Why do so many people think the economy is bad and that Bush is to blame?

Question

A recent poll showed that 50% of Americans think the country is in recession.
The stock market is hitting new highs, GDP is up, unemployment is down, and inflation is in check. What more do they want?
Bush has done an extraordinary job with the economy considering he inherited an economy falling after the tech bubble burst (March, 2000), Corporate scandals perpetrated in the 90s and prosecuted in his administration (Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing), 9/11 and the fallout, plus a different kind of war that is demanding a high degree of industrial might (which would grow the economy like FDR did).
Economy good, Bush doing a good job

What I meant to say is that the war is NOT requiring a large degree of industrial might.

So he gets the cost but not the benefit.

I didn't say wars strengthen an economy I was making a comparison to FDR. He climbed out of the depression with the war. Increased production, decreased umemployment, higher wages, more diverse labor force. One time in history that war helped the economy.

fwf43 do you know what the word exponentially means? I mean it sounds clever and intelligent but do you know what you just claimed?

Romare, you mean the top fifth of the taxpayers who pay over 90% of the taxes?

Lets not say the economy is great but considering what has happened the last seven years it is in pretty good shape.

Answer 1

I note that ADVICE MONKEY says: "P.S. Wars don't strengthen an economy. They are a drain on them"...

Do you mean like the 40+ year WAR ON POVERTY which is just another socialist program, a scam that has to be financed by extorting from the productive so that politicos can pander to the parasitic? The so called, "GREAT SOCIETY" nonsense?

Where $9 TRILLION was wasted?

Is that the war you mean?

Answer 2

Consider, for example, the Bush cuts. They’ve mainly benefitted the top fifth of taxpayers. Supply-siders argue the cuts have generated enough extra revenues to pay for themselves so they haven’t enlarged the budget deficit. That’s debatable but let’s make the heroic assumption the supply-siders are correct and no one has been made worse off. Yet even so, most Americans have not benefitted – nothing has trickled down. Real median wages have barely budged since they were enacted. So the underlying question is whether they’re justified by the fact that rich Americans have gained from them while no one has lost ground. The answer is no. They’ve widened inequality.

Or consider trade-opening agreements. They give Americans access to more low-cost products and services from abroad. This makes Americans’ dollars go further. But the agreements especially benefit the rich, who spend more than the middle class and the poor because they have more income to spend. The agreements also typically impose a burden on working-class Americans who thereby lose their jobs to foreigners. These job losers get new jobs, but studies show the new jobs pay 10 to 15 percent less than the old ones. Even if you assume that access to cheaper goods from abroad adds about 10 to 15 percent to their purchasing power, these working-class wage earners come out about even, at best. That means the overall result of most trade agreements is to widen inequality. Do the efficiency benefits of trade outweigh this result? Maybe a decade ago when inequality was less pronounced. Probably not, now.

Immigration raises the same underlying question. Low-skilled immigrants reduce the cost of all sorts of services – from gardening to elder care. This stretches the dollars of every American but also depresses the wages of many low-wage American workers who have to compete with the new arrivals. Even assuming their increased purchasing power more than cancels out their wage losses, low-wage Americans don’t gain nearly as much from immigration as higher-wage Americans do. The result is widening inequality among native-born Americans. Do the lower labor costs make up for this widening inequality? Unlikely, unless you include the new immigrants in the calculus. After all, once they’ve come here they’re usually much better off economically than before they arrived.

If all these policies promoted economic growth and if all Americans had an equal chance to benefit from the growth, the case for them would be stronger. But relatively poorer Americans are less upwardly mobile today than they were a decade ago. To equalize opportunity, all Americans would need access to far better schools and more affordable health care. All would need extended unemployment insurance and wage insurance. All would need affordable access to post-secondary education. And to pay for all of this, and guarantee upward mobility, the tax system would have to be made far more progressive than it is today – starting with excusing the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes and removing the $100,000 cap on those taxes, and getting back toward the 70 to 90 percent marginal tax on the highest incomes we had under Eisenhower and JFK.

[Yes, I do. And I also know that there is such a thing as fake statistical reasoning, which is where I figure you're headed. No sale.]

Answer 3

The economy has been so-so under Bush. A few areas have benefited but not many. Bush has sacrificed long term economic health with his tax cuts and run away deficit spending for a short term win fall for a few industries, it is just starting to turn sour and will continue.

Answer 4

Bush is the blame. Since I do not get his so called tax breaks I can NOT afford to buy the things I need, Therefore businesses make less money. The same for interest rates & all the costs of everything else going up because of him. Thats less money for people to spend and less money to be made.

Answer 5

Energy prices are through the roof, people by the hundreds of thosusands are losing their homes The new obs that are being created are low-paying. health care costs are ridiculous.

The 90% of the American people who do the work--and VOTE--are not doing well. And theydon't give a rat's a** about some Bush supporters' stock portfolios being in good shape.

Answer 6

George Bush has borrowed and spent four trillion dollars. The wars are one trillion, what happened to the other three? It certainly didn't help the American people. Prices on medical care, fuel, material, food, insurance, state, local, and payroll tax, etc. are placing a burden on the average American.

Answer 7

The average starting salary for what I do dropped by 50% since 2000. I work in a technical field.

Answer 8

No president really has much to do with the economy.

Economies are innately cyclical, and are influenced by groups like the Federal Reserve Board far more than by any action a president can take.

That being said, a president who has a good economy had better have a balanced budget. If not, he isn't much of a president.

Answer 9

The problem with your whole argument is you are only looking at it from the point of view of that top 10% of Americans who are benefiting from the Bush tax cuts and the new economy. But the polls you are quoting are asking a cross section of all Americans, not just the rich.

The average lower class worker, is struggling to feed his/her family with two incomes that combined can barely meet the poverty level. They are suffering under double digit inflation in fuel and energy, double digit inflation in the cost of medical care, stagnant or falling wages caused by competition with low paid illegal immigrant workers and foreign workers who can live well in their countries for pennies on the dollar compared to the US.

The middle class workers are suffering the same fate, with the cost of housing, food, energy and medicine all soaring, while the wages they are paid are shrinking. At the same time, employers are shifting more and more of the cost of health care to the employee, taking an ever bigger bite out of take home pay, while delivering ever smaller benefits. The are also facing the mass exodus of jobs to oversea manufacturing sites, or pressure from the employer to give wage and benefit concessions to allow them to try to compete with the low cost labor in foreign factories.

Meanwhile, we are giving massive tax breaks to the top 10% of all wage earners, who have seen their average income climb by more than 20% on average. You comment that this group is paying 90% of the taxes. You are correct. And to that I say, SO WHAT. They are still not paying their fare share, as this same group who pay 90% of all taxes, are earning 95% of all the income and receiving 99.88% of the gain in real income.

The Bush administration praises the tax cuts as having helped stimulate the economy. That is a load of crap, and in the immortal words of Bush's father when Ronald Reagan made the same claims, it is VOODOO ECONOMICS. The conservatives always want to yell at the moon about letting the market solve problems and let the market determine the course of events, until it comes to getting a big fat tax cut, and then all of the sudden we have to throw the market theory out the window. Give the tax break to the rich so they will invest it???? They are investing in themselves while they move to shield their new income from the investments from normal income tax rules.

What Bush should have done - and it would have assured him a legacy that would have ranked him as one of the top presidents in history, instead of the joke he will end up being, is to give his trillion dollar tax cut completely to the lower and middle class. Why you ask? Because they would have spent the money from the tax cut to buy things they needed, or to improve their standard of living. When they bought those goods, they would be emptying the store shelves. Now the stores are hiring more help to keep up with sales, and they are placing orders for new goods to restock the shelves. So the warehouses and distributors receive more orders for goods. Now the distributors are hiring more help and placing orders with the factories to keep up with the demand for products. Suddenly the manufacturers are having to hire new help, place orders for raw materials from other suppliers and manufacturers, and add new productions lines or more sifts to supply the needed goods.

All these new employees will also have more income, and rising wages, as the employers compete with each other for the best labor pool. And they will also spend that money as they improve their standard of living.

And what of the poor rich guy that did not get the tax cut? Well guess who owns the businesses that are doing all the selling and making all the profits from that selling? Guess who owns the distributorship's and the manufacturing plants. They will see their income rise exponentially as the companies they own see sales snowball.

In the meantime, all of these new wages are being taxed, which brings in more revenue to the government and leads to a surplus in the budget. This can be used to pay off the national dept, at the same time you add some basic services to all Americans, like universal health care, as well as paying for all the things the military needs, that we don't seam to be paying for now, like armored Humvees and body armor, or basic medical care when you return home from Iraq with injuries.

No Bush blew it - so now he will be remembered for his constant drumming of "Stay the Course". The same thing the lead lemming always says to the one behind him in line as they plummet over the cliff.

Answer 10

The Economy is falling. Increased amount of jobs going abroad,increased property taxes and lower wages, the collapse of the housing market, fore closers reaching 50%, the trade deficit increasing exponentially, the importation of inferior products, and NAFTA. It will get worse. EDIT: Maybe using the term"exponentially" was extreme, I will rephrase and use "alarming rate".