Some ideas here.
• Starting wars in the middle east affects crude oil pricing
• changing rules on drilling in Alaska and national parks would effect crude oil pricing
• changing policy towards renewables including adding or decreasing subsidies or tax breaks will effect crude oil pricing.
• changing policy on fuel efficiency mandates for cars will eventually change crude oil pricing
so yeah, actually I’d say every President’s policies have affected crude oil pricing
Well, you’re not being fair to him by judging him on things like employment numbers and stock prices. Let’s rate his performance on the “objective measures” that the American public has rated him by during the primary and general elections.
As of today, January 20, 2017:
Has pants on right-side-out - Check
Appears be wearing shoes - Check
Speaks using words - Check
No visible sign of drooling - Check
Can follow simple commands (e.g. - “Repeat after me”) - Check
Let’s be fair and chart his performance by these factors and not by the usual “big-boy president” metrics. Give the guy a break, already.
You’re setting the bar too high. Those are all things he can already do, so there’s really no place to go but down. It’s like you want him to fail.
Gangs, drugs, and crime need to be on the list too.
What if he institutes policies that disproportionately benefit long-term unemployed that are not registered?
this is silly ignorance. the type of unemployment that is measured there is a standard approach in the economic data benchmarking reflecting the econmic reality of the market participation.
How did old Obama do on all this stuff ? Or Bush ? or Nixon ?
That’s a good but tricky question to answer. For Nixon it would be near impossible to say as many of these studies don’t go back to his presidency. To really understand these indices you need to dig into the underlying data. Since USA has such high HDI values the overall indices don’t change that much but to answer you question, the overall HDI of the USA has continued to climb slowly during Obama. I don’t think it would be fair to Trump to expect a sudden massive spike upwards, the USA already scores very high; however, such a spike would be very noticeable. A decrease in HDI would be one the first (if not the first) in the history of these reports dating back to 1984. It would be very noticeable.
If we take a specific measurement such as income inequality for example, during Obama’s presidency it rose. But it didn’t rise as much as it did during Bush II. It fell during Clinton. Jumped up and down during Bush I. And had been pretty steady going back to 1984.
In particular right now, the USA performs not so well in the S90/10 percentile split, which is defined as “The S90/S10 ratio is the share of all income received by the top decile divided by the share of the first, or the ratio of the average income of the top decile to that of the first.” or the S80/20 percentile split. So ideally during Trump we should see a decrease in inequality or at least a decrease in the rate of climb. In particular if Trump is really going to help the little guy we should see an improvement in S90/10 and S80/20. If Trump helps the middle class we should see an improvement in the S50/10, which has been steady for quite some time. If Trump’s policy are status quo we should see the rate of climb stay steady. If his policy are pro-wealthy then we should see an increase in the rate of climb.
If people pick a few indicators I will be more than happy to dig through the data and publish it every year. I can’t do all of the indicators.
I already intend to track inequality measures (especially income) and metrics on pollution.
Merged thread from Elections starting at post #32.
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On further though, I think I’m done with Trump threads. He’s not my president (I can say it literally). Too depressing.
I’d suggest the indicators Trump campaigned most heavily on, which seemed to me to be:
- Jobs
- Illegal immigration
- Crime/terrorism
- Governmental corruption
- Health care insurance
The rest falls under the general umbrella of making America great again, I guess.
Thanks for reading. Try again. Jesus fuck, what a consort.
Looking at the website, there is only data for selected years. The closest you can get to values for Bush43 and Obama:
U.S. Human Development Index (HDI)
2000: 0.883
2010: 0.909
2014: 0.915
I take this to mean a steady but slowing improvement over the Bush43/Obama years. I guess this could be the index for the U.S. leveling off. If it goes down in the next four years, I’d be concerned.
I don’t understand your objection. Sure, the president personally has very little effect on the economy, but he can put policies in place and deploy the U.S. military in ways that can have significant effects. You’re now changing from an anti-Keystone president to a pro-Keystone president, for example. Is that likely to affect oil prices?
We’re basically a quarter of the way through Trump’s first term, or at least a quarter of the way until voters render a verdict in November 2020, so it seems like an appropriate time to revisit this thread.
Looking back through the thread, I found this post with some handy links and easily-verifiable criteria to make life simple (ETA: certainly, many other posters suggested other useful criteria for evaluation too):
For comparison, today:
- Dow: 24,776
- S&P 500: 2,693
- Nasdaq: 6,513
- Crude Oil: (I don’t know what the original was looking at, but …) https://oilprice.com/ says WTI Crude (the first one listed) is a $60.44
- Gold: $1,308.80
- Unemployment rate (thru Nov 2017): 4.1%
- National Debt: $20,598,778,000,000
- Debt per Citizen: $62,998
- Debt per Taxpayer: $170,334
- Uninsured Rate (Health Insurance): ??? (doesn’t look like there’s a 2017 report available, at least yet)
- GDP Growth Rate: 3.2% in 2017 Q3 (frankly, I’m not sure where the original 3.5% came from, I can’t find where at that link a “3.5%” appears, and I’m sure there would be plenty of quibbling about how to fairly score Trump’s first few quarters vs the Obama years)
- Inflation Rate: 2.2%
- Federal Deficit: $666B
If Trump gets re-elected, he will be viewed as a success. Not, and he’ll be considered an epic failure. By and large, presidents who are reelected are considered successes. Carters and Bush Sr.'s are viewed as failures.