# Obama: bad for business? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 6, 2018, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538 "2018-06-06T14:18:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_fun_ball/32/17664_2.png) [@Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Fun_Ball)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/41 "2018-06-07T02:52:31Z")
> [@Akaj](#): > > This isn’t supposed to be thread about Trump, but it is infuriating how Republicans refuse to acknowledge that today’s “red hot” economy is virtually a straight line continuation of the improvement during the Obama years. > > But lefties often miss this, too. When a hard-left friend of mine bemoaned how Trump is just making the rich richer, I informed her that the S&P tripled from 2009-2017. She didn’t believe me until I showed her a chart. My thoughts exactly, I always believed that most of Obama’s policies were actually business friendly. Thus this thread, are their any policies of Obama’s that were unequivocally bad for business? > [@Chimera](#): > > Well, you can’t fault poorly educated Republicans for believing that everything was shit during the Obama Administration. After all, that’s what their media kept telling them, and they refuse to believe that any of it could be lies. So you think my friend was deluded? It’s possible. Another friend of mine was bragging to me in April about how much lower her taxes were last year thanks to Trump until I pointed out that his cuts don’t take effect until this year. Mythology indeed. > [@Voyager](#): > > And, to Sam’s point, the regulations, minimum wage increases and tax increases that were supposed to make the economy crash somehow didn’t. > Now, we’ll have to see what the massive Republican deficits will do, as well as the coming trade wars. The tax cut seems to be helping the rich, just as expected. Including the business tax cut, much of which is going to stock buybacks which help the rich. The thing is that I don’t think Obama raised the federal minimum wage or taxes rates. I would be happy to be proven wrong, but I always viewed it as a failure on his part. I think this is one of the reasons that Trump’s populism has taken such hold; when you really get down to brass tax Obama did not really do anything to help those people on the margins in this country. I am not saying he could with his relationship with congress being what it was, but those people in the bottom 2 quintiles saw no real gains during his administration (my retirement funds did great though). > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Yeah, the deficits and this stupid trade war nonsense threaten to undo it all. Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for presiding over a near trillion dollar deficit during economic good times and when they control all three branches of government. Agreed. And they are running these deficits when the economy is “red-hot” to boot. Fucking idiotic and I believe it truly threatens to do damage to this country that will take 100 years to correct. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/42 "2018-06-07T02:54:24Z")
> [@D\_Anconia](#): > > The AARP is such an unbiased source. You know how you constantly demand facts from others? Point out the bias and provide counter-facts and figures. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_fun_ball/32/17664_2.png) [@Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Fun_Ball)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/43 "2018-06-07T03:12:40Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > You know how you constantly demand facts from others? > Point out the bias and provide counter-facts and figures. Agreed. The quote from the AARP was very clear on why they thought it was a bad idea for their constituency. They did not come off as partisan in this judgement, simply focused. If **D’Anconia** has facts that show that these tax cuts are good for retirees and that the AARP is wrong, he should present it this being Great Debates on a message board dedicated to fighting ignorance. Better yet, he should post it in a different thread that is not about how Obama policies were bad for businesses. I know he would like to post it in this thread, but that’s only because I suspect he has nothing on the topic at hand. ---
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/44 "2018-06-07T03:14:29Z")
Please stop using the word “regulation” as though it was a pejorative thing. The Code of Federal Regulations is simply the executive branch’s explanation of how it will interpret the laws passed by Congress. They are not “additional regulatory burdens” cooked up by bureaucrats. Congress writes a law that doesn’t necessarily spell out exactly how it works in all situations. The executive department then has to figure out what the law means for certain situations. There typically is a process where the executive department draws up a series of regulations and asks for comment from those that will be affected by it and those familiar with the issues surrounding the law. If the federal government were pushing out an order of magnitude more regulations, what it means is that they want to explicate the law better and not leave any holes in what Congress passed. The promulgation of regulations does not in any way increase the burden on any business owner, it more generally decreases the burden by letting them know what the rules are better than the existing legislation did. Only in cases where Congress explicitly gives the executive branch the power to create rules does the executive branch do so. Now, if something was meant other than the regulations that compose the Code of Federal Regulations, then there might be a point. But if you’re talking about the executive branch promulgating regulations, that’s exactly what it’s referring to. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/45 "2018-06-07T03:31:51Z")
We could discuss his dastardly countenancing of the FCC writing those regulations on the internet. Look how badly that harmed the telecoms. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/46 "2018-06-07T05:29:17Z")
> [@Silver\_lining](#): > > the % of the people working in the labor force went down during Obama’s tenure The “labor force participation rate” was only focused on by FOXGOP because the headline unemployment figures were so good under Obama, they had to find something they could spin as negative (and it’s possible with LFPR because even in a bouyant economy it can decrease). It never gets a mention now. I wonder why. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/47 "2018-06-07T06:08:22Z")
> [@Silver\_lining](#): > > Obama did not prosecute one of the wall street crooks. A man who once kept shaking his finger at the top 1% is not making money from them bygiving speeches. > > A complete sellout. Are you implying that you think McCain or Rmoney **would** have prosecuted anyone? Because that sounds like the reachingest fantasy imaginable. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/48 "2018-06-07T07:15:03Z")
> [@Happy\_Fun\_Ball](#): > > The thing is that I don’t think Obama raised the federal minimum wage or taxes rates. I would be happy to be proven wrong, but I always viewed it as a failure on his part. I think this is one of the reasons that Trump’s populism has taken such hold; when you really get down to brass tax Obama did not really do anything to help those people on the margins in this country. I am not saying he could with his relationship with congress being what it was, but those people in the bottom 2 quintiles saw no real gains during his administration (my retirement funds did great though). When I googled it I got a whole bunch of hits on how often he raised taxes from right wing sources. But [here](https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-tax-changes-did-affordable-care-act-make) is one I trust a bit more: > [@](#): > > The Affordable Care Act (ACA) made several changes to the tax code intended to increase health insurance coverage, reduce health care costs, and finance health care reform. On net these taxes and credits are projected to reduce the deficit by $46 billion in 2020.[1] Taken together, they increase the average tax burden significantly for families in the top one percent of the income distribution but benefit families in the bottom income quintiles by providing new credits that on average exceed new taxes for those families. Combined with the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, the coverage-related taxes are projected to reduce the number of uninsured by 23 million in 2020.[2] These are the people who supposedly would stop working if you raised their taxes, if you believed a lot of the threads we had here at the time. As for minimum wage, he of course could not raise it - that took Congress. It did get raised in 2009. [Cite](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/04/5-facts-about-the-minimum-wage/). The minimum wage has been raised locally also in many places. I live in Silicon Valley where most if not all towns have raised the wage with no apparent impact on employment, based on the many help wanted signs I mentioned. ACA certainly helped the uninsured (at least in states which did not reject Medicaid increases). The decline in unemployment helped also. Given the recalcitrant Congress, I’m not sure what else he could have done. But the point here is that if those on the margins think Trump is going to help them, they got another think coming. A trade war is going to raise prices for everyone, which will hurt those with low incomes most. Republicans in this election cycle, you’ll note, are not talking much about the tax cut since the masses have figured out that they aren’t getting much out of it. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/49 "2018-06-07T14:45:30Z")
re: labor force participation, it’s common to use the “prime age” (not my favorite label, but I didn’t pick it), i.e. 25-54, labor force participation rate so as to avoid most of changes due to students and retirees: [Labor Force Participation Rate - 25-54 Yrs. (LNS11300060) | FRED | St. Louis Fed](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060) It peaked in Q1 '99 at 84.6% (seasonally adjusted), had a brief rise to a local maximum of 83.4% prior to the last recession, then dropped steadily through most of the Obama years, bottoming out at 80.6% in Q3 2015. It’s since increased to 81.8% as of May. That’s only a few points in either direction, but when we’re talking about a 25-54 population of over 126M, that’s about 3.5M more jobs that we’d have if the participation rate were back at its peak. If we want to look just at Obama’s term, the participation rate dropped from 82.8% to 81.5%, and had already been on the upswing for five quarters. Although I’m skeptical of how much blame or credit can be ascribed to a president, past or current, for these numbers, especially given differing lags between different inputs and their effects. According to a likely paywalled WSJ summary of an OECD report that the asshole reporter couldn’t be bothered to link to, “The OECD’s 35 countries—which include the U.S., most of the European Union members, Canada and FranceJapan—had a combined rate of 85.5% in the last three months of 2017.” “The use of opioid drugs ‘appears to be connected’.” > **[Why U.S. Prime-Age Workforce Participation Is Lagging Behind Other Nations](https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-u-s-prime-age-workforce-participation-is-lagging-behind-other-nations-1528291800)** > > The share of U.S. prime-age workers holding or seeking jobs has picked up in recent years but remains well below the rates of other developed economies, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/50 "2018-06-07T17:05:59Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > If we want to look just at Obama’s term, the participation rate dropped from 82.8% to 81.5%, and had already been on the upswing for five quarters. Although I’m skeptical of how much blame or credit can be ascribed to a president, past or current, for these numbers, especially given differing lags between different inputs and their effects. I already postulated an explanation upthread: Obama’s term coincided with the retirement of the baby boomers. Of course the labor participation rate would decline during that time. It’s similar to how Obama is often blamed for an increase in racial tensions between Black people and cops. But his term also coincided with the proliferation of phones with cameras. Of course there’s going to be more visibility with regards to police/citizen interaction when everybody is walking around with technology in their hand that you used to have to balance on your shoulder. (Consider that the Rodney King beating was unique for its time because it happened when, to record something, you had to haul out cumbersome equipment that many people didn’t have). > [@glowacks](#): > > Please stop using the word “regulation” as though it was a pejorative thing. The Code of Federal Regulations is simply the executive branch’s explanation of how it will interpret the laws passed by Congress. They are not “additional regulatory burdens” cooked up by bureaucrats. Congress writes a law that doesn’t necessarily spell out exactly how it works in all situations. The executive department then has to figure out what the law means for certain situations. QFT. An example I can think of is when Obama closed a loophole with regard to guns which were being sold at gunshows. The law passed by congress required background checks, but excluded “occasional sellers”. They then left it up to the appropriate administrative agency (I think ATF) to define “occasional seller”. Obama’s change to the definition wasn’t some egregious form of overregulation. The regulation existed, by design, because the law didn’t define its term. Obama may have changed the regulation, but it’s existence was a given. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/51 "2018-06-07T17:41:53Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > I already postulated an explanation upthread: Obama’s term coincided with the retirement of the baby boomers. Of course the labor participation rate would decline during that time. You postulated about a different phenomenon. The number I posted are: > [@Ruken](#): > > “prime age” […] i.e. 25-54, labor force participation rate ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/52 "2018-06-07T18:12:57Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > You postulated about a different phenomenon. Indeed I did. Mea Culpa. The stats you gave are an interesting phenomenon to consider, since the percentage is not obviously good or bad, as can be seen by the fact that it was much lower in the 1950’s, when the middle class was expanding (plainly due to the fact that a lot of women worked inside the home). Is the reduction in labor participation under Obama do to a lack of available work? Or because married couples were doing well enough that more parents could stay home to care for the kids while their spouse continued in the work force? Perhaps there were more available educational opportunities enticing people to go back to school. I’m not sure the answer, either. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/53 "2018-06-07T18:31:13Z")
I _think_ what it tells us is that even with low unemployment, we still have some wiggle room for employment growth. But yeah not really a good/bad binary, especially given historical numbers. ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/54 "2018-06-07T18:49:12Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > I _think_ what it tells us is that even with low unemployment, we still have some wiggle room for employment growth. But yeah not really a good/bad binary, especially given historical numbers. [Here’s](https://newrepublic.com/article/120826/gop-wrongly-blames-labor-force-participation-rate-obama) an article that tries to address the issue, but has no answers, either. It does note (as do most articles I find) that the drop in labor participation is largely due to the Boomer retirement issue. But it also carves out the prime age, and notes its drop, with no real answer other than it is “structural” and that it started before Obama. > [@](#): > > A better way to judge the labor market is the prime-age (aged 25-54) labor force participation rate. This will eliminate the effects of students staying in school longer and baby boomers retiring, since it focuses just on people in their prime working years. At 80.8 percent, the prime-age LFPR is near its lowest point since the early 1980s. As you can see from this graph, this is a long-term trend in the American economy that predates Obama. The recession may have slightly accelerated, but it certainly didn’t start it. > > This tells us that there is some other structural reason—one not related to the underlying economic conditions—that has caused working age Americans to drop out of the labor force over the past few decades. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/55 "2018-06-07T22:02:06Z")
Well part of the issue is that a good portion of those people live in places where there are not sufficient jobs. Unfortunately, as we discussed in a thread on this board not long ago, they either refuse to move to look for jobs, or lack the resources to move. You can’t insist on living in a small town then demand that the jobs come to you. It doesn’t work that way. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2018, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/56 "2018-06-07T23:54:32Z")
Why is consumer protection considered bad for business? What do these business types think consumers do with the money that consumer protection laws save them if not spend it at other businesses? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2018, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/57 "2018-06-08T06:35:16Z")
> [@E-DUB](#): > > Why is consumer protection considered bad for business? What do these business types think consumers do with the money that consumer protection laws save them if not spend it at other businesses? They are bad for the businesses making money by ripping off consumers. And why does business A care of the consumer spends money at business B? As far as business A is concerned, the consumer could flush the money down the toilet. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2018, 9:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/58 "2018-06-08T09:28:58Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Yeah, the deficits and this stupid trade war nonsense threaten to undo it all. Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for presiding over a near trillion dollar deficit during economic good times and when they control all three branches of government. Oh? Is this a new view? You’re on record calling trillions in tax breaks for the rich “chump change” — just “a rounding error,” no less! — dwarfed in magnitude by the _quadrillions_ that will eventually come due because of liberal follies like SocSec and Medicare. And, BTW, did we miss your answer to the direct question asking why the stock market quadrupled under Obama — at a time when other markets around the world were still in the doldrums — despite the onerous burdens Obama placed on business? ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2018, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/59 "2018-06-08T13:30:02Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > This sincerely confuses me. My wife and I owned our own business for about a year and a half, ending in January of 2016 (it was literally “mom and pop” - we were the only two employees). I don’t recall “untold thousands” or “untold numbers” of federal mandates, in addition to state and municipal ones. > > Are you talking about the OSHA sign? Or paying income tax? I don’t think those were unique to Obama’s presidency, and that certainly doesn’t amount to some “untold” number. > > Perhaps you could help me understand this a little bit better by just listing a few that you are thinking of. > What you ignore, naturally, is the [mass exodus](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-baby-boomers-retirement-means-for-the-u-s-economy/) of the baby boomer generation from the work force. You’re not accounting for the “facts don’t matter” principle. It doesn’t matter whether one can point to actual incidents of excessive regulation, all they need to do is dream up false narratives that IT’S ALL OBAMA’S FAULT and in their minds the matter is settled. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2018, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538/60 "2018-06-08T14:50:02Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > It’s the untold thousands of small regulations and requirements that really kill small businesses. A mom and pop shop now has to worry about meeting untold numbers of federal mandates… This is just false, Sam. It’s absolute nonsense. Smal lbusinesses do not deal with “untold numbers” of federal regulations. That simply is not a thing that happens in the United States or ever did. I have worked with lots of small businesses in the USA. They all did just fine under OBama - the economy was great for small businesses - and not a one ever said “Gosh, these untold numbers of regulations are killing us.” It doesn’t happen. They did not spend all their money on lawyers and I don’t remember ANY spending money on auditors at all. This is all Fox News baloney. Of course there are many, many regulations - and it’s irrelevant. Most of them 1. Do not apply to most businesses. Every jurisdiction in the USA has a law for working at heights - training, fall arrest requirements, etc. Those regulations apply, in the legal sense, to every business. Of course, for 99%+ of all businesses, no one cares or is even aware of the regulations because why would they? Most workplaces don’t need to apply working at heights regulations because no one there is working at heights. Your own Politico cite mentions a number of regulations that obviously apply only to a thin number of businesses. Clearer labelling on cranberry juice affects only companies that makes cranberry juice, and of course they already label the juice so it’s not even a “new” regulation at all, it’s just adjusting an existing one. 1. Are passively met, anyway. Any business is in a state of passively meeting any number of regulations - meeting the law without exerting any effort to do so. To use a really obvious example, all jusrisdictions, federal and state, have regulations about fair treatment and nondiscrimination in the workplace - but it doesn’t require effort to NOT discriminate, and for 99.9% of businesses it’ll never cross anyone’s minds that such rules are a thing. 1. Are ignored. I’m sure you’ve seen those Weirdo Law stories about how it’s illegal in the State of South Dakota to shoot a dolphin with a helicopter-mounted bazooka, or illegal in the City of Boston to chew gum within fifty yards of the Mayer’s wife or whatever. Most of the time these are ludicrous exaggerations of real laws (it’s illegal in most states to shoot any animal with any weapon from a vehicle) or just some law no one bothered to remove from the books. Well, regulations are like that. In doing a quick Google search for weird regulations, I found that at one point the State of Texas had a regulation that said a computer repair person needed a private investigator’s license. that is stupid, of course, but it clearly wasn’t really the intent of the law, and no one bothered to enforce it, and eventually it appears they fixed it. Most such regulations are never enforced, but the right wingers count 'em all. Look, if small business owners were drowning in regulations before Saint Donald came along, _can you explain why small business did so well_? Why was the economy booming? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-bad-for-business/815538.md?page=4)