We ARE Better Off

In a previous post, I posted several charts that showed, with certainty, that the economy is getting better, and that we are better off now than we were when President Obama took office.

Some commentators or political pundits use statistics from the very first day Obama was sworn in to so they can make the claim that "we haven't added any jobs since Obama took over".  This is so disingenuous it is beneath contempt, and should be ignored by anyone serious about finding solutions to the problems that beset our nation during the disastrous Bush Administration. Those of us who pay attention to facts will understand that this a political mis-direct, a mis-representation of the truth, or, using the technical term favored by ethicists, "a lie".

Obviously, President Obama cannot be held accountable for jobs lost due to the failures of the previous administration, jobs lost as the economy fell into the depths of the Great Recession. It's also unfair, and completely unhelpful in analyzing policy to use numbers from when Obama had been in office for just a few months and his policies had not had a chance to take effect.

The following chart illustrate this fully, as the Great Recession featured job losses in the 500,000-700,000 range for four straight months prior to Obama's term. These losses DID change once Obama took over, but obviously NOT from the first day he was sworn in. The trend, however, is unmistakable.  Fewer and fewer job losses turning to many many consecutive months of positive job growth, all in the face of reduced public sector jobs and an obstinate Congress whose stated mission is to make sure President Obama was "a one-term President", regardless of the effect on the country.

The debt is another area of deceit in the media presentation, especially on the highly partisan Fox News. In fact, independent studies based on the Congressional Budget Office's official figures show that the bulk of the debt incurred in Obama's first year were unavoidable due to the depression-bound economy he was handed.

This information looks at the debt due to policy changes, which clearly shows that fact.

The high level of deficits Obama inherited stand in stark contrast to the way the 'Clinton Surplus' was turned into a huge deficit in Bush's second year, and as we have seen, his policies led directly to the largest part of the high spending under Obama. Note that the deficit actually went down in 2010,  the same is true for 2011, so once again, President Obama has turned the tide.

The proven method for bringing country out of a recession is for the economy to regain it's momentum, which means that the GDP has to rise.  The proven method to use in order to spur GDP growth when the private sector is stalled is for the government to spend stimulus money to provide jobs and other stimuli to replace the missing private sector spending.

Let's look at the GDP growth under President Obama.

One again, we see that under president Obama, things have gotten considerably better. If the recalcitrant opposition congress would stop blocking pro-growth policies and stop insisting on an austerity program(similar to the disastrous austerity that has hammered many European countries) our GDP would be higher still.

A look at the stock market shows the same positive trend, after a serious drop during the Bush Recession, it has climbed steadily under President Obama.

The benefits of compiling actual results from trying various policies should be to inform our current policy decisions, an intelligent government would take what worked and try to repeat it, and would avoid policies that failed. So it's simply ludicrously stupid to want to again shove the nation into recession by using the same policies that hammered our ability to run an efficient government that provides for the common good of the people.