Wrong …
…again!
Paul Krugman makes a clear case for Obamanomics in the face of endless nagging from conservatives. He looks at the gap between the claims and criticisms coming from the political right and what actually happened. The “Bush boom” turned out to be the Bush Recession. Obama dug us out.
So what should we say about the Obama job record? Private-sector employment — the relevant number, as I’ll explain in a minute — hit its low point in February 2010. Since then we’ve gained 14 million jobs, a figure that startled even me, roughly double the number of jobs added during the supposed Bush boom before it turned into the Great Recession. If that was a boom, this expansion, capped by last month’s really good report, outbooms it by a wide margin. …Krugman,NYT
So much for the carping coming from over there. But could we please — finally! — leave behind the myth that the president’s policies determine what happens to the economy. At best, Fox News and the right “simplify” truth to the extent that it becomes a crock. Even leaving aside the fact that they are also deliberate liars, they base their news on a misunderstanding of how the system works. For a start and in general economic terms, the president doesn’t have a wheel strong enough to turn the economic ship around.
Does President Obama deserve credit for these gains? No. In general, presidents and their policies matter much less for the economy’s performance than most people imagine. Times of crisis are an exception, and the Obama stimulus plan enacted in 2009 made a big positive difference. But that stimulus faded out fast after 2010, and has very little to do with the economy’s current situation.
The point, however, is that politicians and pundits, especially on the right, constantly insist that presidential policies matter a lot. And Mr. Obama, in particular, has been attacked at every stage of his presidency for policies that his critics allege are “job-killing” — the former House speaker, John Boehner, once used the phrase seven times in less than 14 minutes. So the fact that the Obama job record is as good as it is tells you something about the validity of those attacks. ...Krugman,NYT
The Republican party, Krugman makes clear, just plain got it wrong. We can argue why and how, but there it is.
Not only wrong but nasty. And as for the party of “job creators” being heroes? Not always. They can be mean, self-serving and wrong in both the practical and moral worlds. Their doctrine “doesn’t make much sense, but it conveys a clear message that, whaddya know, turns out to be very convenient for the elite: namely, that injustice is a law of nature, that we’d better not do anything to make our society less unequal or protect ordinary families from financial risks. Because if we do, the usual suspects insist, we’ll be severely punished by the invisible hand, which will collapse the economy.”
Bullpucky! In the end these “job creator” Republicans didn’t know what they were talking about. We are, after all, a prosperous and energetic society with a future and the strength to overcome the bad faith –as well as lousy judgment from proponents of greed and hypocrisy.
Cross-posted from Prairie Weather
graphic via shutterstock.com