Not being snarky but could you please expand on this? He’s slashing taxes and raising spending. Even Forbes is calling him on it.
Congress And Trump Are Spending Money And Cutting Taxes Like There Is No Tomorrow
And GDP come from, very roughly, people x productivity. The nonfarm payrolls trajectory we’ve been experiencing for nearly a decade must result in a GDP increase unless we experience a productivity decrease. Which we aren’t. Not that it’s increasing massively.
It’s classic Trump, tho, innit?
If it works and he gets re-elected, they do more of the same for 4 more years, knowing that they’ll just blame a Democratic POTUS for all the shortcomings of their own, previous policies.
If it doesn’t work, they’ll immediately start blaming the new Democratic POTUS for all the shortcomings of their own, previous policies.
Either way, Trump (and his cronies) walk away with tons of cash and influence, with no possible personal repercussions for any of them. No jail time, no fines, nothing.
Trump’s been operating that way for decades; it’s all he knows.
I’d be delighted to try. Back in 2016, many months before President Trump was even elected, the CBO released this report (they do this all the time, there’s nothing particularly special about this one except that it happened before President Trump was elected, meaning his policies hadn’t done anything to affect anything yet). It’s full of good information, but of particular note for this discussion is Summary Table 1, which outlines the CBO’s baseline budget projections for the (then) next 10 years. This is the trajectory the country was on prior to President Trump. If you look at Summary Table 1, you’ll see that the deficit was already anticipated to rise like this:
2016 = $544B
2017 = $561B
2018 = $572B
2019 = $738B
2020 = $810B
2021 = $893B
2022 = $1,044B
2023 = $1,077B
2024 = $1,089B
2025 = $1,226B
2026 = $1,366B
(assuming I haven’t made any transcription errors)
Those numbers are horrendous, but they existed prior to President Trump being a thing. That was the trajectory we were already on. That’s what I mean by “baked in”. Does that make sense?
There is, I think, some valid criticism that President Trump has not improved the situation (with regard to the deficit), and has, in fact, made it worse (currently, the deficit is expected to outpace those 2016 estimates by roughly a couple hundred billion dollars each year). That is somewhat offset by the fact that the economy under President Trump has outperformed the CBO’s baseline projections for GDP growth and unemployment, but that winning has come at a cost to the deficit.
Anyways, the point I was trying to make was that comparing President Trump’s 1st year in office with the first year of Obama’s second term, without taking into account that the budget deficits were already set to balloon before President Trump ever took office strikes me as rather disingenuous. There are people in this thread trying to blame President Trump for the effects of the decisions of his predecessors.
No.
From RadioWave’s cite:
Underline and bold added.
The short version is that the deficits were already going to be bad (prior to President Trump winning the election), and things have gotten worse (since he did, deficit-wise at least). Do we agree on at least that much?
Start here. See, for example, 5.1% growth in Q2 2014.
Perhaps it was the word “annual” that confused you?
ETA: to elaborate further, 2014’s 5.1% Q2 + 4.9% Q3 + 1.9% Q4 - 1% Q1 = 2.7% ANNUAL growth in 2014.
Obama had greater than 3% quarterly growth more than half a dozen times. You should probably learn about things before you talk shit about them.
I was speaking of annual growth, sorry for not making that clear. I’m aware that he had the occasional good quarter. They were mixed in with bad quarters, which meant most of his years were mediocre.
Obama First President Since Great Depression Not to See 3% GDP Growth
Note that their headline, like my post (although I wasn’t perfectly clear on this, my apologies), is referring to ANNUAL growth.
Your OP is “GDP grew at a 3.5% annual rate in 2018 Q3.” What do you think this means? What should this figure have been to conform with your latest goalpost shift?
Fuzzy_wuzzy’s post #46 and your reply to it in #67 had very little to do with my OP. There was no goal-post shifting there, just you not understanding what “US growth has not reached 3% annual growth for the best part of a decade” meant. You even used the confused smiley to indicate your confusion. Don’t get bent out of shape because I tried to clear it up for you.
Since these numbers are oh, so very very important for this discussion, here are the April-to-April growth rates for the last 71 years. I’ve taken the liberty of painting them according to the President’s party. This data is taken from another FRED dataset (see previous cite.) I choose April-to-April because April 2018 was the last quarter in the dataset.
1948, +4.58%
1949, -1.04%
1950, +7.30%
1951, +9.15%
1952, +3.60%
1953, +6.78%
1954, -2.43%
1955, +7.78%
1956, +2.40%
1957, +1.98%
1958, -2.02%
1959, +9.13%
1960, +2.06%
1961, +1.56%
1962, +6.73%
1963, +3.82%
1964, +6.18%
1965, +5.66%
1966, +7.49%
1967, +2.64%
1968, +5.52%
1969, +3.07%
1970, +0.16%
1971, +3.11%
1972, +5.26%
1973, +6.32%
1974, -0.21%
1975, -1.83%
1976, +6.17%
1977, +4.47%
1978, +6.08%
1979, +2.66%
1980, -0.78%
1981, +2.97%
1982, -1.01%
1983, +3.27%
1984, +8.00%
1985, +3.68%
1986, +3.70%
1987, +3.36%
1988, +4.48%
1989, +3.75%
1990, +2.41%
1991, -0.54%
1992, +3.17%
1993, +2.81%
1994, +4.22%
1995, +2.40%
1996, +4.00%
1997, +4.31%
1998, +4.10%
1999, +4.66%
2000, +5.30%
2001, +1.06%
2002, +1.34%
2003, +2.03%
2004, +4.20%
2005, +3.56%
2006, +3.12%
2007, +1.83%
2008, +1.09%
2009, -3.92%
2010, +2.80%
2011, +1.72%
2012, +2.36%
2013, +1.26%
2014, +2.60%
2015, +3.37%
2016, +1.30%
2017, +2.12%
2018, +2.87%
Note the 3.37% gain for 2015, which not only beats Trump’s figure, but refutes the Fuzzy claim.
Looking at how the numbers jump around should remind one of reading tea-leaves. As others have pointed out, Trump’s number may be peculiarly anemic given this was all he could muster despite an asininely huge tax cut.
The liberal shills over at the WSJ are ascribing about half the growth over the last six quarters to increased government spending:
So everyone is on the same page, let’s look at the difference between the 2016 estimate and the 2018 estimate:
2016 = was $544B, no change.
2017 = was $561B, now $665B
2018 = was $572B, now $804B
2019 = was $738B, now $981B
2020 = was $810B, now $1,008B
2021 = was $893B, now $1,123B
2022 = was $1,044B, now $1,276B
2023 = was $1,077B, now $1,273B
2024 = was $1,089B, now $1,244B
2025 = was $1,226B, now $1,352B
2026 = was $1,366B, now $1,320B
Hold on a sec – when deficits went up as a result of the Great Recession, conservatives LOST. THEIR. SHIT. There was no “baking in” of the fiscal effects of a economic catastrophe. Now you want us to buy that deficits that are somewhere around a third to a half of those days are terrible but were going to happen anyways? Give me a break.
This is exactly why people often have the totally wrong impression about fiscal conservatism. Many think that fiscal conservatives want to balance the budget, but it is TOTALLY false. Fiscal conservatives exist for one reason only: to cut taxes. Everything else is lip service.
I would phrase it differently. Republicans exist to cut taxes; they wrap themselves in the mantle of “fiscal conservative” to give cover to their actions. Who knows, maybe they even believe it.
I would phrase it differently still: Republicans exist to cut taxes on the rich (or, at best, taxes that mainly fall on the rich). They really have very little interest in cutting payroll or sales taxes that are regressive and hit the poor and middle class harder.
I swear I made a post here about welcoming Republicans to make campaign ads based on GDP growth… I guess not.
Well, they did, sorta: We Can't Go Back - YouTube
CNN is reporting that Trump saw that ad and hated it. He and I are, for once, on the same page. That ad was low energy. A loser. Made by someone with a low IQ. I should know, I have one of the best brains, ever, is what everyone is saying.