Despite a bipartisan effort...

Carter? Carter? Has everyone forgotten the Misery Index?

[edit] U.S. misery index

[edit] Misery index - era by U.S president
Index = Unemployment rate + Inflation rate Rank President Time Period Index Average Low High
5 Harry Truman 1948"1952 7.87 Dec 1952 = 3.45 Jan 1948 = 13.63
1 Dwight D. Eisenhower 1953"1960 6.26 Jul 1953 = 2.97 Apr 1958 = 10.98
3 John F. Kennedy 1961"1962 7.27 Jul 1962 = 6.40 Jul 1961 = 8.38
2 Lyndon B. Johnson 1963"1968 6.78 Nov 1965 = 5.70 Jul 1968 = 8.19
7 Richard Nixon 1969"1973 9.98 Jan 1968 = 7.80 Dec 1973 = 13.61
10 Gerald Ford 1974"1976 15.93 Dec 1976 = 12.66 Jan 1975 = 19.90
11 Jimmy Carter 1977"1980 16.27 Apr 1978 = 12.60 Jun 1980 = 21.98
9 Ronald Reagan 1981"1988 12.19 Dec 1986 = 7.70 Sep 1981 = 19.33
8 George H. W. Bush 1989"1992 10.68 Sep 1989 = 9.64 Nov 1990 = 12.47
4 Bill Clinton 1993"2000 7.80 Apr 1998 = 5.74 Jan 1993 = 10.56
6 George W. Bush 2001 - 2008 8.10 Oct 2006 = 5.71 Aug 2008 = 11.47

Nimh objects to Shlaes as a hack. This is a common tactic. If someone's evidence cannot be logically rebutted they are hacks.

I am sure that Nimh thinks that Dr. Thomas Sowell is a hack also.

Dr, Sowell writes(in his book-"Basic Economics")

quote:

"Scary as it may seem, neither Hoover or FDR understood basic Economics. Although some have tried to depict FDR as the man who got us out of the Great Depression, ALL PREVIOUS DEPRESSIONS HAD ENDED MUCH SOONER, without any major governmental intervention. This was, in fact, the first depression in which the federal government intervened so much, firs t under Hoover and then even more so under Roosevelt.

Some economisgt, including Nobel Prize Winner Milton Friedman, have argued that it was PRECISELY GOVERNMENT POLICIES that kept the economy from recovering as quickly as before, when left alone>
end ofquote
But I am sure that Nimh thinks that Friedman was a "hack" also!

Odd that the complaints come fast and furious about debt when it's being used to create jobs for citizens, but there's no complaints about debts that are used to murder and torture innocents abroad.

Yes, you have a point. I just finished a letter asking President Obama when we are getting out of Afghanistan. There have been quite a few innocent children murdered in Afghanistan and Pakistan since Jan. 20, 2009.

You have to look at this in a much wider historical sense, G. Did I miss your posts berating the Bush administration for wasting scads of money for an illegal invasion of Iraq?

I was only pointing out the hypocrisy of conservatives to love to spend tons of money murdering the citizens of other countries but these same folk whine and cry about providing unemployment benefits to their own.

Well, using your own annual growth data. the average GDP growth rate for the Carter years (geometric mean) is 2.8% -- that's over one third less than the average rate you cited for the period 1950 thru 2008. I believe that anyone acquainted with arithmetic and even elementary statistics would indeed call that significantly lower than that for the period cited - just as I said. You would do well to actually read and think about the numbers you paste here to support your erroneous assertions.

Moreover my reference to the population growth rate was indeed valid. GDP per capita, using purchasing power parity statistics, DECLINED during the Carter Presidency.

I calculated the average by simply adding the rates and dividing by the numbers. That gives me 3.3 for Carter compared to 4.1 for the total.

Of course using the same method gives me 3.45 for Reagan and 2.18 for GWBush.
If you want to argue that Carter's term had significantly lower GDP growth, you have to make the same argument for Reagan and Bush.

A rather snotty comment george considering you didn't check how I factored average before you compared it to the way you factored it. If you want to figure the geometric mean for 1950-2008 go ahead so we can compare.

Would you care to provide your numbers and calculations to support that statement?

Frankly George, you made a comment and you are now trying to defend it even though it is pretty much indefensible. But keep digging. I look forward to checking your math.

What is neglected in the debate is the multiplyer effect.

The Fiscal Stimulus Will Pay For Itself

Maddow gets it. Economists and Republicans don't.

I watched Prof. Jeffrey Sachs on Rachel Maddow's show the other day. She asked whether the fiscal stimulus would work. "No" he said emphatically, it would not. "No one has the tools....to fix this......the fiscal hole will cripple us for the long-term."

She tentatively mentioned 'the multiplier.' He brushed this aside with a counsel of despair. "We might have a few more jobs in the short-term but a massive deficit in the long-term..."

Scant consolation for 13 million unemployed and underemployed Americans. Their lives could be transformed by this fiscal stimulus.

And anyway, as Keynes once noted, in the long term we're all dead.

Sachs's analysis is overwhelmingly shared by mainstream economists. And by Republicans. These have been whipping voters into a frenzy with talk of 'generational theft.' Future generations, they argue, will be paying for this fiscal stimulus for decades to come. That is simply not true, as I will show below.

Meantime, these points are truly rich coming from the Republicans. Readers no doubt know that during the Bush-Cheney years the US national debt doubled from $5,700bn in 2001 to $10,700bn today. Others may recollect that Mr. Cheney said in 2001: "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."

So let's not hear any more from Republicans about deficits mattering or about 'generational theft.'

But to get back to history. The fiscal stimulus of the 1930's was positive -- both in the US and the UK. It dramatically lowered unemployment after 1933.



Second, it is simply wrong to suggest that the fiscal stimulus 'will cripple us long-term.' It will not. The fiscal stimulus will pay for itself. Here's how.

At times of high unemployment tax cuts may be saved and not spent into the economy. But when the government invests the bulk of $789 billion in real, productive economic activity - it always gets its money back - plus some.

It works like this. Government invests in labor-intensive programs e.g. $40 billion in energy efficiency and renewable energy programs, including $2.9 billion to weatherize modest-income homes. $27 billion for highway and bridge construction and repair and $11.5 billion for mass transit and rail projects; $4.6 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers; $5 billion for public housing improvements; $6.4 billion for clean and drinking water projects.

The energy efficiency/transportation/public housing programs hire American workers - some highly skilled, some not so skilled. These programs also purchase materials - from factories. Some foreign, but mostly American.

Next, something called 'the multiplier' kicks in. It's the ABC of economic science and works like this.

The workers get pay checks. They use the income to pay taxes - direct to the US government. So immediately the government can use these tax revenues to fix the budget. Then workers purchase goods and services - boosting the economy. Companies hire more workers to deal with demand for materials from stimulus-sponsored programs. More employed workers equals more taxpayers.

Ever-rising tax revenues drop into the Treasury's coffers.

Because government spending is financed by bank money or credit, income increases. Eventually savings are generated to match the original stimulus expenditure - so there is no 'crowding out' by government. But savings too can find a way back to the US Treasury, because savers could end up investing in US Treasury bonds.

If workers or factories spend money on goods made in China - then some will leak out to China. But experience shows that investment in public works tends to be local investment. By weatherizing the homes of the poor, strengthening flood defenses, growing forests to act as pollution 'sinks' and subsidizing organic farming - investment stays at home.

But investing in this kind of economic activity is not the only revenue source for the US government.

A massive improvement to the budget will be in savings made in unemployment payments.

I looked up the Congressional Budget Office's estimates for expenditure on unemployment compensation and food stamps for the years 2009 - 2015. Their estimates are optimistic. The Congressional Budget Office thinks unemployment is going to decline after 2009. Nevertheless, even under its conservative estimates expenditures on unemployment compensation and food stamps rise to a massive $818 billion between now and 2015.

If the numbers of unemployed people were cut, and if Americans had enough income not to rely on food stamps - Congress would make massive savings to the budget. If we add those savings to the tax revenue generated thanks to the 'multiplier effect' - the outlook is positively rosy for a surplus on the budget as the economy recovers.

So lets not have any more talk of the 'crippling effects' of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

If there is a complaint it's the one the non-economist Rachel Maddow made to Prof. Sachs. The fiscal stimulus is just not big enough. $789 billion will not be enough to fill the $2 trillion collapse in output since the crisis started.

So, it's more strength to your elbow President Obama. And Congress, get ready for phase two of the fiscal stimulus.

--Ann Petifor, Author: "Debtonation"

Well, it was not Bush who authorized the invasion of Iraq, JTT.

I will quote from Bob Woodward( no conservative he) Plan of Attack--P351.

quote:

On October 10 and 11(2001) the House and Senate OVERWHELMINGLYvoted to grant the President FULL AUTHORITY to attack Iraq unilaterally.The voteinh the House was 296 to 133 and in the Senate 77 to23.The Congress also gave Bush the full go-ahead to use the military ' AS HE DETERMINES TO NECESSARY AND APPROPRIATE"todefend against the threat of Iraq>

end of quote-

Did you forget thatlittle detail,JTT? You really need toreadmore. Woodward is a good source torefresh your memory!

You defend an illegal invasion based on lies where thousands upon thousands of innocents were murdered. What layer of scum is this?

You need to try to think more, G. You are no different than Foofie, or Okie, another simple mind loaded up with propaganda.

Face the flag, turn in your brain, mouth the memes. You're a good little American.

I am not certain that I am good, JTT, but I am not little. When I was in the Special Forces I weighed 230lbs. and stood at 6 ft. 2 in. I have gained three inches in my waist since but I am not little. How big are you, squirt?

George Ob1- YOu must really forgive Parados. He has a habit of not sticking to the subject. When I eviscerated him on the Global Warming thread, he went off on another subject and refused to address my main topic--mainly, that the IPCC had revised its predictions of sea level rise downwards. He couldn't address it since it blew his arguments to shreds.

I think it might be a better approach to really understanding how incredibly ineffective Carter was if we looked at the Misery Index. Carter is by far the leader in the index which combines INFLATION WITH UNEMPLOYMENT.

Carter continues his imbecilities by touting Hamas--a ruthless bunch of fundamentalist Muslim killers.

Yup.

Wait, what am I, chopped liver? Didn't I just calculate this, and discover that Real GDP growth over the four years Carter was president was significantly higher than the population growth?

That was based on the Real GDP growth numbers Parados provided, though, and my own calculation. So let's Google GDP (PPP) per capita, specifically.

This is from an online encyclopedia about which I know little, but it cites the World Bank's World Development Indicators database as source:

1976 - United States: 8,300.502 PPP $ per capita
1980 - United States: 12,185.719 PPP $ per capita

Looks like a firm increase to me.

Just to doublecheck this .. here: The Penn World Table, provided by the Center for International Comparisons of Production, Income and Prices
at the University of Pennsylvania, "provides purchasing power parity and national income accounts converted to international prices for 188 countries for some or all of the years 1950-2004."

Here's the data for the relevant years regarding Real GDP per Capita (and the site adds: "Please note: in PWT, "real" means "PPP converted""):

USA 1976 8,277.93
USA 1977 9,132.09
USA 1978 10,218.79
USA 1979 11,303.56
USA 1980 12,170.33

Again, a firm increase .. of 14.7%, actually, over those four years.

So what gives? If you were going on memory, maybe this is a good sign that your assumptions might benefit from some revising?

We knew that already.

No one can make a claim to being good when they support the slaughter of innocents as you have.

"special" forces, wow! That makes it that much easier to understand your posts.

So, since Obama supports the war in Afghanistan, and in fact he wants to send MORE TROOPS to Afghanistan, by your own words he isnt very good either.
After all, he supports the murder of innocents also.

Exactly, Mysteryman--There are dozens of INNOCENT children being murdered every day by our vicious troops in Aghanistan and there are scores of INNOCENT children being blow apart every day in the eastern part of Pakistan where our unmanned planes fire at INNOCENT children. These vicious US troops are, of course, being led by the commander in cheif _BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, who apparently does not care how many INNOCENT children are being killed since he has no plans to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan.

NO BLOOD FOR POPPIES--NO BLOOD FOR POPPIES-

GET OUT OF AFGHANISTAN NOW. BRING OUR TROOPS HOME!

But, the news media say that Obama has lied about his pledge about peace and bringing our troops home--

Note:

quote

The shift of military focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, which is considered by the Obama administration as the frontline of fighting against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants, is one of Obama's priorities since he was sworn in last month.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week that the Pentagon had prepared "several options" for the president after a wide review of U.S. strategy and goals in Afghanistan, and he believes the current U.S. troops in Afghanistan would have all forces they asked for.

The U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, has requested as many as 30,000 additional troops, including three more combat brigades, an aviation brigade and other supporting troops. If let go, it would nearly double the size of the 37,000-strong U.S. force currently deployed there.

end of quote


67,000 troops in Afghanistan? What for? Does anyone know how much that will cost? Why not save that money to give to the poor and homeless right here in the USA?

Interesting chart after 2 months of stimulus...



The chart comes from the Administration itself when they were trying to sell this bank-busting crock (http://otrans.3cdn.net/45593e8ecbd339d074_l3m6bt1te.pdf. The red triangles show where we currently are...still waiting for any impact of the stimulus at all...