@blatham,
blatham wrote:
Quote:The stock market and other leading indicators of business and consumer confidence all point clearly to accelerating economic growth ahead. ( My fairly balanced portfolio is up 6% in just the last week).
And here in Canada,
unemployment is at the lowest point in 40 years
Trudeau did that. He must have. He's the PM.
We both know there are many cyclic and long term factors, beyond the control of political administrations that influence economic outcomes, and that politicians of every stripe are prone to take personal credit for favorable outcomes occurring during their tenure and to blame their predecessors for unfavorable ones. Few are immune from all that, and I can recall many statements of yours about the favorable results of Obama's policies, and my own citing the unfavorable ones.
That said there are indeed many political/governance factors that do indeed influence economic outcomes. Some are long term, reflecting traditional national policies and transcending most political regimes, some are primarily cyclic and transnational, while others are more dependent on current national policies. Since the 1960s GDP annual growth Rates in Canada have declined from 6 -8% annually to 4-6% in the 1990s and 2-4% since then. The United States has followed a largely similar pattern, though with slightly higher ( ~ + 1%) growth rates Many factors are involved here including some large swings in the export/import trade balance particularly for Canada and the economic cost for wars and military actions by the United States.. However the largest and most determinative factors for both have been the expansion of publicly funded social & economic benefit programs and the concurrent growth of international economic competition from formerly poor countries.
The economies of the U.S. and Canada are closely coupled: each is the other's major trading partner. Canada's current GDP growth lags that of the U.S. by about 1%/yr. and forecasts for the year ahead indicate a widening gap. Both countries are experiencing long-term lows in unemployment. I'll leave it to you and other Canadians to determine whether the current government has had much to do with that. In the case of the United States the evidence connecting our currently rapidly accelerating economic growth rate with the regulatory and tax policies of our current government is very strong and persuasive.
