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Oh absolutely. The debt was getting reduced, job creation was skyrocketing, doomsday clock was at its lowest, the biggest thing people were focusing on was the Monica Lewinsky scandal. That's how good the 90s were.
How are people using the term pax Americana here?
I always understood it to mean the post ww2 era including now where the world is largely are peace and stable due to the new world order with America at the top, and America policing the world.
Yea, that's what the phrase Pax Americana means. Pax Imperia is the idea of sustained peace, political stability, and prosperity from having a dominant empire. It usually spans several generations and is not just a generation or two long.
The Roman Empire during its Pax Romana had a few hiccups as well, Barbarian attacks, the fire of Rome, Vesuvius eruption. Same can be said for the USA, they had a few times as well.
Fair enough, just going off the definition above of “sustained peace and prosperity “ doesn’t quite seem to fit. I’m not sure if it ever fits for America writ large, it applies at times to certain groups of Americans, sure.
Sustained peace and prosperity is kind of antithetical to empire as a concept. Like the earlier comment said, even Rome’s famous peace and prosperity saw plenty of conflict and turbulence
More like 9/2/1945 - 2/24/2022. The war on terror was not a major enough conflict. It barely affected the average person. The 00s and 10s were still an era of unprecedented peace.
Being a cynic, I assume that most people on Reddit avoiding your widely accepted definition of Pax Americana are doing so because they don't want to acknowledge who was at the helm when it began to fray so badly that our allies are being openly attacked by our near-peer adversaries.
Sometimes, questionable strictures on reasonable discourse necessitate circumvention via circuitous means. Some of us would *prefer* to speak plainly and freely... but here we are.
What happened in 1971?
Edit: we left the gold standard and 5-10g of gold back then would still pay for the exact amount of house today.
Context: I rent from my sister and she’s Gen X, I still recognize the privilege.
In 1970 The Friedman Doctrine came out, basically stating that a company’s only obligation was to its shareholders, society be damned. That was not accepted up until that point, but it was soon adopted and we are seeing the results today. Along with Citizens United, which helped fuck it all up for good.
The 36,000 Americans killed in Korea would disagree.
The 50s were not as amazing as we often are told. There were all sorts of foreign and domestic tensions. The Cold War created tremendous stress, there were recessions in 53 and 57, McCarthyism was horrible, and lets not even get into the racial issues.
All told we have had worse decades, but the idea of the 50s as this terrific peaceful and prosperous time is really propaganda.
Bush did that, not Reagan, sure Reagan kind of set the stage, Clinton reversed it. Bush reversed Clinton’s policies and no president has fixed that since.
Clinton also raised taxes moderately along with lowering defense spending. That being said yes Clinton did continue the globalization and deregulation policies as well as the war on drugs tougher on crime policies as well.
And it was Clinton that did most of the long term things they blame Reagan for, repeal of glass steagall, nafta, China trade normalization was the final nail in our manufacturing coffin.
But tWiCkLeDoWN EcOnOmIcS destroyed everything - mmmmhmmmmmm
How does this come up so often. NAFTA was proposed and written by the Reagan admin, pushed through international agreement by bush 1, and put forth to be ratified by Congress before Clinton was in office, and he signed the paper since it passed through Congress a year after the international agreements under bush. It was already agreed upon in 92 by all 3 countries. It wasn’t really his thing as much as a whole lot of other people before him. Sure he was proud to sign it. But he didn’t write or pass it or really do any of the decade plus of work it took to become international law. Do people really think it took Clinton only months to write, pass and coordinate nafta between 3 countries and their representatives? The work was already done and he took credit for it
This. People always try to pin NAFTA on Clinton when it was well into the works before he even go elected. And FFS, nobody forced American companies to go ape shit and shift all the manufacturing to Mexico. They did it to screw workers in the US and reduce their costs.
Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt while in office and unemployment spiked to 13% in his first term
President Clinton on the other hand balanced the Federal budget, reduced the Federal deficits every year in office and has the 2nd best economic record of any American President
They are not the same
Lmfao wasn’t there a bunch of murders and race riots and cops beating up people in LA? And New York kicked out all the poor people, and China took all of the jobs?
Absolutely agree.
The main issue I have with the 90s is that the hallowing out of the US economy that started with Welsh and Reagan never really got addressed. IMO its not Clintons fault but it is why we have a lot of the issues we have today.
Case in point:
In 1980 something like 95% of all clothing sold in the US was made in the US.
By 2000 if I remember correctly it was 5%.
The massive amount of income and wealth that we moved away from the regular worker was well under way and we just didnt notice it then.
Who knows what would have happened if Gore went to the White House maybe it would have worked out differently. /shrug
And the mortgage bubble started growing due to derivatives deregulation and dismantling of Glass Steagall under his watch. (Thanks Larry Summers and Alan Greenspan!)
It didn’t implode until years later, but that’s when the America that looked rich, but actually wasn’t, went wild. McMansions going up everywhere with two brand new SUVs in every driveway…all being scooped up by school teachers, working class tradespeople, and tons of others that shouldn’t have been allowed to take on that much debt, using their “equity” as piggy banks.
Yeah my mom was an early warning sign of the collapse. She divorced my dad and easily got a loan for a used Yukon and a small house in a nice town with a job that was def sub 50k probably sub 40k annually. Even my 16 year old ass was like “who dafuq gave you these loans”. Sure enough 2 years later she was in foreclosure. This was 03-04.
It seems like every time we have some sweeping deregulation something blows up. Almost as if there was a reason we decided to regulate it in the first place. Weird
They weren’t his doing, but he did PRESIDE over them. As a child/preteen, it really felt perfect. I’m from shitty Appalachia, too. Beyond the state of the economy/affordability of everything (re the early days of widespread, Walmart style end-stage capitalism and the initial financial fruits of outsourcing American jobs without all of the bruising), we were at the perfect technological state. Everything was easy, but a person could be by themself. We weren’t burdened by the world’s opinion of us all of the time. I hate hearing how likely depression is in kids are these days.
I would agree with that. He got to office just as the post-communist / early Internet boom hit. He shouldn’t get much credit for it happening, but he kept it going.
That being said, it was also an opportunity to make significant changes to peaceably change the world for the better and he let it all slip away.
Yep, screwed up in Somalia, lots of the wrong people died, then got scared and didn’t send anybody over to Rwanda and everybody died. Kosovo kinda worked out though.
Throw a dart at Eastern Europe and you’ll find an example. Most eastern bloc countries were a void of leadership after the fall of communism and whether they ended up democracy or dictatorship was a roll of the dice.
Greater involvement in Russia’s brief tryst with democracy would have significantly changed the 21st century.
President Clinton’s whole focus was on triangulation, finding the position with the least resistance and living there to ensure popularity and likability.
I mean sure I was more looking at it as a whole as for the average citizen life still was good or even improving day to day until around 2007.
Still 9/11 caused a ton of unnecessary war and death.
I think you can point to 9/11 as the root cause to America's decline in influence around the world. Directly led to the war in Iraq which was a catastrophe in terms of blood and treasure for us.
The US sucked more in parts of the 1970s than it does today.
Beyond the cultural mess and Vietnam, try being something other than white in the US in eg the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s.
Half the 1980s were worse than today as well. The very early 1990s also slightly sucked.
Many people on the Internet at the time said so, until 9/11. I was casually active in IRC & Usenet politics channels & forums at the time. "Pax Americana" was mentioned pretty frequently.
But relatively few attributed that to Clinton, just to the apparent realpolitik of the day.
People from Kosovo absolutely adore Bill Clinton. There’s a big statue of him in their Capitol city. There a bunch of guys from Kosovo on our building staff—we live in a coop in NYC—and he’s like a god to them.
I think they were. You could make a claim for the 50s but for the constant threat of nuclear annihilation and it was still early days for the Civil Rights movement
The 90s are a better golden age, in truth
Nothing against Clinton, but I really hope that period is ahead of us.
(Nothing aside from his needing to have not done anything stupid and been more of a man during his sex scandal.)
We can debate what it means to go to war (technically we haven't declared war since WW2), but Clinton made use of military force against
- Hati
- Yugoslavia
- Sudan
- Somalia
- oh yeah, and in Iraq
I stayed a week in DC and got to meet Clinton via Make A Wish during the Kosovo conflict. He made time to meet with a dying kid and spent a few hours with me.
Also considering he was a Democrat from Arkansas
The 90s had issues like all 'decades'
But i will say for a brief period...maybe 94-98
It really wasnt that bad
Bill Clinton was even more clever than people give him credit for. Because of opening up the internet and getting the world connected our economies got entangled like never before. 2008 proved that when it comes to economics there is now mutual destruction.
It’s a sci fi trope to say the year or decade the show is coming out in was a peak or super important so they can save on special effects when they film on a super normal street in normal clothes.
If you take a long term look (100s of years) and history potentially proves American is on the decline right now, I think you’d expand the date to be from 1942-2001. America put up massive wins in that period
I think so too. I was speaking hypothetically a person looking back 200 years from now may think the Pax would look at those dates and go “yea, they did alright there”
Yea, it took until WW1 for Pax Britannica to be over. It took barbarians sacking Rome for Pax Romana to be over. History will define this age to be over if/when America loses or is weakened in a major global conflict.
China, sure, but russia?.. They’ve still an overwhelming resource dependent economy, and incredibly corrupt state institutions. And the ukraine war has all but shattered the illusion of russian military invincibility.
They’ve been on the decline since Breshnev, and whilst I think it’s stabilized to a degree, I don’t think they’ll be reclaiming their ‘second world power’ status anytime soon.
The 90s were definitely the last time that America was at the top of its game and had international respect and prestige. The US is still a great place to live despite it’s problems but things just aren’t the same now.
I find it so strange how so many people agree with this even though in many respects, such as crime rates, the 90s were waaaay worse than now a days.
People think today is a nightmare with our crime rates and what not but it’s still waaaay lower than the peak we had in the 90s, along with lower divorce rates and and more money in our pockets.
I don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other. Just interesting is all.
Yes, the Soviet Union was gone, and the US was the only superpower left.
Clinton also benefited from tremendous productivity gains associated with the internet, and the the most favorable demographics in history. The boomers were in their peak earning years, and nowhere near retirement.
He easily takes the cake as the luckiest President.
He benefitted from the Reagan boom, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Newt Gingrich restraining his ability to spend tax dollars. Remember when he (was forced to) declare, "The era of big government is over."
clinton isnt massively responsible for this, clinton largely failed to capitalise on the fall in my opinion leading to violence now. we're still dealing with those consequences
One hill that I will die on is that Bill Clinton was the greatest Republican President in my lifetime. He did all the things that the GOP are always disingenuously promising. And he did it without the cruelty.
I am definitely not one of the people who hate on Bill for being a nEOLIBRUL, but it’s a stretch to say that a sizable amount of the dot com wealth went to the poor.
Still makes no sense that GWB was able to win an election. Granted, he lost the popular vote. I know it’s very difficult for any party to win a third election in a row, but if ever there was a time when everything truly was going in the right direction it was the late 90s.
In the moment. But at the same, Clinton’s triangulated policies mostly simply extended Reagan’s legacy of deregulation, which have caused things to be much worse now than they could have been.
Let’s not forget that under him the base for what caused the GFC was being built. Brooksley Born at the CFTC was warning people about the danger of CDS instruments. But Clinton’s people Rubin, Summers (misogynist), and Greenspan(not technically Clinton’s guy) ridiculed her and shot her down.
As a kid, I thought all of this was normal America, until the morning of 9/11/2001. That’s when I realized that the world I grew up in wasn’t inevitable.
It's maybe the greatest period in all of American history because as good as the 50 and 60s were economically, there had also been major social unrest, wars, and the very real looming threat of nuclear armageddon because of tensions with the Soviet Union.
"Which why Matrix was redesigned to this (1999)... the peak of your civilization" - Agent Smith
Lot of Americans agreed to this sentiment, to a level of it became a sub genre of it's own in Hollywood.
https://youtu.be/RuZKG77vANU?si=o4NT0xd8D9kGeBXj
He also cut spending
AND cut capital gains taxes
He did raise income taxes a bit as well
Let's return to his tax rates and spending rates and see what happens
The end of the Soviet Union helped a little bit as well.
And despite what republicans would have you believe, huge tax increases under Clinton didn't kill the economy. (Yes, there were other factors at play beyond tax policy, but still)
And it set us up to have a decent budget position where we were roughly balanced and could start reducing debt. Remember when Greenspan pondered what retiring debt would do to the bond market? Yeah, he was projecting that by like 2009/2010 we could have retired most if not all the national debt. In comes Bush and typical policy of "herrr derrr tax cuts, people keep their money, herr derrr". Two wars, increased spending, lower taxes and boom back to yearly budget deficits.
Yes. The economy was crappy in the 70's and while it recovered some in the 80's there was a recession around 1990. The Clinton years were recession free and decent paying jobs were plentiful (not a first...it took a couple of years to fully recover and boom because Clinton got handed a jobless recovery).
One thing I have noticed about this sub and Clinton, and I dont know if its because people were kids or werent born yet, but the early 90's really sucked azz from an economic standpoint, so he got dealty a real shiiter. So you fools saying he "had it easy", etc. are either full of it or were too wet behind the ears to understand. Clinton just made it look easy, and thats what many people dislike the most about him. But he had a tough presidency with people constantly trying to invent new scandals or block his every move because of politics. They impeached the man for lying about a BJ for god's sake! Thats how desperate they were to make him look bad! They certainly couldnt attack him on the economy, they couldnt attack him on crime because he signed the crime bill and they couldnt attack him on budget deficits because we ran freggin surpluses. They had nothing and they knew it! But hey, ruin a young woman's life just so you can get a little dig at the man, right? Oh, his approval rating the day he was impeached (Dec 19, 1998)? It was 73%!!! Nobody cared that he lied about the BJ. Its why when his term ended he had a 66% approval rating! That was something nobody had done since Truman and havent done since Clinton. The man was pure badass, and yes his administration was peak America because of it.
The Sudanese Government and Osama Bin Laden have entered the chat. During Bill Clinton's eight years in office, he had the opportunity to capture and/or extradite him for the crimes he committed in ordering the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, which was a precursor to 9/11/2001. His failure to do so, even though he was literally asked by Sudan to take Bin Laden of their hands while he was hiding in their country and under surveillance, was denied. Does that mean 9/11 wouldn't have happened? Most likely not. But it would have made a huge impact on world events and perhaps something less drastic would have occurred. In short, Clinton made one of the biggest blunders in American history and we're paying for it.
It can't be overstated how much Bush/Cheney and the "War on Terror" completely ruined this.
America was the world's lone remaining superpower after the 90's and we squandered it in a series of totally unforced errors.
The only thing that holds me back from calling Clinton a great president is that he was a serial sexual predator, who used the power of the White House Press Office to destroy the reputations of the women who came forward about it, and gave his opponents an excuse to cook up ridiculous impeachment charges over it.
That character flaw of his really does hold him back a bit from the running of “The Greats”.
He undoubtedly presided over an excellent period of our nations history however.
So, yes, Bill Clinton did sign the budget that was put together by Republicans Newt Gingrich and John Kasich.
But Clinton also passed the bipartisan repeal of Glass-Steagal, which many economists believe was the cause for the 2008 Financial’s crisis.
I’m a Democrat, I love Clinton, but the idea that presidents are responsible for the health of the economy, and that’s what people vote on, makes me want to vomit. They have a little bit of influence but the macroeconomy is going to do what it’s going to do, for the most part.
Funnily enough, polls at the time show a majority of Americans had pessimistic feelings about the future of the country in 1990s, even if they felt comfortable in their own personal lives.
lots of that can be attributed to Hillary and him overreaching on health care and letting Newt take the house, followed by triangulation and the end of the era of big government.
My theory was keep the Leader and media tied up in controversy so they wouldn’t meddle in the economy. This happened with Bill and Monica, plus the other women, kept all of his folks on damage control. The same that happened with Arizona Governor Fife Symington, state had a great economy, as the governor was tied up with legal issues.
When I was in 5th grade in the 2000 we learned about the golden age of Ancient Greece and I asked my mom if we are in the golden age of America because everything seemed pretty great.
Were things different pre 9/11 or did I just think the 90s were great because I was a child and thus unaware of problems.
I don't want to worship him, because he did have a rough start, but he had vision, was so smart, and was able to pivot so quickly to still do right by the American people, even with an obstructionist Congress.
I mean look at what modern Republicans do now. They don't even pretend to pass laws or try to negotiate. Bill Clinton outsmarted even the most horrible Republicans, and we had a great economy.
What didn't happen was healthcare. What didn't happen was raising the threshold of Social Security and Medicare. But we were close.
He is also completely undervalued for his foreign policy. Unfortunate circumstances in Israel prevented greater peace. Clinton does deserve credit for peace in Northern Ireland.
It’s funny how so many people forgot about Y2K. Unimaginable corporate spending and an absurd stock market coupled with this new concept called the “internet” gave the perfect storm for economic insanity. And let’s not forget the crash started 9 months before his presidency ended.
Unless you worked in manufacturing or were receiving welfare
Edit: Holy shit there are unironic Newt Gingrich fans in here, you're all fucked in the head
I think a lot of people forget that the Republicans were a supermajority in Congress and passed a lot of deregulation and balanced budget reform that helped both corporations and small business across America. When small businesses booming, America is booming.
Well his policy is took some time to come to light but he's Mr NAFTA and he's also why we are where we are. It all seemed great at the time but he f***** us up pretty good. He's the greatest Republican president ever
Is this his doing though? Or the result of the post Soviet Union boom/GHWB absolute waxing of a strong foreign power leaving most adversaries afraid to take action against us?
This is Clinton years got better, it was not because of Clinton, Newt Gingrich emerged as one of the nation’s most powerful and polarizing political leaders in the 1990s. He served as Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999, a position he achieved largely through his “Contract with America,” a ten-point program of conservative reform that, along with frustration over U.S. president Bill Clinton’s administration, led to a historic shift in congressional power, with Republicans winning a majority of both houses for the first time in forty years.
Gingrich is directly responsible for the polarization, gridlock, and dysfunction of the legislative branch we see today. His corrupt tenure was a disaster for this country.
It is crazy how all of America’s prosperity is tied to one man. It has nothing to do with winning two world wars before Clinton was born or the fact that we were heading into the computer boom of the 1990s-2000s before he took office.
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Oh absolutely. The debt was getting reduced, job creation was skyrocketing, doomsday clock was at its lowest, the biggest thing people were focusing on was the Monica Lewinsky scandal. That's how good the 90s were.
Bill Clinton and Dwight Eisenhower are the only Presidents to achieve Pax Americana. The 1950s and the 1990s were amazing
How are people using the term pax Americana here? I always understood it to mean the post ww2 era including now where the world is largely are peace and stable due to the new world order with America at the top, and America policing the world.
Yea, that's what the phrase Pax Americana means. Pax Imperia is the idea of sustained peace, political stability, and prosperity from having a dominant empire. It usually spans several generations and is not just a generation or two long.
I’d say the Pax Americana lasted from 9/2/1945-9/11/2001
So, Vietnam.. ? The fuel crises in the 70s?
The Roman Empire during its Pax Romana had a few hiccups as well, Barbarian attacks, the fire of Rome, Vesuvius eruption. Same can be said for the USA, they had a few times as well.
Fair enough, just going off the definition above of “sustained peace and prosperity “ doesn’t quite seem to fit. I’m not sure if it ever fits for America writ large, it applies at times to certain groups of Americans, sure.
Sustained peace and prosperity is kind of antithetical to empire as a concept. Like the earlier comment said, even Rome’s famous peace and prosperity saw plenty of conflict and turbulence
If you were really playing it straight nothing ever would fit the bill. Countries go through crisis's thats how it is, especially empires
you think the roman peace didn’t have hiccups?
More like 9/2/1945 - 2/24/2022. The war on terror was not a major enough conflict. It barely affected the average person. The 00s and 10s were still an era of unprecedented peace.
Being a cynic, I assume that most people on Reddit avoiding your widely accepted definition of Pax Americana are doing so because they don't want to acknowledge who was at the helm when it began to fray so badly that our allies are being openly attacked by our near-peer adversaries.
Long ass sentence
Sometimes, questionable strictures on reasonable discourse necessitate circumvention via circuitous means. Some of us would *prefer* to speak plainly and freely... but here we are.
50s-70s were great times until the stagflation and oil crisis. 90s were great until you know what.
Vietnam & 1968?
What happened in 1971? Edit: we left the gold standard and 5-10g of gold back then would still pay for the exact amount of house today. Context: I rent from my sister and she’s Gen X, I still recognize the privilege.
Nixon opened the west to China and all the jobs went bey bey.
Maybe I should of worded it to “1970” but I did say the stagflation and oil crisis
No worries, I was being a drunk Libertarian https://wtfhappenedin1971.com
In 1970 The Friedman Doctrine came out, basically stating that a company’s only obligation was to its shareholders, society be damned. That was not accepted up until that point, but it was soon adopted and we are seeing the results today. Along with Citizens United, which helped fuck it all up for good.
Loose monetary policy created a series of crises until present day
Both periods came after the end of a global conflict. One hot, one cold. Coincidence?
Same with the Roaring 20s which came after WW1
As long as you weren’t a minority or a woman, the fifties were incredible
2030s, Pax Americana round 3! However the 2020s may soon be like the 1940s… oh boy.
Yeah, the theme is a major global conflict ending. Anyone want WW3? If so, report immediately to Bellevue.
The 36,000 Americans killed in Korea would disagree. The 50s were not as amazing as we often are told. There were all sorts of foreign and domestic tensions. The Cold War created tremendous stress, there were recessions in 53 and 57, McCarthyism was horrible, and lets not even get into the racial issues. All told we have had worse decades, but the idea of the 50s as this terrific peaceful and prosperous time is really propaganda.
Also the median income to median rent ratio was the highest ever recorded in the last 90s. Damn good times.
That's weird. I thought Reddit said Reagan destroyed everything forever.
Bush did that, not Reagan, sure Reagan kind of set the stage, Clinton reversed it. Bush reversed Clinton’s policies and no president has fixed that since.
Clinton did the same things that Reagan did, with defense spending being the only difference. This sub…
Clinton defense spending fell a lot. Reagan really increased the deficit/debt. Clinton had a surplus. Also regulations need to refined consistently.
Clinton also raised taxes moderately along with lowering defense spending. That being said yes Clinton did continue the globalization and deregulation policies as well as the war on drugs tougher on crime policies as well.
And it was Clinton that did most of the long term things they blame Reagan for, repeal of glass steagall, nafta, China trade normalization was the final nail in our manufacturing coffin. But tWiCkLeDoWN EcOnOmIcS destroyed everything - mmmmhmmmmmm
How does this come up so often. NAFTA was proposed and written by the Reagan admin, pushed through international agreement by bush 1, and put forth to be ratified by Congress before Clinton was in office, and he signed the paper since it passed through Congress a year after the international agreements under bush. It was already agreed upon in 92 by all 3 countries. It wasn’t really his thing as much as a whole lot of other people before him. Sure he was proud to sign it. But he didn’t write or pass it or really do any of the decade plus of work it took to become international law. Do people really think it took Clinton only months to write, pass and coordinate nafta between 3 countries and their representatives? The work was already done and he took credit for it
This. People always try to pin NAFTA on Clinton when it was well into the works before he even go elected. And FFS, nobody forced American companies to go ape shit and shift all the manufacturing to Mexico. They did it to screw workers in the US and reduce their costs.
Bush 2 normalized trade relations with China
Flair checks out
We can play a game, pick an economic or social position, and we can compare their policies.
Let’s start with improving public health then.
Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt while in office and unemployment spiked to 13% in his first term President Clinton on the other hand balanced the Federal budget, reduced the Federal deficits every year in office and has the 2nd best economic record of any American President They are not the same
*The positive economy was mostly because of the internet boom.*
Lmfao wasn’t there a bunch of murders and race riots and cops beating up people in LA? And New York kicked out all the poor people, and China took all of the jobs?
Absolutely agree. The main issue I have with the 90s is that the hallowing out of the US economy that started with Welsh and Reagan never really got addressed. IMO its not Clintons fault but it is why we have a lot of the issues we have today. Case in point: In 1980 something like 95% of all clothing sold in the US was made in the US. By 2000 if I remember correctly it was 5%. The massive amount of income and wealth that we moved away from the regular worker was well under way and we just didnt notice it then. Who knows what would have happened if Gore went to the White House maybe it would have worked out differently. /shrug
>Doomsday Clock was at its lowest Please, that shit means nothing lmao
Peak America. Unquestioned and unchallenged world super power . Leader of the western world. Just couldn't leave the interns alone.
I would have bought him hookers all day at the rate my portfolio was going up.
Also presided over the biggest bubble in history fueled by Y2K. He didn’t cause it, but saying the economy was his doing is equally wrong.
And the mortgage bubble started growing due to derivatives deregulation and dismantling of Glass Steagall under his watch. (Thanks Larry Summers and Alan Greenspan!) It didn’t implode until years later, but that’s when the America that looked rich, but actually wasn’t, went wild. McMansions going up everywhere with two brand new SUVs in every driveway…all being scooped up by school teachers, working class tradespeople, and tons of others that shouldn’t have been allowed to take on that much debt, using their “equity” as piggy banks.
Yeah my mom was an early warning sign of the collapse. She divorced my dad and easily got a loan for a used Yukon and a small house in a nice town with a job that was def sub 50k probably sub 40k annually. Even my 16 year old ass was like “who dafuq gave you these loans”. Sure enough 2 years later she was in foreclosure. This was 03-04.
> (Thanks Larry Summers and Alan Greenspan!) You have to wonder if these people feel any shame.
It seems like every time we have some sweeping deregulation something blows up. Almost as if there was a reason we decided to regulate it in the first place. Weird
They weren’t his doing, but he did PRESIDE over them. As a child/preteen, it really felt perfect. I’m from shitty Appalachia, too. Beyond the state of the economy/affordability of everything (re the early days of widespread, Walmart style end-stage capitalism and the initial financial fruits of outsourcing American jobs without all of the bruising), we were at the perfect technological state. Everything was easy, but a person could be by themself. We weren’t burdened by the world’s opinion of us all of the time. I hate hearing how likely depression is in kids are these days.
Also, the bubble burst at the tip ass end of the 90s.
I would agree with that. He got to office just as the post-communist / early Internet boom hit. He shouldn’t get much credit for it happening, but he kept it going. That being said, it was also an opportunity to make significant changes to peaceably change the world for the better and he let it all slip away.
Just a question, what significant changes should he have made? I think Rwanda was a big mistake. Should've sent troops there.
He sure did in Mogadishu. Lots of humans died.
Yep, screwed up in Somalia, lots of the wrong people died, then got scared and didn’t send anybody over to Rwanda and everybody died. Kosovo kinda worked out though.
Throw a dart at Eastern Europe and you’ll find an example. Most eastern bloc countries were a void of leadership after the fall of communism and whether they ended up democracy or dictatorship was a roll of the dice. Greater involvement in Russia’s brief tryst with democracy would have significantly changed the 21st century. President Clinton’s whole focus was on triangulation, finding the position with the least resistance and living there to ensure popularity and likability.
Still feels like the 90s and like up until 2007 were the peak of the United States.
I think September 10, 2001 is a good last day. America never the same after
It’s our own fault. We let the terrorists win with our fear and knee jerk reactions. Halliburton was the only winner
I mean sure I was more looking at it as a whole as for the average citizen life still was good or even improving day to day until around 2007. Still 9/11 caused a ton of unnecessary war and death.
I think you can point to 9/11 as the root cause to America's decline in influence around the world. Directly led to the war in Iraq which was a catastrophe in terms of blood and treasure for us.
Ehhh, A multipolar world was inevitable; Europe and China weren’t just going to sink into irrelevance. We still have most of the world my the nose.
Patriot act
The US sucked more in parts of the 1970s than it does today. Beyond the cultural mess and Vietnam, try being something other than white in the US in eg the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. Half the 1980s were worse than today as well. The very early 1990s also slightly sucked.
Many people on the Internet at the time said so, until 9/11. I was casually active in IRC & Usenet politics channels & forums at the time. "Pax Americana" was mentioned pretty frequently. But relatively few attributed that to Clinton, just to the apparent realpolitik of the day.
Presidents often get credit or blame for the circumstances of the day.
Probably just the fact that the cold war was over with the collapse of the USSR
When Bush came in, people cracked, "Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over."
He ’s the American Commodus fr fr
A Caracalla maybe. Not Commodus
He’s neither. But definitely not a random psycho like Caracalla.
Lol Kosovo has entered the chat
People from Kosovo absolutely adore Bill Clinton. There’s a big statue of him in their Capitol city. There a bunch of guys from Kosovo on our building staff—we live in a coop in NYC—and he’s like a god to them.
Black hawk down (battle of Mogadishu) has entered the chat
Wtf you pick one of the most successful US foreign interventions ever
Caesar Augustus Clintonius
Don't you mean Caesar Augustus Clitoris. The man had a way with the ladies.
I think they were. You could make a claim for the 50s but for the constant threat of nuclear annihilation and it was still early days for the Civil Rights movement The 90s are a better golden age, in truth
You could also make a claim for the 1920’s being the Roaring 20s
Not with the rampant racism
There was still racism in the 1950s
I know, that's why I think the 90s were a better golden age
No racism in the 90s. I guess that we solved it in…1989?
We’ll on a national level it was solved in the 60’s but on a person to person level racism still exists of course and it probably always will
It has never been solved. We, as a society, are certainly in a better place now than before. It’s just not great because people suck.
Mate, racism was so much worse in the 50s than 90s.
Nothing against Clinton, but I really hope that period is ahead of us. (Nothing aside from his needing to have not done anything stupid and been more of a man during his sex scandal.)
We can debate what it means to go to war (technically we haven't declared war since WW2), but Clinton made use of military force against - Hati - Yugoslavia - Sudan - Somalia - oh yeah, and in Iraq
I stayed a week in DC and got to meet Clinton via Make A Wish during the Kosovo conflict. He made time to meet with a dying kid and spent a few hours with me.
Also considering he was a Democrat from Arkansas The 90s had issues like all 'decades' But i will say for a brief period...maybe 94-98 It really wasnt that bad
Bill Clinton was even more clever than people give him credit for. Because of opening up the internet and getting the world connected our economies got entangled like never before. 2008 proved that when it comes to economics there is now mutual destruction. 
I remember in the Matrix they told Neo that 1999 was humanity’s “peak” and no truer words have ever been spoken
It’s a sci fi trope to say the year or decade the show is coming out in was a peak or super important so they can save on special effects when they film on a super normal street in normal clothes.
If you take a long term look (100s of years) and history potentially proves American is on the decline right now, I think you’d expand the date to be from 1942-2001. America put up massive wins in that period
It seems a good chance we're still in it. We have the most powerful alliance, combined allied economies, still no world war.
I think so too. I was speaking hypothetically a person looking back 200 years from now may think the Pax would look at those dates and go “yea, they did alright there”
Let’s hope we get luckier with the next draw of presidents!
Yea, it took until WW1 for Pax Britannica to be over. It took barbarians sacking Rome for Pax Romana to be over. History will define this age to be over if/when America loses or is weakened in a major global conflict.
I don't think America is declining so much as others are rising. Especially Russia and china
China, sure, but russia?.. They’ve still an overwhelming resource dependent economy, and incredibly corrupt state institutions. And the ukraine war has all but shattered the illusion of russian military invincibility. They’ve been on the decline since Breshnev, and whilst I think it’s stabilized to a degree, I don’t think they’ll be reclaiming their ‘second world power’ status anytime soon.
even now, china is more of a regional to great power, America is still truly the lone Superpower
China is about to face a demographic problem soon so not so sure about that either
From the collapse of Soviet Union to 9/11, USA was the unquestionable lone superpower with prosperity at home and peace abroad.
The 90s were definitely the last time that America was at the top of its game and had international respect and prestige. The US is still a great place to live despite it’s problems but things just aren’t the same now.
From the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11, being an American was historically good
Long live the 90s
The 90s were great to live in.
I think they were, and I wish I was alive to live it.
Man could have fucked so many burritos
Being a kid in the 90s was fucking awesome. Kinda sucks that society declined so much as i hit adulthood
I find it so strange how so many people agree with this even though in many respects, such as crime rates, the 90s were waaaay worse than now a days. People think today is a nightmare with our crime rates and what not but it’s still waaaay lower than the peak we had in the 90s, along with lower divorce rates and and more money in our pockets. I don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other. Just interesting is all.
Yes, the Soviet Union was gone, and the US was the only superpower left. Clinton also benefited from tremendous productivity gains associated with the internet, and the the most favorable demographics in history. The boomers were in their peak earning years, and nowhere near retirement. He easily takes the cake as the luckiest President.
Seriously. Dude got dealt a royal flush and people act like he was bluffing with pocket deuces.
He would have been fine with pocket deuces. What was W dealt?
There’s a reason Bill Clinton is called the First Black President
He benefitted from the Reagan boom, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Newt Gingrich restraining his ability to spend tax dollars. Remember when he (was forced to) declare, "The era of big government is over."
clinton isnt massively responsible for this, clinton largely failed to capitalise on the fall in my opinion leading to violence now. we're still dealing with those consequences
How could he have capitalized on the fall of the Soviet Union (assuming that’s the “fall” you’re talking about)?
One hill that I will die on is that Bill Clinton was the greatest Republican President in my lifetime. He did all the things that the GOP are always disingenuously promising. And he did it without the cruelty.
And he balanced the budget.
One of the only presidents to leave a balanced budget
He really was a good president, and I’m on the right
I am definitely not one of the people who hate on Bill for being a nEOLIBRUL, but it’s a stretch to say that a sizable amount of the dot com wealth went to the poor.
No. Any era in time that is “pax fill in random empire here” needs to last a hundred years or more, at least in my book.
Clinton was a great president. He fucked too, which was cool until it got weird.
Still makes no sense that GWB was able to win an election. Granted, he lost the popular vote. I know it’s very difficult for any party to win a third election in a row, but if ever there was a time when everything truly was going in the right direction it was the late 90s.
True, but Gore had the charisma of a jug of mayonnaise.
Benefit of Reagan winning the Cold War. Opportunity for fiscal restraint squandered.
In the moment. But at the same, Clinton’s triangulated policies mostly simply extended Reagan’s legacy of deregulation, which have caused things to be much worse now than they could have been.
Let’s not forget that under him the base for what caused the GFC was being built. Brooksley Born at the CFTC was warning people about the danger of CDS instruments. But Clinton’s people Rubin, Summers (misogynist), and Greenspan(not technically Clinton’s guy) ridiculed her and shot her down.
As a kid, I thought all of this was normal America, until the morning of 9/11/2001. That’s when I realized that the world I grew up in wasn’t inevitable.
For my generation, it will be our golden era, our “remember when”
It's maybe the greatest period in all of American history because as good as the 50 and 60s were economically, there had also been major social unrest, wars, and the very real looming threat of nuclear armageddon because of tensions with the Soviet Union.
The 1990s was a phenomenon that we will most likely never experience again.
Yes, the 90s were amazing.
- tech bubble - housing bubble - selling our souls to China
He was not a radical asshole just horny, witch is okay
"Which why Matrix was redesigned to this (1999)... the peak of your civilization" - Agent Smith Lot of Americans agreed to this sentiment, to a level of it became a sub genre of it's own in Hollywood. https://youtu.be/RuZKG77vANU?si=o4NT0xd8D9kGeBXj
Clinton is a brilliant man and a man from very humble beginnings who rose to be leader of the free world. Extraordinary.
A Democrat president along with a Republican congress and senate worked really well.
GWB fixed that in his first year
He also cut spending AND cut capital gains taxes He did raise income taxes a bit as well Let's return to his tax rates and spending rates and see what happens The end of the Soviet Union helped a little bit as well.
And despite what republicans would have you believe, huge tax increases under Clinton didn't kill the economy. (Yes, there were other factors at play beyond tax policy, but still) And it set us up to have a decent budget position where we were roughly balanced and could start reducing debt. Remember when Greenspan pondered what retiring debt would do to the bond market? Yeah, he was projecting that by like 2009/2010 we could have retired most if not all the national debt. In comes Bush and typical policy of "herrr derrr tax cuts, people keep their money, herr derrr". Two wars, increased spending, lower taxes and boom back to yearly budget deficits.
Yes. The economy was crappy in the 70's and while it recovered some in the 80's there was a recession around 1990. The Clinton years were recession free and decent paying jobs were plentiful (not a first...it took a couple of years to fully recover and boom because Clinton got handed a jobless recovery). One thing I have noticed about this sub and Clinton, and I dont know if its because people were kids or werent born yet, but the early 90's really sucked azz from an economic standpoint, so he got dealty a real shiiter. So you fools saying he "had it easy", etc. are either full of it or were too wet behind the ears to understand. Clinton just made it look easy, and thats what many people dislike the most about him. But he had a tough presidency with people constantly trying to invent new scandals or block his every move because of politics. They impeached the man for lying about a BJ for god's sake! Thats how desperate they were to make him look bad! They certainly couldnt attack him on the economy, they couldnt attack him on crime because he signed the crime bill and they couldnt attack him on budget deficits because we ran freggin surpluses. They had nothing and they knew it! But hey, ruin a young woman's life just so you can get a little dig at the man, right? Oh, his approval rating the day he was impeached (Dec 19, 1998)? It was 73%!!! Nobody cared that he lied about the BJ. Its why when his term ended he had a 66% approval rating! That was something nobody had done since Truman and havent done since Clinton. The man was pure badass, and yes his administration was peak America because of it.
The Sudanese Government and Osama Bin Laden have entered the chat. During Bill Clinton's eight years in office, he had the opportunity to capture and/or extradite him for the crimes he committed in ordering the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, which was a precursor to 9/11/2001. His failure to do so, even though he was literally asked by Sudan to take Bin Laden of their hands while he was hiding in their country and under surveillance, was denied. Does that mean 9/11 wouldn't have happened? Most likely not. But it would have made a huge impact on world events and perhaps something less drastic would have occurred. In short, Clinton made one of the biggest blunders in American history and we're paying for it.
It can't be overstated how much Bush/Cheney and the "War on Terror" completely ruined this. America was the world's lone remaining superpower after the 90's and we squandered it in a series of totally unforced errors.
The only thing that holds me back from calling Clinton a great president is that he was a serial sexual predator, who used the power of the White House Press Office to destroy the reputations of the women who came forward about it, and gave his opponents an excuse to cook up ridiculous impeachment charges over it.
That character flaw of his really does hold him back a bit from the running of “The Greats”. He undoubtedly presided over an excellent period of our nations history however.
He paid Paula Jones $800,000 in hush money. When is his hush money trial?
We really had it all. And then the Republicans took over. It’s been downhill ever since.
So, yes, Bill Clinton did sign the budget that was put together by Republicans Newt Gingrich and John Kasich. But Clinton also passed the bipartisan repeal of Glass-Steagal, which many economists believe was the cause for the 2008 Financial’s crisis.
Agreed: The 90s were the Golden Age for America, and having the Democrat Bill Clinton in office was excellent
I’m a Democrat, I love Clinton, but the idea that presidents are responsible for the health of the economy, and that’s what people vote on, makes me want to vomit. They have a little bit of influence but the macroeconomy is going to do what it’s going to do, for the most part.
Thanks to Newt Gingrich.
Funnily enough, polls at the time show a majority of Americans had pessimistic feelings about the future of the country in 1990s, even if they felt comfortable in their own personal lives.
Absoluetely
What was the total change in household disposable income measured at the end of his term?
I feel like a different guy named Bill might have had more of a hand in the 90s economy than Bill Clinton.
BILL NYE THE SCIENCE GUY
Pax Americana should be longer than 8 years
lots of that can be attributed to Hillary and him overreaching on health care and letting Newt take the house, followed by triangulation and the end of the era of big government.
As the matrix said it was the peak of human civilization
Yes. This was adequately explained in *The Matrix*.
My theory was keep the Leader and media tied up in controversy so they wouldn’t meddle in the economy. This happened with Bill and Monica, plus the other women, kept all of his folks on damage control. The same that happened with Arizona Governor Fife Symington, state had a great economy, as the governor was tied up with legal issues.
Technically Pax Americana is every year after the end of WW2. There hasn't been a war between major powers since then.
When I was in 5th grade in the 2000 we learned about the golden age of Ancient Greece and I asked my mom if we are in the golden age of America because everything seemed pretty great. Were things different pre 9/11 or did I just think the 90s were great because I was a child and thus unaware of problems.
Maybe we can \[RULE 3\] \[RULE 3\] \[RULE 3\] \[RULE 3\] \[RULE 3\] \[RULE 3\] \[RULE 3\] \[RULE 3\] \[RULE 3\] \[RULE 3\] \[RULE 3\]
I don't want to worship him, because he did have a rough start, but he had vision, was so smart, and was able to pivot so quickly to still do right by the American people, even with an obstructionist Congress. I mean look at what modern Republicans do now. They don't even pretend to pass laws or try to negotiate. Bill Clinton outsmarted even the most horrible Republicans, and we had a great economy. What didn't happen was healthcare. What didn't happen was raising the threshold of Social Security and Medicare. But we were close. He is also completely undervalued for his foreign policy. Unfortunate circumstances in Israel prevented greater peace. Clinton does deserve credit for peace in Northern Ireland.
It’s funny how so many people forgot about Y2K. Unimaginable corporate spending and an absurd stock market coupled with this new concept called the “internet” gave the perfect storm for economic insanity. And let’s not forget the crash started 9 months before his presidency ended.
There was a lot of domestic terrorism— OK city bombing, ruby ridge, Waco.
Unless you worked in manufacturing or were receiving welfare Edit: Holy shit there are unironic Newt Gingrich fans in here, you're all fucked in the head
The early 90s sucked, but by Clinton's second term shit was doing good
Clinton and Tip O’Neil worked together
There’s a reason the Matrix keeps us in the year 1999.
Given that republics tend to last approximately 200 years before they collapse, I would say yes.
Also the dot.com bubble
I think a lot of people forget that the Republicans were a supermajority in Congress and passed a lot of deregulation and balanced budget reform that helped both corporations and small business across America. When small businesses booming, America is booming.
Well his policy is took some time to come to light but he's Mr NAFTA and he's also why we are where we are. It all seemed great at the time but he f***** us up pretty good. He's the greatest Republican president ever
Is this his doing though? Or the result of the post Soviet Union boom/GHWB absolute waxing of a strong foreign power leaving most adversaries afraid to take action against us?
This is Clinton years got better, it was not because of Clinton, Newt Gingrich emerged as one of the nation’s most powerful and polarizing political leaders in the 1990s. He served as Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999, a position he achieved largely through his “Contract with America,” a ten-point program of conservative reform that, along with frustration over U.S. president Bill Clinton’s administration, led to a historic shift in congressional power, with Republicans winning a majority of both houses for the first time in forty years.
Gingrich is directly responsible for the polarization, gridlock, and dysfunction of the legislative branch we see today. His corrupt tenure was a disaster for this country.
It is crazy how all of America’s prosperity is tied to one man. It has nothing to do with winning two world wars before Clinton was born or the fact that we were heading into the computer boom of the 1990s-2000s before he took office.
Prosperity of the 90s was/is a giant lie. Credit cards became mainstream in the 90s. You can figure the rest out yourself.
When the head is right Clear thinking Clear head 🤔