@cicerone imposter,
Cicerone, It might be useful for you to actually read the articles you post here before you triumphantly cite them here as “proof” of your prejudgments. The fact is the article you cited concludes that, while there are indeed differences in the economic growth rates among various Presidents, those differences have very little to do with the declared policies of either political party i.e. “Presidents have little effect on the economy”.
The article in question reports the analysis of two prominent Princeton Economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson, reported in an article released by the “National Bureau of Economic Analysis”. The findings of these authors include the following points;
(1) There are significant differences between the GDP growth rates seen by various Presidents, but they are far more driven by external economic events than the declared policies of the presidents and their parties themselves.
(2) The actual fiscal policies of presidents appear on average to be driven more by reaction to those external factors than anything else.
(3) The monetary policies of the various Fed Chairmen are likewise more reactive to external economic events than Presidential policy and have very little correlation with the declared policies of the Party of the Presidents who appointed them.
(4) Defense spending by Presidents was also unrelated to party and more driven by wars and external threats and more or less uniformly distributed across political parties.
(5) Blinder and Watson’s analysis found that U.S. GDP growth over the past eight decades was far more determined by oil price shocks and what they call Total Factor Productivity, which represents the combined effects of advances in science, technology, and business & manufacturing practices than by public policy.
Here is their conclusion’
Quote: … the performance of the economy is one of the most important factors for voters when they head to the polls. If the economy is doing well the incumbent will, likely win and vice versa But Blinder and Watson have shown that the President has little effect on the economy. Economic performance is determined by factors that are largely outside the control of public policy, or at least the kind of policy that is directly controlled by the Commander-in-Chief.
I don't fully aagree and suspect that our prominent economists were perhaps too focused on the power and niceties of their own art. Public policies do have an economic effecrt, but those effects do indeed operate in a sea of real external factors that often overcome them or turn potentially good ideas in into bad ones. Moreover the effects of poublic policy are cumulative, building (or destroying) on one another and often have long and hard to forecast delay times before their effects are seen.
