What caused the recession?

Was it Bush's fault?

Published on March 24, 2004 By KarmaGirl In Politics

It seems like everyone is jumping on the bandwagon to blame bush for our economic problems. Everyone sees Clinton as the one who "balanced the budget". Unfortunately, what happens while a President is in office is usually not what he did, but what the Presidents before him did.

The decline in the economy started when Clinton was in office. A great article can be found at: http://www.house.gov/jec/press/2004/01-22-04.pdf

So, what has been getting us out of the slump? The changes in tax policies and low interest rates. People blame Bush and his tax cuts for the current state of the economy, but those tax cuts are what is pulling us out. It is also a long term plan. It will be much better in a couple years from now.

What do I think hammered the last nail into the economic coffin? Gas prices. Things didn't get too bad until gas prices raised so dramatically. The cost of everything went up because it cost more to transport it. It cost more for workers to get to work. Businesses had to pay more to ship things and pay more to buy things. People lost trucking jobs because companies had to downsize to stay competitive. Truckers and delivery people saw salary decreases. It effected us globally. If a tax break is needed- it should be applied to gas.

Comments (Page 3)

vincible

on Mar 30, 2004

Brad,

What's important here is not your behavior, but the aggregate behavior of everyone in your income bracket. Now one can construct seemingly compelling arguments that, if given a tax windfall, a rich person would spend a greater fraction of that windfall than a poor person would. You can construct seemingly compelling arguments of the opposite. Fortunately, empirical studies have been done on the subject.

"Do the rich save more"?
http://papers.nber.org/papers/w7906.pdf

KarmaGirl tells me to be lazier in my posts, so I won't reproduce the data, but table 3 documents what they call the "well-accepted fact that saving rates increase with current income." (Quote from page 23 of the pdf, table on 24.) It shows much greater savings rates for the rich than for the poor by a variety of measures. So if the goal is to stimulate the economy by increasing spending, and, therefore, aggregate demand, tax cuts for the poor are more efficient than tax cuts for the rich. There are other papers on tax policy that you can look up if you are so inclined.

KarmaGirl

on Mar 31, 2004

Reply #30 By: jeblackstar - 3/30/2004 9:29:45 PM
10 refineries is a "large" number, if you're talking a total of 20. 10 refineries from 159, is.... 6%.

My point is still good eh?

No, it is not good. It is ten from 155 (working) the others have been inactive (some as long as 3 years, they just aren't officially closed). In 1950 we had over 300 working refineries. 54 years later, we have 145. I am sorry if you can't see why this is a problem.

vincible, please take your debate to Brad's article. It is much more applicable to his article than to mine.

KarmaGirl

on Mar 31, 2004

Oh, and on the refinery issues, it is much more complicated than just having a number of refineries. Do you know why California has a gas crisis and why that refinery closing will be an issue? Because they have different emissions standards. They have what is considered "boutique gas". Their cars are made to use that gas. It has a lot of ethanol in it- which is more than most engines will tolerate. they have to have the emissions to control the smog. But, that means that they have to get another refinery to produce gas that they can use, which will mean it will end up costing more because they are at the mercy of the refinery. Sorry, but I see that as an issue.

vincible

on Mar 31, 2004

I'm not sure why you think a discussion of tax policy is not relevant, since your article made the claim that Bush's tax cuts are what are bringing us out of recession. But if you think there's a better place for me to discuss this I will go there. However, I don't know what article you're talking about. Could you give me a link?

Frogboy

on Mar 31, 2004

Brad I thank you for this little fact you gave to us. The fact that the tax cuts allowed this site shows how it can help. Now Brad I'm curious, would you be subject to Kerry's proposed tax increases for the "rich"? This also brings up another point. They were able to create another job with their tax cut. The wealthier people are the ones who have the ability to create new jobs. More money will make them more likely to hire more people and therefore decrease unemployment.

Virtually all LLCs and S-corps would be subjected to Kerry's tax increase because LLCs/S-corps revenue is treated as the income of the principle.

The whole point of the Bush tax cut was to provide a cross the board cut in taxes that would both increase spending and provide more capital to small businesses.

KarmaGirl

on Mar 31, 2004

However, I don't know what article you're talking about. Could you give me a link?

If you want more discussion about this same topic, please visit Brad Wardell's article at: http://draginol.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=10867

I'm not saying not to discuss it here, but there are more views on it on Brad's article. It is also much more focused on that subject. (Brad knows a lot more about it than I do, anyway)

Flaknugget

on Mar 31, 2004

Here’s a little nugget of paranoia for you all. I read on article on it at truthout.org, and although it seemed pretty outlandish at the time, I can’t shake the logic that it contains.

Now going from record surpluses to record debt in just 3 short years is a mind-blowing feat, one would almost think that’s what the plan was all along. Especially when you see the Bush administration continue to push economic ideas that have already been tried, and only seem to dig the hole deeper. Also it doesn’t help matters when the administration seems to purposely write fictional federal budgets, and underestimate medicare bills by hundreds of billions of dollars.

So what will happen when America is bankrupt? Well I guess we’ll just have to privatize everything won’t we… what other choice would we have? If the government screws us so badly, then Corporate America can’t be any worse right?

Imagine the neo-con dream of privatized everything. A police force for profit, Professor Pepsi teaching our kids in schools, hospitals forcing patients to pay before treatment regardless of the ailment. Doesn’t seem that far off does it?

KarmaGirl

on Mar 31, 2004

Now going from record surpluses to record debt in just 3 short years is a mind-blowing feat,

considering that we had a recession and a war, no, it's not that mind blowing at all.......

jeblackstar

on Mar 31, 2004

Your "numbers" show nothing about capacity. I'm afraid, and others have proven, that refinery cost increases are not a substantive part of the rising gas prices. As for California gas being "bad" for regular engines, that's news to me, yes California gas is more "pure" than gas in most states, and that shock of shock is why California has consistently had higher gas prices. BUT the reason the gas prices have INCREASED is mostly due to decreases in production and increases in consumption.

Cheers

jeblackstar

on Mar 31, 2004

Oh, and Brad, again, 2% of the US population makes more than 200k a year, that does not equate to all small business owners, nor even all LLC and S-corps.

Cheers

Flaknugget

on Mar 31, 2004

considering that we had a recession and a war, no, it's not that mind blowing at all.......

When has the US not been at war? WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Cold War, Iran, Afghanistan (cold war era and post 9/11), Kuwait, Bosnia, Iraq, and countless black-ops CIA missions in South America and Africa. Actually war usually drives the American economy.... what's different this time?

KarmaGirl

on Mar 31, 2004

2.4% in 2000 which equates to over 2.5 million taxpayers.

Those people probably also only count the money that they pay themselves salary with rather than what they are taxed on. It's not really "income" it's more like your tax base.

KarmaGirl

on Mar 31, 2004

what's different this time?

We were starting in the recession before we went to war. We started out with less people in the workforce. Times change.

KarmaGirl

on Mar 31, 2004

I think you need to research a bit more. There is not a decrease in production. The only decrease happens when a refinery closes. The refineries, as I mentioned before, are running at maximum capacity (98%). They are holding their own now, but that won't happen when there is a higher demand, refineries that close, and more boutique gas. With the California gas and non-California cars, read what I specifically said about it- I was referring to ethanol. The gas isn't more "pure" it just has a different content. Ethanol burns cleaner, but engines not designed for California will have eventual problems with it. It also gets less MPG. The more ethanol in the fuel, the worse the gas mileage. Another catch 22.

Flaknugget

on Mar 31, 2004

We were starting in the recession before we went to war. We started out with less people in the workforce. Times change.

Look… the US has been in a recession and a war before, the simple fact is the war in Iraq isn’t as big an impact on the economy as the Bushies would have you think. So far they’ve spent just over 120 billion in federal funds directly towards the Iraq effort (not including budgeted military spending, which would have happened anyway). Which is a huge sum… but the medicare bill was estimated to cost 400 billion and now appears to cost somewhere in the area of 530 billion. All while the coroprate taxes being collected are at the lowest they’ve been since the 1930’s.

Don’t let them fool you Ms. Karma, it’s not terrorism, or gay marriages, or war, or the French that are killing the American economy.

It’s the fact that the White House keeps coming up with ways to spend more money then the year before, while taking in less money then the year before. It’s a trend reflected in dozens of Bush policies, and not just the ones you’ll see in the news papers. And unfortunately 1, minus 2, doesn’t equal 3.

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