Tag Archives: Job Growth

Truth vs. Fantasy in Today’s Politics, Part 2

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My previous post dealt with false talking points Republican presidential candidates are repeating over and over. It may not be a surprise that these clowns are ignoring reality regarding the economy, immigration and crime. But there are even bigger myths worth noting. Here are two big differences between reality and Republican bullshit.

Republicans have convinced many voters that they’re better at handling the economy than Democrats. Is it because Republicans claim to love capitalism, especially big business, so much? Here’s the job growth under the most recent Democratic and Republican presidents. The difference is rather amazing and certainly not well-known. Under the last three Democrats, the economy added 46.9 million jobs. Under the last three Republican presidents, the ones who supposedly know how to nurture the economy, the increase was a pathetic 1.9 million (from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Simon Rosenberg):

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But wait! Does the economy grow under Democrats because they’re the party of “borrow and spend”? Hardly. It’s because Democrats try to spread the wealth, not concentrate it at the top. Since Reagan was president, Republicans have added red ink through reckless, unproductive tax cuts, while Democrats have restored fiscal sanity (from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and the Tennessee Holler site):

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Deficits went up under Reagan, the two Bushes and the last guy. They’ve gone down under Clinton, Obama and Biden. It’s no surprise that cutting taxes for the rich and corporations increases the national debt but a healthier economy under Democratic presidents makes deficits go down.

Here’s one last chart. Politicians have been talking about bringing back American manufacturing jobs for as long as I can remember. Now it looks like it’s actually happening. This chart shows spending on factory construction (adjusted for inflation). To the left is the second Bush presidency, showing factory construction increasing until the 2008 financial crisis (the vertical gray line) that started in Bush’s second term. Construction recovered in Obama’s first term, was stagnant or declined during the last president’s single term, and then took off with Biden in the White House.  From the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau and Steven Rattner:

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From Yahoo Financial News:

President Obama tried to revitalize American manufacturing, with little to show for it. President Txxxx tried too, with similarly unimpressive results.

Under President Biden, however, a manufacturing boom finally seems to be getting started. Since the beginning of 2022, construction spending on new factories has more than doubled, from an annualized rate of $91 billion in January 2022 to $189 billion in April 2023, the latest data available. That’s the biggest jump, by far, in data going back to 2002….

Private-sector firms are building more US factories to cash in on an unprecedented spate of legislation Biden has signed providing federal funding and incentives for infrastructure development, a massive green-energy buildout, and a revitalized semiconductor industry. Three separate bills passed by the Democratic Congress in 2021 and 2022, and signed by Biden, will provide well over $1 trillion in federal spending, tax breaks, and other incentives meant to build more important products in the United States and reduce reliance on importers, mostly China.

Republicans would have you believe the American economy is in deep trouble and they’d do a better job with it than Democrats. The evidence says otherwise. Republican economic competence is a myth.

Maybe the Biggest Secret in Politics

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A Democratic strategist (they have one?) named Simon Rosenberg claims that “the most important, least understood story in US politics” is that the “economy does so well under Democrats and so poorly under Republicans”. He cites the following statistics:

16 years of Clinton and Obama yielded 34 million jobs

1 year of Biden yielded 6 million jobs

16 years of G. Bush, G. W. Bush and T____ yielded 1 million jobs.

40 million jobs added vs. 1 million? That sounded suspicious, so I found a chart based on data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve. It shows “job growth by U.S. President, measured as cumulative percentage change from month after inauguration to end of term” for presidents going back to Jimmy Carter. According to the chart, jobs increased by 33% during the Clinton, Obama and Biden years vs. 1% during the Bush, Bush and T____ years. 

Reagan had the best job growth for a Republican (although not as good as Clinton). But even if you go back 46 years and include Carter’s and Reagan’s numbers, there’s a stark difference:

21 years of Carter, Clinton, Obama and Biden: 45%

24 years of Reagan, Bush, Bush and T_____: 18%.

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Yet if you were to ask voters which party does best with the economy, most would say the Republicans. They’re seen as the party of business and low taxes, despite the fact that they’re the party of Big Business and low taxes for corporations and the rich, which they always claim will improve the economy, but which doesn’t. For instance, they always say raising the minimum wage or raising taxes on the rich are “job killers”. The evidence shows otherwise: increasing the incomes of the working class and increasing taxes on the rich benefits the economy, since giving average consumers the ability to buy stuff increases the need for workers and taxing the rich allows the government to provide more services.

It may be hard to believe that voters are so wrong about the two parties. But here’s one reason why: Republicans have a powerful propaganda network and Democrats don’t. The Republicans have networks like Fox “News” and OAN, popular sites like Breitbart and the Daily Caller, and heavily-followed Facebook accounts, plus talk radio, all of which deliver a pro-Republican message, often in concert. The Democrats don’t have anything that organized or efficient. Most Democrats who pay attention to current events rely on corporate media, big organizations like the New York Times and CNN, that don’t want to seem too pro-Democratic.

Here are two examples of what the Democrats are up against. Some clown on Fox claimed that Democrats don’t really care about people who live in cities, because the 10 unhealthiest cities in America are run by Democrats:

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But the list of cities Fox used referred to the 10 healthiest cities!

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Meanwhile, the NY Times put a story on the front page suggesting the January 6th committee isn’t acting normally:

The House committee investigating the assault on the Capitol and what led to it is employing techniques more common in criminal cases than in congressional inquiries.

The story is accurate. Since T___ and his allies aren’t cooperating, the committee has been forced to be aggressive. The article suggests this is a risky move and might backfire. It’s not normal for congressional committees! What’s especially weird, however, is that, as an example of normal practice, the article ignores Watergate and Iran-Contra and uses the Benghazi attack. The Republican House committee that “investigated” Benghazi went on for months in order to push a non-existent scandal. Their behavior apparently seemed normal to the Times:

By comparison, the House select committee that spent two and a half years investigating the 2012 Benghazi attack issued just a dozen or so subpoenas — a small fraction of the number issued by the Jan. 6 committee so far — and made no criminal referrals.

The author James Gleick sums up:

Did anyone at the Times think for a second before including this Benghazi comparison? Why so few subpoenas? Maybe because, even though it was a sham, everyone cooperated (remember Hillary?) [testifying for 11 hours] Why  no criminal referrals? Maybe because THERE WERE NO CRIMES.