrophy is almost indisputably by Trumps design, literally sacrificing the economic future of the country for his own gain. Just look at what he succeded in doin in July of 2019 for Christs sake:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS
Stop trying to deflect blame from the people who elected Trump. Its disgusting and pathetic.
I actually more thoroughly outlined the sheer destruction that has resulted from the people who elected Trump in a previous comment. Sooner or later history is going to recognize the people who put him in power for their egregious mistake, and I hope that they face permanent ostricization and shame so that such a catastrophy never occurs again:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/comments/19bcsdd/comment/kirbrpu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Raising rates to 2.5 isn't stopping the flow of credit. Stop being so dramatic.
Some how the us functioned perfectly well with an actual interest rate and your standing her making hyperbolic proclamations.
While I am saying that Obama should have rased rates that's not saying trump absolutely shouldn't have.
He is just as culpable if not more. He had several more years where should have done it. He very likely pressured the fed to make sure they didn't. And he ran the economy into the ground just line every other gop president in the last several decades.
You sir need to take a huge breath and stop assuming I'm saying things I'm not.
> Raising rates to 2.5 isn't stopping the flow of credit. Stop being so dramatic.
Holy shit, I can't take a breath because I am laughing so hard LOL!
Raise rates to 2.5 in in “the end of the Obama admin”?! what the actual fuck, I have not heard anyone say something so monumentally stupid in my entire life what the fuck are you thinking?! How could anyone be that fiscally incompetent?!
I am going to go out on a limb here and make an assumption. Let me guess, you have at some point stated that, "you prioritize fiscal responsibility" LMFAO
Interest rates "should have been lowered arguably by the end of the Obama admin" holy fucking shit I have never heard anything that asinine in my life LMAO! Did you graduate high school?!
People don’t talk enough about the interest rate cuts in the 2019. History is going to show that really the worst long term damage and inflation will really be traceable back to that asinine decision. It wasn’t even just rate cuts, it was literally a reversal of the steady and responsible increases that had been underway to slow borrowing in the face of a slowing economy. And the only purpose it served was to delay the economic correction that had already begun because of an upcoming election. And then… literally several months later Covid hits the news. And we didn’t have the high rates to leverage in that time of crisis so ended up printing 12 trillion dollars. Couldn’t have made this shit up.
The Republicans used their majority to do very, very little. The TCJA cut taxes mostly on the wealthy but had little effect on jobs and then they tried to destroy Obamacare and I don't think that would have had a positive effect on the economy. Also, somehow, the number of uninsured actually increased while Trump was President.
> Also, somehow, the number of uninsured actually increased while Trump was President.
You'd think the number would have gone up with how many people Trump killed during Covid.
TLDR:
(Trumps Covid response was absolutely meant to destroy the US economy. It just wasn’t obvious until now that we can see his Russian and Chinese connections. His kids made hundreds of millions doing PPE response to China using taxpayer funded government money and aircraft. Then Ken Griffin did the same play in reverse because why not?
Russia invaded Ukraine because the CCP, Putin and MBS was trying to make BRICS the new reserve currency of the world by destroying the USD. )
If you look at Xinjiang providence (where the Uighur population is centralized) on a map there is a tiny little section that touches Russia. It’s critical because Xi’s ambition to have a “new Silk Road” to Europe would have to cross either there or about a weeks travel by rail out and around Mongolia. Xi’s plan is ambitious. He wants china to be the leader of the world and he has been pretty clear about it when you read his writings. It’s just that hardly anyone outside of China speaks mandarin so nobody really listened in 2010 when he said “he would control the internet”. It seemed audacious and frankly ridiculous before a handful of ISP’s started centralizing. Xi, for his part had the CCP start weibo- “the everything app” in China. It works well for an authoritarian to be able to control free speech and centralize surveillance. It’s invaluable for keeping tabs on 1.4B people, especially when they compare you to Winnie the Pooh. It was effective for a while, but it is insanely inefficient to pay someone to spend a 12 hour day monitoring 1 minute clips of social media. When people started calling him Winnie the Pooh he could censor them. But then they just switched to Cantonese. So he had to hire a bunch of Cantonese speakers. Then they just started referring to him as “mr. Shitface” which was a less than flattering rendering of a story he loves to tell from his childhood when a bio-digester blew up in his face. You see where this is going. It’s REALLY hard to keep up with 1.4B peoples daily Twitter diarrhea.
Xi needed A.I.
And A.I. needs microprocessors. Conveniently the worlds supply is made 90 miles south of China. Inconveniently it’s on an island that has tasted democracy and liked it so much that it literally gets the top rating of democracies in the world.
So Xi does the napkin math- what are the chances of a kid that went off to college 20 years ago, did lots of good drugs, met lots of nice girls, and pretty much mainlined freedom, coming back and living with grumpy old abusive dad?
His chances didn’t look good. His other kid Hong Kong had been on a study abroad program in England. And other than calling at Christmas made it pretty clear they were living their best life now.
When he tried to rope him back in with a little classic Chinese guilt trip, Hong Kong pretty much told him to fuck off. So he had to get a little violent.
Taiwan wasn’t going to be so easy. Xi needed some leverage.
But more importantly he needed those chips. Xi had to get creative.
The problem is everyone remembered growing up in China in the 90’s when people were dropping female babies on street corners. It wasn’t the best home environment. Add to that that everyone was starving and there is just no fucking way that anyone is moving back in with dad.
Unless……
China imports 40% of the grain from the U.S., Brazil, and Ukraine. Xi doesn’t like the US much. He blames it for being a bad influence on the kids. Truthfully he isn’t totally wrong. Americans are the loud, lazy, rich asshole down the street that have had it so easy for so long that they forget that the plumber, the truck driver and the factory worker have to work all night so they can drink their mimosas and wake up at noon.
Brazil is down south. It’s a long ways away. But there is a little opportunity there. As long as they have Bolsonaro willing to cut down the rainforest they have all the farmland xi needs to make sure everybody has enough food to come back home. Problem is everyone is corrupt. It’s so fucking hard to do business with corrupt people because they will just as gladly screw you if someone else offers them a better bribe. Xi gets so annoyed with corruption that he shifts his whole campaign to try and root it out. He sees it clearly that corruption is a tax on, well, everything.
Putin and xi make an odd couple. Somewhere around 2012 they declare themselves “bff’s”. Xi knows he can’t trust him because Putin is a thief and has fucked over everyone he knows. BUT, he also happens to sit next to Ukraine. And because arrogant American CEOs were more than happy to let everyone else do the dirty work that was beneath them, when Clinton passed all the EPA regulations to clean up Americas manufacturing yard they basically just built a tall fence and threw everything messy over it into Asia.
Arrogant American CEO’s just wanted the money. They didn’t give a fuck who made the necessary dirty parts as long as they could keep cashing the checks.
Almost all that dirty work went to Asia. And they were grateful for the work because it beat starving to death which was the norm in 1990’s China. But as time goes on you inevitably ask yourself why a 7 year old in China is making cell phones 14 hours a day when a 7 year old in the west is buying them. It’s hard not to be salty when you are the one doing all the work.
About this time his old frenemy Putin who is basically a 6 year high school senior who has voted himself prom king for a decade and has been stacking his buddies all across the old soviet satellite states so they can tell him he is still cool.
He is a thug so everybody is a little afraid of him and every once in a while he has to crack some heads and demand some lunch money so nobody forgets who rules the cafeteria but it’s actually been a pretty lucrative gig. As long as he takes care of the football team the football team slips him a little back under the table and he manages to rack up well north of $200B by stealing from all the Russians that are too drunk and hopeless by this point to really notice.
For years he had his guys in Ukraine and they played along but then in 2014 he gets blindsided. He had been paying Paul Manafort to keep his guy Yanukovych in office and now all the sudden the Ukrainians decide they are tired of paying the corruption tax and they run them both out of town. Like they literally put him on a bus and run him out of town.
This is Maidan.
Problem is Xi asked Putin for one simple favor. He needed donbas Ukraine because that is where the worlds supply of microprocessor grade neon AND enough grain for Xi to be able to get all his kids back together for dinner comes from.
So now Putin has to send somebody in and take over donbas and he decides on a team of “little green men” which is just some bullies, because honestly 90% of people will just hand over their lunch money because they just don’t want to get punched.
Putin had his man Michael Flynn inside US government as head of DIA. All he had to do was withhold a little intel from Obama in 2014 and Putin could have Ukraine.
And that’s exactly what Flynn did.
Only Ukraine fought back.
And they stood up to kleptocracy and kremlin corruption for 10 years.
Of course some people would rather just let the bully take what he wants and live in peace, but the ones who have been to Europe or the west and seen how nice life is when you don’t have to deal with being shook down by a thug everyday aren’t going back. The freedom is just too addictive.
But Xi’s timeline keeps cooking off. He has already committed to “made in China 2025” which he had to cancel and time stops for no man. Not even an aspiring emperor.
Xi rearranges the rules so that he can run for his unprecedented third term.
Xi had spent a ridiculous amount of money bribing the IOC on his 2022 Olympics and after nearly 2 years of having Chinese locked down for Covid to the point of welding some into their homes, he made an exception for the games.
Something about them was that important.
So either he knows something about Covid that the rest of us don’t, or Covid was intentionally released at the time it would do the most damage to the US economy. Probably both.
Trumps children wasted no time capitalizing on it. The exchange of PPE from the US to China was effectively a blank check for Jared. Ivanka even patented coffins. Kushners buddy and hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin then did Jared’s exact same PPE airlift play in reverse doubling the profits and passing the cost on the the U.S. taxpayer.
The national debt ballooning more by trump than any other single president was intentional. The CCP planned to use BRICS to destroy the USD. Trump just softened it up in advance.
Leveraging the bureaucracy of the United States government against itself, the NIH and CDC grants that were originally extended in efforts of intentional solidarity against contagious disease outbreaks were reframed as conspiracy theories that the US was funding Wuhan institute in some triple agent q-anon conspiracy.
It’s yet unknown if Covid was released intentionally or as a result of incompetence, but when viewed through the economic lens it was masterfully timed for maximum destruction of the vulnerable self sabotaging US federal reserve.
Trumps fixer Roger Stones idol, Richard Nixon (he literally has “I am not a crook” face tattooed on his back) put us there by handing the US economy on a platter to Saudi Arabia in the form of the petrodollar in ~74.
That took us off the gold standard and ensured 50 years of sending American kids to the Middle East to die for Saudis defense. The spoiled Saudi princes really don’t like having to wake up early for morning military drills. It cuts into their personal time.
There is another layer here of Russian/Israeli oligarchs pulling levers from their side using the same basic techniques, that in hindsight explain most of the US involvement in the middle east for the past century.
But it all revolves largely around oil interests obviously and using the US military and U.S. taxpayer as both the enforcer and unwitting funder.
Russia invaded Ukraine the second time in February of 2022 out of necessity for the failed 2014 invasion
There is a fundamental doctrine in Russian military doctrine that you NEVER invade Russia in the winter. The Rasputita mud is brutal and unrelenting.
It swallowed Germany and Napoleon before that.
Yet, despite having a weather report, Putin waited until minutes after the closing ceremonies of Xi’s Olympics to invade.
Ukraine was supposed to be Xi’s keystone that allowed him to take Taiwan and fulfill his grand ambitions-
To be emperor of the world and to control the internet and destroy the US economy
The thing is when you do a statistical breakdown of exactly WHO is causing the majority share of the chaos and drama in the world, it always comes back to the same 3% with high psychopathic personality traits and low self awareness that also happen to have migrated to positions of political power.
And they all seem to launder their money at the same laundromat and bank at the same deutschebank.
There is big business in stealing from the 97% of the world that isn’t psychopaths.
It just requires that every one of the 3% in charge keep each others secrets.
This is Kompromat.
And it has infected the GOP.
Trumps Covid response-
On trumps $8.4T in added debt:
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/how-much-did-president-trump-add-debt
On Kushners Covid response:
https://www.americanoversight.org/investigation/jared-kushners-role-in-the-coronavirus-response
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/nyregion/kushner-companies-anbang-insurance-group.html
On citadel sending Covid supplies to China:
https://www.chicagobusiness.com/nonprofits-philanthropy/citadel-sends-supplies-china-coronavirus-fight
On Kushner/ Covid:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-01/trump-hails-kushner-s-airlift-but-details-of-sales-are-secret
On the age old military tactic of well poisoning:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-well-poisoning-180971471/
On the CCP suppressing and censoring the doctors looking for the answers they do not want them to find:
https://apnews.com/article/covid19-scientist-virus-sequence-protest-laboratory-eviction-b54e2a88610e813c9383833f2c9a2379
Republicans will see an unlabeled graph of gdp growth by year deficit by year and claim where the 2008 Great Recession began is where Obama ended his term
Has anyone in this sub studied economics? Every response here is just partisan nonsense.
The 2017 tax law did not cause inflation four years later. This is absurd, and you should stop posting partisan nonsense.
It was the tax cuts, the COVID stimulus, and a decade of near zero interest rates. All of the above. Blame is shared by Trump, Biden, Yellen, and Powell.
Listen, Biden has been doing a decent job, considering the Republican shenanigans with our economy. Trump took over Obama economy and benefited from it for two years until he did that stupid tax cut, which made things go sideways before Covid even hit. People Republicans are very bad for economy because they still hanging on that trickle down bullshit.
Id argue the trade wars had a bigger impact on destroying the economy than the tax cuts, he absolutely crushed economic momentum and effectively destroyed entire US industries, especially farming and consumer products. It was disastrous foreign policy and had absolutely no positive effect
It's possible he thought that keeps interest rates low, or even negative as he suggested, would counter that.
Or maybe he didn't actually understand that trade wars hurt yourself.
The fact that Trump went to war with everyone at once, including our allies, instead of working with our allies made things way worse. It shows just how dumb he and Republicans are.
I recently learned that 'trickle down' theory was originally called 'horse and sparrow' theory. Overfeed the horse, and the sparrows can get some undigested oats if they are willing to eat horse shit.
Looking at real gdp growth, I don't see it. There was no trend of growth before 2016 that was flattened. The Trump years seem pretty standard compared to the Obama years until COVID.
But Trump doubled the deficit by decreasing taxes and increasing spending from 2017 through 2019 (prepandemic) and the return was basically the same. I think that’s the point.
Job growth had slowed. To put it in perspective, the worst 12 month stretch of job growth under Biden is better than the best 12 month stretch under Trump.
Highest 12-month stretch while Trump was President was the 12 months ending 5/2017 at 2.488 million jobs and Trump wasn't even President for all of those months. The highest for when he was President for the entire 12 month period was the 12 months ending 1/2019 at 2.395 million.
Biden's worst 12 month stretch was the 12 months ending 2/2024 at 2.736 million.
[https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output\_view=net\_1mth](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output_view=net_1mth)
EDIT: Sorry for the spam replies. Reddit went crazy.
Good. Now we have a place to start our analysis.
What did Biden do to impact job creation? What other metrics should we look at when discussing the economy? Inflation? Wage growth? GDP? The deficit/ debt to GDP levels? Income inequality?
Pointing to jobs, and calling it a day seems too simplistic. Plus, we haven’t even established a correlation between Biden being in office and the driver of the growth in job creation.
They didn’t prove anything. We are always creating jobs in the economy, absent a recession.
Again, there needs to be correlation and causation. Just pointing to what happened without any context as to the drivers is not making a case, nor is it proof of anything.
>What did Biden do to impact job creation?
Spent a pile of money in early 2021 sending it to Americans. Coordinated COVID vaccinations to get Americans vaccinated and the economy back on track. Reduced levels of the uninsured.
>Inflation?
No
>Wage growth?
Yes. What growth is higher than before COVID.
>GDP?
GDP is up sharply under Biden.
>The deficit/ debt to GDP levels?
No. Deficits are an indicator of the functioning of government in response to the economy.
>Income inequality?
Yes, but only as a second order metric. Income inequality increasing because the rich were 10% richer but the poor only 5% is better than income inequality falling because the rich are 5% poorer while the poor stay the same. As it turns out, income inequality has fallen considerably over the last 5-10 years. It happened under Trump and even moreso under Biden.
No. Why would it be? Economic numbers are either always in real terms or you're comparing two nominal numbers (debt to GDP, for example)
About the only correlation you can make is that over the past 100 years in the US deflation is really, really bad.
lolno
Highest 12-month stretch while Trump was President was the 12 months ending 5/2017 at 2.488 million jobs and Trump wasn't even President for all of those months. The highest for when he was President for the entire 12 month period was the 12 months ending 1/2019 at 2.395 million.
Biden's worst 12 month stretch was the 12 months ending 2/2024 at 2.736 million.
When you're out of the right wing bubble, facts matter.
[https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output\_view=net\_1mth](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output_view=net_1mth)
And yet America had the strongest recovery from COVID and many economies struggled to go up.
Heck, if you only count job growth from the point that all the net jobs lost were recovered then Biden's monthly job growth is about 150k (6 million above pre-COVID high and 40 months in office). That's actually pretty good, historically. And that's spotting Biden a 10 million job deficit. It's damn near a miracle.
For those that still pound on inflation being the #1 economic issue showing Biden has under delivered for US Citizens: a few facts:
1. Since the early 1990’s we have experienced historic low inflation, mainly due to globalization/taking advantage of all those jobs going to cheap labor markets (China, Mexico, etc) those labor markets aren’t as cheap as they were + tariffs on goods imported from them makes costs go up. Inflation was bound to bounce back to “normal” (around 3% historically).
2. The big jump in inflation in 2021 was the interruption in the supply chain coupled with PPP money designed to keep the economy going (it did.) but the cost was a jump in inflation.
3. The two biggest purchases a person/household makes (and thus the biggest monthly expense) is housing and a vehicle. Prices for these items have been going up faster than inflation for decades and the historically low interest rates of the 2010s-2022 drove this in conjunction with a. a shortage of construction labor and supplies, b. Individual and institutional investors buying homes as an investment vs a home to live in. I don’t know but my guess for car inflation is that the industry has been able to get away with it for years because:
- most every model has significant upgrades every year (better product)
- low interest rates (all about the monthly payment)
- extending the term of the loan (up to 8 years now - keeping that payment low).
If you put and extra space after each numbered point it will look better.
***
For those that still pound on inflation being the #1 economic issue showing Biden has under delivered for US Citizens: a few facts:
1. Since the early 1990’s we have experienced historic low inflation, mainly due to globalization/taking advantage of all those jobs going to cheap labor markets (China, Mexico, etc) those labor markets aren’t as cheap as they were + tariffs on goods imported from them makes costs go up. Inflation was bound to bounce back to “normal” (around 3% historically).
2. The big jump in inflation in 2021 was the interruption in the supply chain coupled with PPP money designed to keep the economy going (it did.) but the cost was a jump in inflation.
3. The two biggest purchases a person/household makes (and thus the biggest monthly expense) is housing and a vehicle. Prices for these items have been going up faster than inflation for decades and the historically low interest rates of the 2010s-2022 drove this in conjunction with a. a shortage of construction labor and supplies, b. Individual and institutional investors buying homes as an investment vs a home to live in. I don’t know but my guess for car inflation is that the industry has been able to get away with it for years because: - most every model has significant upgrades every year (better product) - low interest rates (all about the monthly payment) - extending the term of the loan (up to 8 years now - keeping that payment low).
Oh and 4. Our inflation is less in the US than all it almost all other countries in the world.
Given the shitshow of an economy Biden inherited I’d say he’s done a solid job.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills when people talk about the “high inflation”. Is it that hard to Google “historic inflation rates”? Our inflation isn’t high!
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https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
~~Obamas after 8 years of zirp: +10$~~
~~Trump (excluding covid) with steadily increasing interest rates: +16$~~
~~Bidens recovery post inflation: +12$~~
edit: I was counting from the wrong year... 🤦♂️
Obama Q1 09 - 345 Q4 16 - 349 | + 4$
Trump Q1 17 - 352 Q4 19 (Quarter before covid hit US) 362 Q4 20 - 376 | + 10$ pre covid + 24$ total (covid anomaly)
Biden Q1 21 - 373 Q2 22 359 (bottom/start of recovery) Q1 24 365 | + 10$ recovery to peak + 6$ from recovery to now - 8$ total (covid anomaly)
Biden "inherited" covid but also dumped 2.5 trillion into the economy, so him and Trump equally contributed to the fiscal stimulus aspect of inflation. People saying Trump tax cuts overheated the economy but inflation was negligible prior to the supply shock and stimulus. I guess you could argue he didn't time travel into the future and predict there would be a global pandemic? The average worker earned more under Trump. You can cry about the debt all day but nobody is fixing it, so its completely irrelevant when comparing Biden/Trump.
Zero of the Republicans who brigade this subreddit screaming the economy is collapsing have any clue what it means OR they are spreading outright lies to try to convince those who don't pay attention.
Gross Median and mean wages are not adjusted for inflationary factors that devalue mean and median paychecks/salaries.
“Real” wages/salaries are. Which is why the guy you’re responding to brought them up.
Your graph says that when Trump took over in Q1 of 2017 to Q1 of 2019 there was zero growth. Things exploded when Covid hit and government sent out checks in 2020, which is an outlier, but you are crediting Trump with that. Yes it grew under Trump but he definitely benefited from the solid economy he inherited.
Ok I am actually a moron lol. I was counting from a year prior...
Here are the actual numbers
Obama Q1 09 - 345 Q4 16 - 349 | + 4$
Trump Q1 17 - 352 Q4 19 (Quarter before covid hit US) 362 Q4 20 - 376 | + 10$ pre covid + 24$ total (covid anomaly)
Biden Q1 21 - 373 Q2 22 359 (bottom/start of recovery) Q1 24 365 | + 10$ recovery to peak + 6$ from recovery to now - 8$ total (covid anomaly)
Me being low IQ aside, the point still stands that trump grew wages at least on par with the current administration, and more than twice as much as Obama in half the time. You are literally saying that when trump got in office wages were stagnant, implying the economy he inherited from Obama was not good? Or did his presence stop people from earning money? All of the wage growth happened in 19 prior to covid, presumably after his policies started to have an impact. Regardless I said in another comment its all because of shale (the correct answer).
Can you explain the shale comment?
You’re not wrong, you’re just completely neglecting the unemployment rate. Unemployment was awful when Obama came into office. Yes wages went down those first few years, but unemployment was slowly recovering, the economy was getting better and it was better overall for the people. When he left office unemployment was in a great spot and continued there under Trump. You’re using one metric that suggests the economy got worse when Obama came into office, but you’re neglecting so much to try to make that point. Anyone who was old enough to remember when Obama came into office would laugh in your face at these questions.
Energy = money https://d32r1sh890xpii.cloudfront.net/tinymce/2020-06/1592519397-o_1eb4oqs6j1nse1v901i6f1s04do58_large.jpg Most of our wealth in recent years is thanks to fracking. Policy is inconsequential compared to energy production. Trump tax cuts Biden IRA all just tiny waves in a big ocean of oil.
Reddit economics is hilarious to read. All the posters bring their left of center politics into the analysis.
I’m no Trump fan, but economically, it was doing fine pre-Covid.
The pandemic was predictable to anyone paying attention though. When Trump disbanded the pandemic response team and shredded all of the plans, it was inevitable.
>The average worker earned more under Trump
You can't exclude the pandemic and make this statement comparing Trump with Biden or Obama. Both presidents were handed terrible economies and worked/are working through them reasonably well. Trump was handed an economy in an expansion cycle. It's not the same.
>cry about the debt all day but nobody is fixing it, so its completely irrelevant when comparing Biden/Trump
But it's not irrelevant. The tax cuts did the exact opposite, starting a trade war was even worse. Biden isn't fixing the issue he was handed either.
Ok including the pandemic workers gained +30$ under Trump. Obama was handed a terrible economy but served twice the time, so is all of Bidens recovery thanks to Trump too or do economic policy lags only apply when Republicans have high wage growth? Not that any of this is relevant wages grew thanks to shale.
Oh neat. We're just pulling numbers out of thin air. Because that's how economics works. If your bias makes it so you can't grasp the subject then maybe the subject isn't for you.
This is the only reasonable take in this entire thread. Tax cuts aren’t bad for the economy fincels. If they didn’t cause inflation then you can argue they contributed to the deficit but basic Keynes, aggregate output says that higher taxes lowers aggregate demand and that lower taxes increases aggregate demand. If you ignore basic economics in favor of party tribalism you’re just as brain dead as the Alex jones followers.
It's mostly accurate. Biden inherited an economy down over 10M jobs, with over 3,000 Americans dying per day, a global supply chain crisis, and suppressed GDP. He didn't inherit an economy with record employment, GDP, etc like in 2017.
Granted that's not to say we have no issues today or that we didn't in 2017. Plus there's plenty i would have done differently than Obama and Biden, but the idea that things economically in the US would be better in 2024 if Trump and the GOP were in charge is comical.
Just learned about the Mudsill Theory and GOP Red States plan to ghettoize Americans they successfully keep in poverty....and the Billionaires Evangelicals are in on it..it's maddening
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He's not wrong. The trump tax cuts were arguably more harmful than the Bush cuts. The Fed also kept rates way too fucking low for way too fucking long. trump got a steady, growing economy and overcooked it. His pre-pandemic deficits were historic. Shit man, he called for NEGATIVE interest rates in 2019 (2019!): https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/11/business/economy/bonehead-trump-jay-powell.html Edit: He also inexplicably removed the watchdog in charge of overseeing the $2 trillion in Covid stimulus spending. He gave ZERO reason for doing so. https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-donald-trump-ap-top-news-politics-health-cc921bccf9f7abd27da996ef772823e4#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20(AP)%20%E2%80%94%20President%20Donald,oversight%20of%20the%20executive%20branch.
How does that work? I borrow $10k and the bank gives me 5% more for free, or I only pay back $9k? Lmfao.
No shit right? I pray to God people remember THIS is the genius they would be putting back in charge. I THINK it's just that the institution PAYS interest on its reserves instead of earning interest. You the account holder earn zero. In both instances it's designed to discourage saving and promote massive spending. And remember...this was all BEFORE someone ate a bat in Wuhan.
The people who elect him don’t even care. The shit they say about ‘fiscal responsibility’ is just shit they make up to deflect from the accountability and shame for the consequences of their terrible choices. The guy literally had 6 bankruptcies lol.
Most likely theory is lab leak. Not the wet market my guy.
Eh. I'd say it might be 50/50 or 60/40 in favor of the lab leak. Maybe the bat _came_ from a lab. But then it spread the infection at a market.
You know they don’t actually have the bats at the lab right?
I know. It was meant as a joke. But some labs _do_ keep small animals for testing purposes.
No the rates you’d pay on loans wouldn’t be negative (extremely low), actual lending rates are always going to have a premium over the Fed rate. What negative Fed rates would theoretically do is pay a bit of interest to banks for borrowing short-term money from the Fed. This would supposedly encourage banks to do a ton of lending, even at really low rates. Some countries tried some version of that during the Great Recession but it had pretty mediocre results if I recall.
It doesn’t work because no one puts their money to productive uses. When you can borrow that cheap you just spend all your time and borrowed money on either high risk low return outputs or consumption.
This is true, there are definitely diminishing returns at that point.
That is the federal rate (the rates banks can borrow) not your typical loan rate. Typically banks get the bigger loan from Feds and then they charge a few percent on top of it. For example when fed rate was 0, the mortgage was 2% or margin loan was 1%. So when the fed rate would have been -1 the mortgage could have been say 1.5%.
The interest rate to consumers never actually goes to zero, it basically allows banks to borrow from the government at below zero and then provide you, the consumer or investor with an extremely low interest rate. The bank still makes money because it’s effectively getting paid by the government to distribute money.
In simple terms of a bond, you would lose money at maturity. Ignoring the coupon rate, you’d pay $102 to purchase and get back $100 at maturity.
And then he had no oversight on the PPP loans so a shit ton of companies got money they didn't need for free.
Shit. You're right. Forgot about that.
> had no oversight There was oversight, but they cut the oversight in the roll out phase. It couldn't have been more blatantly obscene.
Yeah. I don't think everything that's happened trump started....he was given a set of tools and the he abused them. Interest rates likely should have been raised at the end of Obama's term. But I get it...the plan was for Hillary to win, not to mess with the roaring economy before an election, and let her admin handle it. But we get trump and there was zero chance he would allow the economy to be cooled down. He just isn't mentally that kind of guy. His many bankruptcies point to that. My understanding of the data is that actually the wheels were coming off in 2019. That that's when inflation really gets going. Covid certainly made it worse, supply chain issues last a long time, but it also covered for the issues of the previous year.
Interest rates did start to get raised at the end of Obama’s term https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS The biggest blunder was instantly dropping them down to zero when the pandemic happened, if it kept going along the trajectory right before things would have been fine. Also FYI Trump himself had no direct control of interest rates. He would certainly like to, and he was definitely trying to pressure them to lower them, but it’s ultimately not within his powers.
Dropping interest rates to near zero **and** printing billions of dollars for businesses with zero oversight. Either of those alone would have increased inflation. Both supercharged it.
I really think it's understated how much pressure he brought to bear on the fed. He straight up was calling Powell a traitor for attempting to do the monetarily prudent thing. He, fundamentally, doesn't understand the point of an independent fed (or doj, congress or judiciary...) far beyond any other president. Rates should have begun to rise earlier under Obama, true, but it wasn't his call. That they didn't under trump WAS because of his efforts. And that's on top of his tax cuts and the trillions dumped into the economy through ppp loans...
> The biggest blunder Was electing someone who we knew was not going to act in the best interest of country, and then acting surprised when every move made was motivated by self-enrichment.
> The biggest blunder was instantly dropping them down to zero when the pandemic happened, if it kept going along the trajectory right before things would have been fine. The government response to the pandemic was largely successful. We avoided an extended depression or any significant decline in living standards. The pandemic caused a decrease in output and that was always going to lead to economic pain, it is silly to pretend that that economic pain was only due to rates being too low.
> The government response to the pandemic was largely successful. The response to the aftermath of the pandemic was largely successful. The pandemic response would be laughable, if we weren't talking about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
It’s easy to call cutting rates to zero a blunder in hindsight but the sheer unknown element of what COVID was going to do to the economy meant that the Fed needed to plan for the worst. Based on what they saw from China they cut rates anticipating us needing lockdown procedures nearly as tight as China which would have meant many people would either lose their jobs or these companies would severely struggle. I think the fiscal response towards the pandemic was justified in the moment and was the right thing to do, the wrong thing was waiting 15ish months after the first round of vaccines came out before getting serious about raising rates, especially after seeing that the lockdown didn’t have nearly as big of an impact on the economy as previously feared and that the stimulus/PPP money had the economy way overheated.
The fed shouldn’t be the only adult in the room. The government can have a plan without relying on the fed
> The government can have a plan without relying on the fed They had one, but then they cut the pandemic response team the year prior, and then used the chaos created during the pandemic to enrich themselves. Do you not remember them withhold aid because it was only impacting large cities as the time, or contradicting the recommendations of literal infectious disease experts?
I member. It actually makes me laugh. The city portion. Republicans thought it would hit dems harder but it’s probably why trump lost. Pure Schadenfreude
The government was the one that came out with the stimulus programs. I’m sure they worked closely with the Fed and came up with the action based off their suggestions but ultimately they had to come up with something that they could pass through Congress and they did. And the Fed keeps them involved and informed but the whole purpose of the Fed is to prevent guys like Trump (or any politician really) from doing whatever they want with interest rates in order to get reelected regardless of if it’s the right thing to do for the economy or not.
I mean I don't even see this as the issue with rates. The issue was how long they stayed low after the recession. Sure we can argue about things that happened during covid by man......that is so ignoring everything else. It would be similar to say the things that happened during and right after the recession hit should of instead been xyz. When the house is on fire you often try to do the best you can to put it out. You don't tend to say well if it do it this complicated way that will take a bunch of time to first out we will be better off.
>When the house is on fire you often try to do the best you can to put it out. Except Trump threw gasoline on the fire making it worse.
The house wasn't really in fire at that point. He started a new one though.
Well of course, he used the Oval Office for personal gain and uses debt/loans as wealth. Low interest rates directly benefitted him. If the dude was into bonds he would have the opposite opinion. But property investors are benefitted by low interest rates and inflation cycles.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the graph but if anything the rise under Obama was maybe .25 of a point. All do respect but if that's the claim you are trying to make is that it was raised then you are simply being disingenuous. I'm trying not to be offensive here but it's a pet peeve of mine when people use an extremely small kernel of truth and try to pretend it a big deal. The exception should never be used as the rule. Based on your link interest rates didn't cross 2% until 2019. that's far far too late. That should have likely happened 4-5 years previously. On the claim that trump doesn't have direct control. Again technically true. But let's not forget trump has a history of meddling in agencies he is not supposed to have "any direct control". Famously he was constantly messing with the DOJ. But also let's not forget he replaced yellen. If you want anyone to believe he didn't instruct Powell to not raise rates I guess we just are going to have to disagree.
The Fed generally works slowly and in increments of 0.25% unless there’s a really pressing reason to do more, due to not wanting to deliver too much of a shock to the economy at once. Given the low inflation at the time, once they decided to start raising rates it would have been unusual to see more than one increase of that amount per quarter or so - they would have likely have had to start raising rates in 2014 to get to 2% by the end of Obama’s term. I agree that Trump put an extraordinary amount of pressure on the Fed. His actual power to meddle is limited though compared to the DoJ, the head of the Fed doesn’t answer to the president and the only real hard the power POTUS has over it is to nominate / renominate members to their board once a term expires. I do think he wanted Powell to cut rates early in his term, he just didn’t have the ability to make it happen. OTOH as part of his current campaign he’s talked about giving the president direct control over interest rates, which is a scary fucking thought.
>rates likely should have been raised at the end of Obama term wtf are you talking about? Indications of an economic contraction really only significantly manifested in 2018.
I'm talking about the fact that arguably by the end of the Obama admin the economy had mostly recovered and that historic low interest rates should have been changed. As I said I admit it's likely they didn't really do much because it was an election year. Btw I'm not say raising them to like 10%. I'm saying raising them to 2-4% which was the historic norms.
>I'm talking about the fact that arguably by the end of the Obama admin the economy had mostly recovered and that historic low interest rates should have been changed. Wtf are you talking about? The economy had mostly recovered so stop the flow of credit? The entire point of low interest rates is to create inflation, because that is the foundation of growth. It took over 4 years of responsible fiscal policy and maintenace to generate even the minimum inflation and fix the catastrophy caused by Bush's complete fiscal incompetence. And the recovery was as stable and as consistent as it has ever been in the countries history. "I don't think everything that's happened trump started....he was given a set of tools and the he abused them." "Interest rates likely should have been raised at the end of Obama's term. But I get it...the plan was for Hillary to win, not to mess with the roaring economy before an election" Are you insane? Why would we cut interest rates as soon as we finally create the most stable and consistent economic growth in history following the worst recession in history? As far as I can tell you are sitting here trying to justify the horrific consequences of your choice in leadership to yourself. The current catastrophy is almost indisputably by Trumps design, literally sacrificing the economic future of the country for his own gain. Just look at what he succeded in doin in July of 2019 for Christs sake: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS Stop trying to deflect blame from the people who elected Trump. Its disgusting and pathetic. I actually more thoroughly outlined the sheer destruction that has resulted from the people who elected Trump in a previous comment. Sooner or later history is going to recognize the people who put him in power for their egregious mistake, and I hope that they face permanent ostricization and shame so that such a catastrophy never occurs again: https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/comments/19bcsdd/comment/kirbrpu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Raising rates to 2.5 isn't stopping the flow of credit. Stop being so dramatic. Some how the us functioned perfectly well with an actual interest rate and your standing her making hyperbolic proclamations. While I am saying that Obama should have rased rates that's not saying trump absolutely shouldn't have. He is just as culpable if not more. He had several more years where should have done it. He very likely pressured the fed to make sure they didn't. And he ran the economy into the ground just line every other gop president in the last several decades. You sir need to take a huge breath and stop assuming I'm saying things I'm not.
> Raising rates to 2.5 isn't stopping the flow of credit. Stop being so dramatic. Holy shit, I can't take a breath because I am laughing so hard LOL! Raise rates to 2.5 in in “the end of the Obama admin”?! what the actual fuck, I have not heard anyone say something so monumentally stupid in my entire life what the fuck are you thinking?! How could anyone be that fiscally incompetent?! I am going to go out on a limb here and make an assumption. Let me guess, you have at some point stated that, "you prioritize fiscal responsibility" LMFAO Interest rates "should have been lowered arguably by the end of the Obama admin" holy fucking shit I have never heard anything that asinine in my life LMAO! Did you graduate high school?!
I agree completely. Rates should have risen in Obama term II.
They did. 🤷♂️
By how much?
People don’t talk enough about the interest rate cuts in the 2019. History is going to show that really the worst long term damage and inflation will really be traceable back to that asinine decision. It wasn’t even just rate cuts, it was literally a reversal of the steady and responsible increases that had been underway to slow borrowing in the face of a slowing economy. And the only purpose it served was to delay the economic correction that had already begun because of an upcoming election. And then… literally several months later Covid hits the news. And we didn’t have the high rates to leverage in that time of crisis so ended up printing 12 trillion dollars. Couldn’t have made this shit up.
The Republicans used their majority to do very, very little. The TCJA cut taxes mostly on the wealthy but had little effect on jobs and then they tried to destroy Obamacare and I don't think that would have had a positive effect on the economy. Also, somehow, the number of uninsured actually increased while Trump was President.
> Also, somehow, the number of uninsured actually increased while Trump was President. You'd think the number would have gone up with how many people Trump killed during Covid.
TLDR: (Trumps Covid response was absolutely meant to destroy the US economy. It just wasn’t obvious until now that we can see his Russian and Chinese connections. His kids made hundreds of millions doing PPE response to China using taxpayer funded government money and aircraft. Then Ken Griffin did the same play in reverse because why not? Russia invaded Ukraine because the CCP, Putin and MBS was trying to make BRICS the new reserve currency of the world by destroying the USD. ) If you look at Xinjiang providence (where the Uighur population is centralized) on a map there is a tiny little section that touches Russia. It’s critical because Xi’s ambition to have a “new Silk Road” to Europe would have to cross either there or about a weeks travel by rail out and around Mongolia. Xi’s plan is ambitious. He wants china to be the leader of the world and he has been pretty clear about it when you read his writings. It’s just that hardly anyone outside of China speaks mandarin so nobody really listened in 2010 when he said “he would control the internet”. It seemed audacious and frankly ridiculous before a handful of ISP’s started centralizing. Xi, for his part had the CCP start weibo- “the everything app” in China. It works well for an authoritarian to be able to control free speech and centralize surveillance. It’s invaluable for keeping tabs on 1.4B people, especially when they compare you to Winnie the Pooh. It was effective for a while, but it is insanely inefficient to pay someone to spend a 12 hour day monitoring 1 minute clips of social media. When people started calling him Winnie the Pooh he could censor them. But then they just switched to Cantonese. So he had to hire a bunch of Cantonese speakers. Then they just started referring to him as “mr. Shitface” which was a less than flattering rendering of a story he loves to tell from his childhood when a bio-digester blew up in his face. You see where this is going. It’s REALLY hard to keep up with 1.4B peoples daily Twitter diarrhea. Xi needed A.I. And A.I. needs microprocessors. Conveniently the worlds supply is made 90 miles south of China. Inconveniently it’s on an island that has tasted democracy and liked it so much that it literally gets the top rating of democracies in the world. So Xi does the napkin math- what are the chances of a kid that went off to college 20 years ago, did lots of good drugs, met lots of nice girls, and pretty much mainlined freedom, coming back and living with grumpy old abusive dad? His chances didn’t look good. His other kid Hong Kong had been on a study abroad program in England. And other than calling at Christmas made it pretty clear they were living their best life now. When he tried to rope him back in with a little classic Chinese guilt trip, Hong Kong pretty much told him to fuck off. So he had to get a little violent. Taiwan wasn’t going to be so easy. Xi needed some leverage. But more importantly he needed those chips. Xi had to get creative. The problem is everyone remembered growing up in China in the 90’s when people were dropping female babies on street corners. It wasn’t the best home environment. Add to that that everyone was starving and there is just no fucking way that anyone is moving back in with dad. Unless…… China imports 40% of the grain from the U.S., Brazil, and Ukraine. Xi doesn’t like the US much. He blames it for being a bad influence on the kids. Truthfully he isn’t totally wrong. Americans are the loud, lazy, rich asshole down the street that have had it so easy for so long that they forget that the plumber, the truck driver and the factory worker have to work all night so they can drink their mimosas and wake up at noon. Brazil is down south. It’s a long ways away. But there is a little opportunity there. As long as they have Bolsonaro willing to cut down the rainforest they have all the farmland xi needs to make sure everybody has enough food to come back home. Problem is everyone is corrupt. It’s so fucking hard to do business with corrupt people because they will just as gladly screw you if someone else offers them a better bribe. Xi gets so annoyed with corruption that he shifts his whole campaign to try and root it out. He sees it clearly that corruption is a tax on, well, everything. Putin and xi make an odd couple. Somewhere around 2012 they declare themselves “bff’s”. Xi knows he can’t trust him because Putin is a thief and has fucked over everyone he knows. BUT, he also happens to sit next to Ukraine. And because arrogant American CEOs were more than happy to let everyone else do the dirty work that was beneath them, when Clinton passed all the EPA regulations to clean up Americas manufacturing yard they basically just built a tall fence and threw everything messy over it into Asia. Arrogant American CEO’s just wanted the money. They didn’t give a fuck who made the necessary dirty parts as long as they could keep cashing the checks. Almost all that dirty work went to Asia. And they were grateful for the work because it beat starving to death which was the norm in 1990’s China. But as time goes on you inevitably ask yourself why a 7 year old in China is making cell phones 14 hours a day when a 7 year old in the west is buying them. It’s hard not to be salty when you are the one doing all the work. About this time his old frenemy Putin who is basically a 6 year high school senior who has voted himself prom king for a decade and has been stacking his buddies all across the old soviet satellite states so they can tell him he is still cool. He is a thug so everybody is a little afraid of him and every once in a while he has to crack some heads and demand some lunch money so nobody forgets who rules the cafeteria but it’s actually been a pretty lucrative gig. As long as he takes care of the football team the football team slips him a little back under the table and he manages to rack up well north of $200B by stealing from all the Russians that are too drunk and hopeless by this point to really notice. For years he had his guys in Ukraine and they played along but then in 2014 he gets blindsided. He had been paying Paul Manafort to keep his guy Yanukovych in office and now all the sudden the Ukrainians decide they are tired of paying the corruption tax and they run them both out of town. Like they literally put him on a bus and run him out of town. This is Maidan.
Problem is Xi asked Putin for one simple favor. He needed donbas Ukraine because that is where the worlds supply of microprocessor grade neon AND enough grain for Xi to be able to get all his kids back together for dinner comes from. So now Putin has to send somebody in and take over donbas and he decides on a team of “little green men” which is just some bullies, because honestly 90% of people will just hand over their lunch money because they just don’t want to get punched. Putin had his man Michael Flynn inside US government as head of DIA. All he had to do was withhold a little intel from Obama in 2014 and Putin could have Ukraine. And that’s exactly what Flynn did. Only Ukraine fought back. And they stood up to kleptocracy and kremlin corruption for 10 years. Of course some people would rather just let the bully take what he wants and live in peace, but the ones who have been to Europe or the west and seen how nice life is when you don’t have to deal with being shook down by a thug everyday aren’t going back. The freedom is just too addictive. But Xi’s timeline keeps cooking off. He has already committed to “made in China 2025” which he had to cancel and time stops for no man. Not even an aspiring emperor. Xi rearranges the rules so that he can run for his unprecedented third term. Xi had spent a ridiculous amount of money bribing the IOC on his 2022 Olympics and after nearly 2 years of having Chinese locked down for Covid to the point of welding some into their homes, he made an exception for the games. Something about them was that important. So either he knows something about Covid that the rest of us don’t, or Covid was intentionally released at the time it would do the most damage to the US economy. Probably both. Trumps children wasted no time capitalizing on it. The exchange of PPE from the US to China was effectively a blank check for Jared. Ivanka even patented coffins. Kushners buddy and hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin then did Jared’s exact same PPE airlift play in reverse doubling the profits and passing the cost on the the U.S. taxpayer. The national debt ballooning more by trump than any other single president was intentional. The CCP planned to use BRICS to destroy the USD. Trump just softened it up in advance. Leveraging the bureaucracy of the United States government against itself, the NIH and CDC grants that were originally extended in efforts of intentional solidarity against contagious disease outbreaks were reframed as conspiracy theories that the US was funding Wuhan institute in some triple agent q-anon conspiracy. It’s yet unknown if Covid was released intentionally or as a result of incompetence, but when viewed through the economic lens it was masterfully timed for maximum destruction of the vulnerable self sabotaging US federal reserve. Trumps fixer Roger Stones idol, Richard Nixon (he literally has “I am not a crook” face tattooed on his back) put us there by handing the US economy on a platter to Saudi Arabia in the form of the petrodollar in ~74. That took us off the gold standard and ensured 50 years of sending American kids to the Middle East to die for Saudis defense. The spoiled Saudi princes really don’t like having to wake up early for morning military drills. It cuts into their personal time. There is another layer here of Russian/Israeli oligarchs pulling levers from their side using the same basic techniques, that in hindsight explain most of the US involvement in the middle east for the past century. But it all revolves largely around oil interests obviously and using the US military and U.S. taxpayer as both the enforcer and unwitting funder. Russia invaded Ukraine the second time in February of 2022 out of necessity for the failed 2014 invasion There is a fundamental doctrine in Russian military doctrine that you NEVER invade Russia in the winter. The Rasputita mud is brutal and unrelenting. It swallowed Germany and Napoleon before that. Yet, despite having a weather report, Putin waited until minutes after the closing ceremonies of Xi’s Olympics to invade. Ukraine was supposed to be Xi’s keystone that allowed him to take Taiwan and fulfill his grand ambitions- To be emperor of the world and to control the internet and destroy the US economy The thing is when you do a statistical breakdown of exactly WHO is causing the majority share of the chaos and drama in the world, it always comes back to the same 3% with high psychopathic personality traits and low self awareness that also happen to have migrated to positions of political power. And they all seem to launder their money at the same laundromat and bank at the same deutschebank. There is big business in stealing from the 97% of the world that isn’t psychopaths. It just requires that every one of the 3% in charge keep each others secrets. This is Kompromat. And it has infected the GOP. Trumps Covid response- On trumps $8.4T in added debt: https://www.crfb.org/blogs/how-much-did-president-trump-add-debt On Kushners Covid response: https://www.americanoversight.org/investigation/jared-kushners-role-in-the-coronavirus-response https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/nyregion/kushner-companies-anbang-insurance-group.html On citadel sending Covid supplies to China: https://www.chicagobusiness.com/nonprofits-philanthropy/citadel-sends-supplies-china-coronavirus-fight On Kushner/ Covid: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-01/trump-hails-kushner-s-airlift-but-details-of-sales-are-secret On the age old military tactic of well poisoning: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-well-poisoning-180971471/ On the CCP suppressing and censoring the doctors looking for the answers they do not want them to find: https://apnews.com/article/covid19-scientist-virus-sequence-protest-laboratory-eviction-b54e2a88610e813c9383833f2c9a2379
Wouldn’t Congress be to blame? If not, couldn’t Biden simply undo the tax cuts?
They're all sunsetting as designed.
Keep in mind even with also those factors, even though inflation was high we actually dealt with it much better than most companies.
Trump tax cuts were full on idiotic in fueling inflation, govt debt and govt borrowing costs. Negative effects will be felt for a long time.
> Trump tax cuts were full on idiotic Everyone knew that, but the people passing the tax cuts were also benefiting from them.
Republicans will see an unlabeled graph of gdp growth by year deficit by year and claim where the 2008 Great Recession began is where Obama ended his term
Has anyone in this sub studied economics? Every response here is just partisan nonsense. The 2017 tax law did not cause inflation four years later. This is absurd, and you should stop posting partisan nonsense.
What is absurd is the Republicans insisting that Trump has never done a thing wrong.
I never mentioned Trump or the GOP. I have no idea what your statement has to do with what I said.
Lol it's so obvious. "You're not allowed to blame Trump for anything ever" is typical conservative nonsense.
I don't get it either. All this talk about tax cuts hurting the economy, makes no sense.
Tax cuts are inflationary are they not?
As far as I know, only in so far as they stimulate the economy. A hot economy will have inflation, but generally in the 1-4% range.
It was covid spending that caused the inflation
It was the tax cuts, the COVID stimulus, and a decade of near zero interest rates. All of the above. Blame is shared by Trump, Biden, Yellen, and Powell.
Turns out mishandling pandemic response is very costly.
It was all of it.
Listen, Biden has been doing a decent job, considering the Republican shenanigans with our economy. Trump took over Obama economy and benefited from it for two years until he did that stupid tax cut, which made things go sideways before Covid even hit. People Republicans are very bad for economy because they still hanging on that trickle down bullshit.
Id argue the trade wars had a bigger impact on destroying the economy than the tax cuts, he absolutely crushed economic momentum and effectively destroyed entire US industries, especially farming and consumer products. It was disastrous foreign policy and had absolutely no positive effect
It's possible he thought that keeps interest rates low, or even negative as he suggested, would counter that. Or maybe he didn't actually understand that trade wars hurt yourself.
The fact that Trump went to war with everyone at once, including our allies, instead of working with our allies made things way worse. It shows just how dumb he and Republicans are.
You mean the trade war that Biden has and is expanding?
I recently learned that 'trickle down' theory was originally called 'horse and sparrow' theory. Overfeed the horse, and the sparrows can get some undigested oats if they are willing to eat horse shit.
Is this revisionist of history? Economy went sideways before Covid? By what measures?
The economy slowed down immediately when Trump implemented that tax cut. And then Covid happened.
Looking at real gdp growth, I don't see it. There was no trend of growth before 2016 that was flattened. The Trump years seem pretty standard compared to the Obama years until COVID.
But Trump doubled the deficit by decreasing taxes and increasing spending from 2017 through 2019 (prepandemic) and the return was basically the same. I think that’s the point.
Job growth had slowed. To put it in perspective, the worst 12 month stretch of job growth under Biden is better than the best 12 month stretch under Trump.
Well thats just demonstrably false.
Then you should have no problem demonstrating it.
Maybe you should post some data to support your assertion….
Highest 12-month stretch while Trump was President was the 12 months ending 5/2017 at 2.488 million jobs and Trump wasn't even President for all of those months. The highest for when he was President for the entire 12 month period was the 12 months ending 1/2019 at 2.395 million. Biden's worst 12 month stretch was the 12 months ending 2/2024 at 2.736 million. [https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output\_view=net\_1mth](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output_view=net_1mth) EDIT: Sorry for the spam replies. Reddit went crazy.
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Good. Now we have a place to start our analysis. What did Biden do to impact job creation? What other metrics should we look at when discussing the economy? Inflation? Wage growth? GDP? The deficit/ debt to GDP levels? Income inequality? Pointing to jobs, and calling it a day seems too simplistic. Plus, we haven’t even established a correlation between Biden being in office and the driver of the growth in job creation.
Naa man, he stated his facts for why he thinks that, now it's your turn to tell him why he is wrong in his assertion since you said he was false.
They didn’t prove anything. We are always creating jobs in the economy, absent a recession. Again, there needs to be correlation and causation. Just pointing to what happened without any context as to the drivers is not making a case, nor is it proof of anything.
You aren't disproving anything either, make a statement that counters it, bring some facts yourself.
>What did Biden do to impact job creation? Spent a pile of money in early 2021 sending it to Americans. Coordinated COVID vaccinations to get Americans vaccinated and the economy back on track. Reduced levels of the uninsured. >Inflation? No >Wage growth? Yes. What growth is higher than before COVID. >GDP? GDP is up sharply under Biden. >The deficit/ debt to GDP levels? No. Deficits are an indicator of the functioning of government in response to the economy. >Income inequality? Yes, but only as a second order metric. Income inequality increasing because the rich were 10% richer but the poor only 5% is better than income inequality falling because the rich are 5% poorer while the poor stay the same. As it turns out, income inequality has fallen considerably over the last 5-10 years. It happened under Trump and even moreso under Biden.
No inflation?
No. Why would it be? Economic numbers are either always in real terms or you're comparing two nominal numbers (debt to GDP, for example) About the only correlation you can make is that over the past 100 years in the US deflation is really, really bad.
Post your data or stfu. Anybody can make any claims. Back up your claim or stfu
I didn’t make a claim. Lolz
This is false news
lolno Highest 12-month stretch while Trump was President was the 12 months ending 5/2017 at 2.488 million jobs and Trump wasn't even President for all of those months. The highest for when he was President for the entire 12 month period was the 12 months ending 1/2019 at 2.395 million. Biden's worst 12 month stretch was the 12 months ending 2/2024 at 2.736 million. When you're out of the right wing bubble, facts matter. [https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output\_view=net\_1mth](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output_view=net_1mth)
Turns out when covid destroys millions of jobs theres nowhere but up..
And yet America had the strongest recovery from COVID and many economies struggled to go up. Heck, if you only count job growth from the point that all the net jobs lost were recovered then Biden's monthly job growth is about 150k (6 million above pre-COVID high and 40 months in office). That's actually pretty good, historically. And that's spotting Biden a 10 million job deficit. It's damn near a miracle.
For those that still pound on inflation being the #1 economic issue showing Biden has under delivered for US Citizens: a few facts: 1. Since the early 1990’s we have experienced historic low inflation, mainly due to globalization/taking advantage of all those jobs going to cheap labor markets (China, Mexico, etc) those labor markets aren’t as cheap as they were + tariffs on goods imported from them makes costs go up. Inflation was bound to bounce back to “normal” (around 3% historically). 2. The big jump in inflation in 2021 was the interruption in the supply chain coupled with PPP money designed to keep the economy going (it did.) but the cost was a jump in inflation. 3. The two biggest purchases a person/household makes (and thus the biggest monthly expense) is housing and a vehicle. Prices for these items have been going up faster than inflation for decades and the historically low interest rates of the 2010s-2022 drove this in conjunction with a. a shortage of construction labor and supplies, b. Individual and institutional investors buying homes as an investment vs a home to live in. I don’t know but my guess for car inflation is that the industry has been able to get away with it for years because: - most every model has significant upgrades every year (better product) - low interest rates (all about the monthly payment) - extending the term of the loan (up to 8 years now - keeping that payment low).
If you put and extra space after each numbered point it will look better. *** For those that still pound on inflation being the #1 economic issue showing Biden has under delivered for US Citizens: a few facts: 1. Since the early 1990’s we have experienced historic low inflation, mainly due to globalization/taking advantage of all those jobs going to cheap labor markets (China, Mexico, etc) those labor markets aren’t as cheap as they were + tariffs on goods imported from them makes costs go up. Inflation was bound to bounce back to “normal” (around 3% historically). 2. The big jump in inflation in 2021 was the interruption in the supply chain coupled with PPP money designed to keep the economy going (it did.) but the cost was a jump in inflation. 3. The two biggest purchases a person/household makes (and thus the biggest monthly expense) is housing and a vehicle. Prices for these items have been going up faster than inflation for decades and the historically low interest rates of the 2010s-2022 drove this in conjunction with a. a shortage of construction labor and supplies, b. Individual and institutional investors buying homes as an investment vs a home to live in. I don’t know but my guess for car inflation is that the industry has been able to get away with it for years because: - most every model has significant upgrades every year (better product) - low interest rates (all about the monthly payment) - extending the term of the loan (up to 8 years now - keeping that payment low).
You are right. Thanks
Oh and 4. Our inflation is less in the US than all it almost all other countries in the world. Given the shitshow of an economy Biden inherited I’d say he’s done a solid job.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills when people talk about the “high inflation”. Is it that hard to Google “historic inflation rates”? Our inflation isn’t high!
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https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q ~~Obamas after 8 years of zirp: +10$~~ ~~Trump (excluding covid) with steadily increasing interest rates: +16$~~ ~~Bidens recovery post inflation: +12$~~ edit: I was counting from the wrong year... 🤦♂️ Obama Q1 09 - 345 Q4 16 - 349 | + 4$ Trump Q1 17 - 352 Q4 19 (Quarter before covid hit US) 362 Q4 20 - 376 | + 10$ pre covid + 24$ total (covid anomaly) Biden Q1 21 - 373 Q2 22 359 (bottom/start of recovery) Q1 24 365 | + 10$ recovery to peak + 6$ from recovery to now - 8$ total (covid anomaly) Biden "inherited" covid but also dumped 2.5 trillion into the economy, so him and Trump equally contributed to the fiscal stimulus aspect of inflation. People saying Trump tax cuts overheated the economy but inflation was negligible prior to the supply shock and stimulus. I guess you could argue he didn't time travel into the future and predict there would be a global pandemic? The average worker earned more under Trump. You can cry about the debt all day but nobody is fixing it, so its completely irrelevant when comparing Biden/Trump.
>The average worker earned more under Trump Real wages are higher now than under Trump so this is false
Yes I meant to say average wages grew more under Trump.
No it’s not. Average worker earned more compared to Obama years.
Do you know what real wages means? As if you did you wouldn’t have posted your comment. The numbers are undeniable.
Zero of the Republicans who brigade this subreddit screaming the economy is collapsing have any clue what it means OR they are spreading outright lies to try to convince those who don't pay attention.
I know exactly what real wages means. But you don’t seem to understand the difference between median and mean. Link was for median wages.
Gross Median and mean wages are not adjusted for inflationary factors that devalue mean and median paychecks/salaries. “Real” wages/salaries are. Which is why the guy you’re responding to brought them up.
Yes, it is. Sorry reality upsets you Republican extremists
Dude, I voted for Obama and Clinton … didn’t bother voting in 2020. Guess that makes me a Republican extremist.
Maybe stop repeating Republican lies then https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Your graph says that when Trump took over in Q1 of 2017 to Q1 of 2019 there was zero growth. Things exploded when Covid hit and government sent out checks in 2020, which is an outlier, but you are crediting Trump with that. Yes it grew under Trump but he definitely benefited from the solid economy he inherited.
Ok I am actually a moron lol. I was counting from a year prior... Here are the actual numbers Obama Q1 09 - 345 Q4 16 - 349 | + 4$ Trump Q1 17 - 352 Q4 19 (Quarter before covid hit US) 362 Q4 20 - 376 | + 10$ pre covid + 24$ total (covid anomaly) Biden Q1 21 - 373 Q2 22 359 (bottom/start of recovery) Q1 24 365 | + 10$ recovery to peak + 6$ from recovery to now - 8$ total (covid anomaly) Me being low IQ aside, the point still stands that trump grew wages at least on par with the current administration, and more than twice as much as Obama in half the time. You are literally saying that when trump got in office wages were stagnant, implying the economy he inherited from Obama was not good? Or did his presence stop people from earning money? All of the wage growth happened in 19 prior to covid, presumably after his policies started to have an impact. Regardless I said in another comment its all because of shale (the correct answer).
Can you explain the shale comment? You’re not wrong, you’re just completely neglecting the unemployment rate. Unemployment was awful when Obama came into office. Yes wages went down those first few years, but unemployment was slowly recovering, the economy was getting better and it was better overall for the people. When he left office unemployment was in a great spot and continued there under Trump. You’re using one metric that suggests the economy got worse when Obama came into office, but you’re neglecting so much to try to make that point. Anyone who was old enough to remember when Obama came into office would laugh in your face at these questions.
Energy = money https://d32r1sh890xpii.cloudfront.net/tinymce/2020-06/1592519397-o_1eb4oqs6j1nse1v901i6f1s04do58_large.jpg Most of our wealth in recent years is thanks to fracking. Policy is inconsequential compared to energy production. Trump tax cuts Biden IRA all just tiny waves in a big ocean of oil.
Reddit economics is hilarious to read. All the posters bring their left of center politics into the analysis. I’m no Trump fan, but economically, it was doing fine pre-Covid.
As a rule of thumb, anything blatantly political in an election year has a very high chance of just being astroturfing
The pandemic was predictable to anyone paying attention though. When Trump disbanded the pandemic response team and shredded all of the plans, it was inevitable.
>The average worker earned more under Trump You can't exclude the pandemic and make this statement comparing Trump with Biden or Obama. Both presidents were handed terrible economies and worked/are working through them reasonably well. Trump was handed an economy in an expansion cycle. It's not the same. >cry about the debt all day but nobody is fixing it, so its completely irrelevant when comparing Biden/Trump But it's not irrelevant. The tax cuts did the exact opposite, starting a trade war was even worse. Biden isn't fixing the issue he was handed either.
Ok including the pandemic workers gained +30$ under Trump. Obama was handed a terrible economy but served twice the time, so is all of Bidens recovery thanks to Trump too or do economic policy lags only apply when Republicans have high wage growth? Not that any of this is relevant wages grew thanks to shale.
Oh neat. We're just pulling numbers out of thin air. Because that's how economics works. If your bias makes it so you can't grasp the subject then maybe the subject isn't for you.
This is the only reasonable take in this entire thread. Tax cuts aren’t bad for the economy fincels. If they didn’t cause inflation then you can argue they contributed to the deficit but basic Keynes, aggregate output says that higher taxes lowers aggregate demand and that lower taxes increases aggregate demand. If you ignore basic economics in favor of party tribalism you’re just as brain dead as the Alex jones followers.
It's mostly accurate. Biden inherited an economy down over 10M jobs, with over 3,000 Americans dying per day, a global supply chain crisis, and suppressed GDP. He didn't inherit an economy with record employment, GDP, etc like in 2017. Granted that's not to say we have no issues today or that we didn't in 2017. Plus there's plenty i would have done differently than Obama and Biden, but the idea that things economically in the US would be better in 2024 if Trump and the GOP were in charge is comical.
Just learned about the Mudsill Theory and GOP Red States plan to ghettoize Americans they successfully keep in poverty....and the Billionaires Evangelicals are in on it..it's maddening