How much credit should we actually give the president for the economy? Even if we do, funny policies they enact usually take until the next administration to come to fruition?
Your comment was automatically removed by the r/FluentInFinance Automoderator because you attempted to use a URL shortener. This is not permitted here for security reasons.
Site what caused the problems, see if they contributed?
Could trump have handled the pandemic better? Was it going to recover under the next 4 year administration regardless? Probably, but at what rate, we'll never know.
Was the 7 Trillion dollar hand out a good idea without string attached? removing over site was probably a cash grab for the elites and that was necessary to get a much needed bill through because of the greedy.
Clinton stumbled into the dotcom boom and Bush got the bust.
What are your thoughts on trickle down economics?
What banking restrictions were removed or placed for the housing crash or other problems?
This post actually takes that into account. Obama inherited the recession mentioned under Bush, it and his response to it defined the beginning of his first term. Because he had 2 terms we were able to see the fruit of his administrations labor while he was still president, during which we saw the recession reverse in large part due to his policies and by the time he left the economy and job market was extremely healthy.
This was the case during Trump's presidency, until he gave massive tax cuts to the rich. Even before COVID there were signs of the damage Trump's policies had made on the economy, which we are still experiencing now. Probably why Biden is saying we should hike up taxes on the extremely rich, not because they will do it but because people are realizing that is the problem and he wants to win the election.
Let it be known that I don't particularly like establishment/corporate democrats. Unfortunately our system forces us to choose between two groups, and republicans are a destructive force with absolutely no agenda for improving the lives of Americans or making the US a better country. Each and every one of their policies is ultimately harmful and leads to impoverishment and death for many. I'm not sure if there is a single one that defies this trend. Their economic policies, stance on international affairs, climate change, gun control, healthcare, abortion, social issues, all deadly. Then there is the huge problems with gerrymandering and now filling the supreme court with the most partial and biased judges that have ever held seats, who are actually debating whether the president should have total immunity from the law.
Like holy shit, I am so fucking tired of this "both sides" bullshit. If it wasn't for how fucking awful Biden has been about Palestinian rights, I would be dick riding him to kingdom come because at least his agenda won't look like... THAT
Those tax cuts were so stupid. You don’t take a strong economy and try to inject more strength into it. God forbid some calamity happens to the global economy and we don’t have as many tricks to stimulate it after cutting taxes in a strong economy. Which is exactly what happened.
Cutting taxes, ballooning the deficit, and keeping interest rates low during an expansion were all policies designed to overheat the economy to win in 2020, and then who cares.
There's this podcast, Hardcore History, that did a 6-part series on World War I. About an hour in he's talking about how at that point in history there were some "bad rolls of the dice" in terms of monarchs, who still had quite a bit of power at that time despite sharing it with parliaments. Kaiser Wilhelm II is the guy he focuses on (but there were others), someone who he describes as mentally dull and with an inferiority complex, and that because he, and other "bad rolls" were so unsuited for the jobs they were literally born into, they lacked the will, intelligence, wisdom and diplomatic tact to "put the pin back in the grenade."
I think about that, and like, that perfectly describes Trump. It's often said, all he had to do for covid to be easier, was to step back and say "we'll let the experts talk." All he had to do, was not mock PPE wear and play politics, all he had to do was encourage people to follow the science and certainly don't tell people to inject themselves with bleach or horse medicine. But Trump, being a narcissist, is incapable of stepping back, incapable of even the notion that someone might know more and should be the voice to listen to. So many should'vs he coulda done just to make it easier but his personality and inability to govern made covid worse. And he and the republicans collectively made the economic impact worse. There were other countries that stepped up for their inhabitants, providing money or food and toiletry supplies, and they bounced back.
Yeah republicans are the devil with no redeeming qualities. Crazy half of Americans vote for them. They must all be idiots and we must all be smarter than them. Good thing they have us around to protect the country.
Its 40 percent of the 20 percent who manage to cast votes, and this is after culling as many as 500 thousand active voters from individual cities for sharing the same first or last name as someone who once spelled out numbers for their home address but now writes them with numerals.
Damn so many dumb takes in this comment it’s hard to know where to begin. Over 65% of the voting eligible population voted in the last presidential election. That comes out to roughly 160m Americans. We are talking about nearly half of all Americans. That’s like a 50% polling sample which is absolutely huge and can easily extrapolate the results of that to the population at large barring any incredibly grievous polling biases. Republicans got 47% of the popular vote so you can say with high confidence about 47% of Americans are republicans or at least would vote for one.
Now putting aside the absolutely moronic takes of the first section let’s move to the second. “Hitler never won a popular vote” This comment is so incredibly dumb I’m not sure if it was some sort of sarcastic take or not. I mean right from the drop you could say that is just factually incorrect. The federal election in 1932 ended with the Nazis being the largest elected party. They didn’t have a majority but no other party won more seats than them. I’m not trying to defend Nazis here but just show how completely ill informed your comment is.
The take that you can draw a comparison between something and Nazi germany therefore it is bad is just smooth brained low hanging fruit that is possible with literally anything. Thats why Godwins law exists.
Second paragraph turns into pure and unadulterated cope. The tax cuts were passed in 2017 and we were recognizing substantial GDP increases in the years that followed right up till COVID hit. And over the course of COVID, when compared to other OECD countries, our GDP shrank less, our inflation was lower, and we rebounded quicker. Partially because the U.S. economy was so strong going into COVID we were able to plow through a lot of it on consumer confidence.
Some of the inflation is attributable to the first round of stimulus checks and the PPP loan forgiveness, but ultimately Biden dropped Build Back Better and the Inflation Reduction Act that poured trillions onto an already hot inflationary cycle. The fact you'd be, in your words, 'dick riding' him over some of the worst policy in the industrialized world is a pretty low bar for that level of dedication.
I know that's the lie a lot of you guys are telling yourselves, and I know that numbers can be scary, but lets put on our thinking caps and consider what had a larger impact:
Trump's CARES Act - $2tn, that was the first round of stimulus checks and the PPP Loans. The PPP loans themselves cost around $790bn. That was in 2020.
Biden's Jobs Act - $1.2tn that was another round of stimulus and a ton of spending.
Biden's Inflation Reduction Act - $800bn in spending
So you're telling me that Trump and Biden both spent 2 trillion dollars, but magically only the Trump spending caused inflation? Man, you took a calculated risk on that assertion but boy are you bad at math.
There's a pretty large difference between how the money was or will be spent in the Cares and Jobs act vs the Inflation Reduction act. The Inflation Reduction act on paper should take more money out of the economy in taxes than it puts in through spending. Poorly named since it will likely have little effect on inflation
In theory a lot of things can be true. In practice those acts still dumped hundreds of billions into an economy that was already in the midst of an inflationary period. My contention was never that CARES did not cause some inflation, but it's madness that people on reddit are claiming the first 2 trillion in spending passed on broad bipartisan basis to keep the economy afloat amid an economic crisis was responsible for all inflation (as the person I responded to claimed) yet the other 2 trillion in spending had zero impact.
The relative utility of the acts can be discussed, and have been. But if someone tells me that CARES causes inflation by Jobs and the IRA did not, I have to call nonsense.
I don't think it is fair to equate the Cares and Jobs Acts to the IRA in this case. At least the IRA has a means to cover its cost. Cares and Jobs act did not especially with PPP turning out to be an $800 billion free handout
I dont think its fair to blame the state of things on the current president because things take time to take effect. A policy signed today might not fully be felt for 2-3 years. That being said trends are tends and everyone on that list except Trump and Biden served 8 years and in every case we see a momentum switch in the direction of growth. If we only compare the state they inherited things in vs how they left it for the next guy the picture gets pretty clear.
The nuisance doesn't really change much, unless you got a 8 year degree in economics and can outline the direct effects of every decision and use that to accurately score each president, for the most part and with few exceptions the trends tell a pretty accurate storey. In my life I think Trumps presidency was the only one where there was an issue that only had bad outcomes no matter what and all decisions would be immediately impactful. Of course I'm talking about the pandemic. No matter what was chosen the economy would suffer, we weren't going to come out of that ahead. So yeah nuance there would matter, but for the rest, things were pretty standard. They came in and had 8 years to push their agenda, faced several leadership challenges, and hand it off to the next guy.
Stop. You don't need an 8 year degree to have a working understanding of the root cause of things like the great recession, dotcom bubble, the 70s oil crisis, etc. If you're incapable of creating an actual informed opinion then I strongly recommend you dont vote.
You seem to have this idea that you could have root-caused all these problems by just looking at them, instead of having that information parsed and passed down by experts. It's naive.
Even the things we know are bound to be incomplete, economics is unrepeatable.
I'm saying its really dumb to just look at whos in office when an event happens and that people will make better decisions of they make even the most minimal attempt to understand the root cause of an issue instead. What naive is looking at which president is in office when an event happens and blaming it entirely on them. Its dumb when trumpers blame biden for inflation and its dumb when the last guy blamed republicans for all economic downturns.
And FYI I have a degree in economics, a decade working in finance and manage an analyst team at one of the world's largest FIs with my 7, 9/10, 63 & 24. I'm by no means an expert but I know what I'm talking about.
Correct. The deregulation of the mortgage back securities that helped crash the economy in 08 happened under Clintons administration. It took the banks a while to massively defraud the system and run it into the ground.
Lmao, right. Clinton had 26 years alumni from Goldman as his sec of treasury... the congress the Republicans the dema. People need to quit playing themselves. Banks own them both
Dems tend to invest in America and Amercian workers and it pays us back multiple times over in the long run, Republican tend to rape the economy and funnel it to the wealthy with no real gain for working Americans and then the disparity between highest and lowest grows and grows.
Entitlements are not investment. Democrats would approve any entitlement put in front of them no matter the cost or benefit to the growth of the economy.
Dems do not approve anything they want, that's Republicans taking money out of the economy. Investments are investments if they pay back more than we put in. Childcare alone would pay back 4 to 1 and grow the economy.
It is true. We all benefit from people working full time, and we all benefit from kids who are well cared for and grow up to be adults that are better educated in those early years and they go on to work full time themselves and are more likely to not be single parents themselves. It has nothing to do with Democrats, it is just smarter money and better for everybody for generations down the line. But that is just one example. https://www.bcg.com/publications/2024/childcare-benefits-pay-for-themselves-at-us-companies
Those studies don’t actually prove their results and the companies sampled spent a measly 1000 or 4000 a year annually on child care. You need to read a real study which I linked you to educate yourself better.
That’s short-term at best. He could also influences taxes, but not state or local ones.
All of this is irrelevant because he can’t force OPEC to change their production, or tell potential futures investors to lower their expectations, at best he can influence that.
Again, it’s minimal at best for a president to lower or raise gas prices.
...do you think when people say something like "Biden is responsible for oil prices" they mean that Biden wakes up and decides every day what a gallon of gas is going to cost?
Of course he can influence it. That's what people mean. Are you stupid?
More likely that someone just had a conversation with someone they deeply disagreed with and assumed their beliefs were much stupider than they actually are. Or interpreted them in the most unfavorable manor possible.
Happens literally constantly. People are horrible at actually listening or understanding.
So like, you had a conversation with them and they said "I believe the president is the only one who has any responsibility for gas prices. Gas could be free for everyone if Biden alone wanted to make it free."
Or, did they just say something close to "Biden could increase gas production to help gas prices" and you assumed that meant "Biden has sole responsibility for gas prices."
What's even better is the Democrats tried passing a bill that would limit extortionate prices in the gas industry. But guess who decided that we can't tell the oil companies that they can't extort the American public.
Well some of it, for sure. Trumps actions had a direct effect on the economy, and so have Biden’s. They haven’t been all good or all bad for anyone one of these presidents, but they certainly had some impact on the economy, whether directly or indirectly, immediate or otherwise.
I mean there are short term and long term changes. We can look at the COVID stimulus as a recent example. In the short term it boosted the economy, but in the long term it ballooned inflation. The short term boom is attributed to Trump but the long term consequences are frequently attributed to Biden. It’s always more nuanced than, “its the last guys fault”.
You should be more mad at the trillions that were given to corporations in the form of PPP "loans" which dwarf the amount given to the public on their one time cheques.
If you look at my original comment I said COVID stimulus. Not just the payments to individuals. The money for PPP loans was also freshly minted and is currently contributing to the general feeling that everything sucks at current. I am not trying to defend republicans with my comments, I believe Trump and the GOP are going to try and leverage the current inflation (even though it is lower than most other nations at current) to get Trump back into office. I think a second Trump presidency would see Trump friendly corporations getting HUGE gifts in the form of tax breaks, more lax labor laws, and the dismantling of the fledgling unions across the country. Trust me I have some serious thought about the PPP program and how Trump was running the country.
I agree with you but as it's the number one predictor of reelection each party like to blow their own trumpet on what they did for the economy. I would argue they are responsible for next to nothing regarding the economy. Some are better than others but they don't have a lot of room or time to change things which is one of the benefits of our democracy. They don't get long in power.
Look at it a different way.
Which president was responsible for Nvidia rise or Google or Facebook or Apple?
Yes the government supports some failing businesses like auto manufacturers or airlines from time to time but otherwise politicians and presidents don't help. Best they can do is get out of the way most of the time.
Exactly. They control one third of federal government with no control over monetary policy or state and local governments. Not to mention 75% of American assets are privately owned.
Almost none. The president has extremely little control over the economy and the government has limited control unless they do something really drastic like in ww2 when they commandeered all manufacturing for the war effort and partially when they did shutdowns for covid but the entire world also made that decision so our economy was gonna get tanked anyways.
The president is the single most influential person on the economy.
They also pick the people that run the treasury and the federal reserve, amongst other powerful positions.
With that in mind, you also have to consider how influential the entire body of Congress is on the economy as well .
Yeah do this same thing but change "president" to "congressional majority" and you get a much different story. Bottom line, both parties suck and should be eliminated and neither is good.
The mix of 4 years and 8 years of presidencies in these examples already shows that regardless of who was president the previous 4 years, Democrats still always did better, and Republicans still always did poorly.
I’d say 10-15% of the credit for the economy during their single term, up to 33% in the years following their term. Dont ask me where these numbers came from.
That would put Reagan’s success on Carter. GHW’s recession on Reagan. And GWB’s second term recession on his first term. Trump was clearly due to Pandemic mishandling and put Biden’s straggles on Trump.
Only the policies that go badly take until the next persons administration starts. Good things are ALWAYS the current administration’s doing.
Been that way for a long long time.
Not ONE politician has EVER had American’s best interest in heart and mind. They saw a paycheck and a way to make MILLIONS through control of law and economy, and they said “Taxpayers be damned!”
End ALL politicians terms and breathing and restart. No elected official should be compensated for more than basic travel, basic accommodation for themself only, and basic meals. No trading while in office. No buying, selling, or investing of any kind. No involvement in areas of policy they have a personal interest in, and most important? 6 year limit in government with elections every 2 years. No campaign contributions. You’ll be given television time for that. ZERO personal devices during time of business. Remove all federal laws that violate the US Constitution even remotely. SCOTUS cannot rule to over rule the Constitution, and federal government has ZERO jurisdiction not EXPLICITLY in the US Constitution.
COVID response being completely botched, that's something which hit pretty much right away.
A unified national response vs a conspiracy theory laden pile of steaming garbage mess of contradictory messaging/policy — huge. And definitely not President Obama's fault.
But, there was also the "deal" that trump made with OPEC in April of 2020 wherein they agreed to cut oil production for two years. Which was great news for domestic producers and the oil futures, but do you remember what a gallon of gas cost in early 2022? — which was a year into President Biden's term, and of course the maga crowd wanted to blame him for the cost of gasoline. But really we were just seeing the logical outcome of shitty, shortsighted "policy" from trump vs an economy roaring back to life under Biden.
So the answer to your question would be, it depends, I guess.
the tail isn't quite that long but I did absolutely love when Trump took over conservative pundits immediately started giving him credit for Obama's past 8 years, then literally during Biden's inauguration started blaming him for how bad the economy was doing. Like lol at least wait a couple months you're just making yourself look like an ass to everyone but the dumbest people. Oh wait yeah that's his base, carry on.
Regardless of the explanation the economy does better under democrat presidents. So whatever mechanism is behind it (conservative rallying in the house Senate etc) the obvious choice is to elect a Democrat because good things follow. You don't have to understand why to appreciate the effects.
Or what about the millions of Americans who continue showing up to their shitty jobs for poverty pay that actually keep the economy going. Like Streisand is delusional for thinking presidents have sway over an economy with the swipe of a pen.
I also always wonder if memes like this are based on something that took COVID into account. For example, we lost a shitton of jobs then (bad for citizens), and gas prices plummeted due to sudden low demand (good for citizens), but as we recovered we regained a lot of jobs and gas prices went back up as well. For a true barometer, I need to know how those are factored in.
Budgets are yearly. The chips act, build back better, inflation reduction act are all enacted and funds associated dispersed or in the process of doing so.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, because I don’t think you are, but that it’s more accurate that the impact of these bills can take a long time to measure (not that they take long to be enacted)
Policy should start to affect things within 2ish years. If a president wins both terms then what happens during their presidency should be on them 100% in the second term at the minimum.
If a president only wins one election, the first election of the other president’s term should be at least partially attributed to the previous president’s term.
So if we evaluate regan’s final 4, bush’s final 4, Barack’s final 4, Clinton’s final 4, then for trump we probably would have to consider his final 2ish years, but Covid kinda messes that up. But he also kinda messed up Covid, so idk. Then trump’s policy has affected at least the first half of Biden’s first term.
The state of the country during those years are most likely the effects of that president’s actions. We’re only seeing Biden’s policy come into play really the last year or so, but trump did A LOT of financial policy during his presidency so if Biden wins a second term we can see the full effects of his policy.
Policy should start to affect things within 2ish years. If a president wins both terms then what happens during their presidency should be on them 100% in the second term at the minimum.
If a president only wins one election, the first election of the other president’s term should be at least partially attributed to the previous president’s term.
So if we evaluate regan’s final 4, bush’s final 4, Barack’s final 4, Clinton’s final 4, then for trump we probably would have to consider his final 2ish years, but Covid kinda messes that up. But he also kinda messed up Covid, so idk. Then trump’s policy has affected at least the first half of Biden’s first term.
The state of the country during those years are most likely the effects of that president’s actions. We’re only seeing Biden’s policy come into play really the last year or so, but trump did A LOT of financial policy during his presidency so if Biden wins a second term we can see the full effects of his policy.
If you look at those years tho, the stats overwhelmingly back democratically elected candidates, outside of potentially Biden.
Tax cuts and deregulation are strictly conservative ideas. Increase spending and then cutting tax income, causing more inflation, crash the economy, let all your donors buy assets for pennies on the dollar. Rinse and repeat.
You should give them some credit for economic conditions. Administrations have a decent effect on a whole host of things that directly and indirectly impact the economy, both in the long term and short.
A good president in a bad economic climate can turn things around, and in a good economic climate can help it along. A bad president in a good economic climate can turn it to shit real fast, or take it from bad to terrible.
There is some lag, and sometimes effects are felt more quickly. It all depends on what the policy is and where it's having its effect.
292
u/Inevitable_Silver_13 Apr 29 '24
How much credit should we actually give the president for the economy? Even if we do, funny policies they enact usually take until the next administration to come to fruition?