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.
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.
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.
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 of the baby boomer generation from the work force.
These. The spineless, utterly unprincipled GOP would have spewed lizards from their eyeballs if Obama had run similar deficits or initiated similar tariffs.
It also helps retirees, many of whom are not rich.
IIRC over a third of US stocks are owned in retirement accounts.
The AARP does not seem to agree with you on the overall impact of the tax changes on retirees:
Yep, I’m sure they are just thrilled with this:
"Yesterday, we learned what happens when Republicans trying to rein in government tackle the tax side of the equation but not the spending side.
The result: a Medicare program that is projected to run out of money just eight years from now, in 2026"
I mostly hear gripes about ADA, EPA, and EEOC regulations - which don’t hit moms and pops as hard as they hit the big guys.
Of course, I have relatives who think that having to get a building permit, with the electrical diagrams stamped by an electrician, is a burden. Dad bragged that the little town in Idaho that they’d retired to didn’t require building permits. Ten years and a few electrical fires later, they did.
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.
They are the party of Trump. They have no shame.
Except, Barack Obama voted for it. As did his opponent.
Possibly. I know that many conservatives don’t like the consumer protection. This friend was actually looking to invest in some check cashing stores at one point until I argued him out of it as an immoral business to be in one night over a bottle of scotch.
No, and I didn’t press him for any. We were at a social gathering and both he and I are sensitive of how partisan things are these days. Our wives have both made demands that we are not allowed to discuss politics if they are at the gathering.
Right. I was thinking more of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, but it was a jobs/stimulus program, not a bill to boost to stop the bleeding. There is no way that he could have done loan forgiveness in this act.
Thanks Sam, I can understand how over regulation, or indeed any regulation, could harm businesses. It may be that this is what my friend is talking about. This begs a few questions though, your link title claimed he was attempting to push a bunch of regulations through in his last 13 months in office, does this mean he was OK for businesses before that? Is it just the 8 examples in the article that were bad for business (I think the fiduciary rule makes sense, charge me more if you need to but represent me if I hire you!), or are there other examples of job killing regulations that Obama pushed. Better yet, is there any data that Obama’s policies were bad for business. I am just looking for a few concrete examples…
Regarding Trump and his deregulation, tax cuts and the “red-hot” economy, I think we need to wait and see how effective he will be in the long term. It may very well be that Trump’s policies will spur long term growth, but I think it it too soon to tell. The unemployment rate and GDP growth are continuing along at the pace they were before he was elected and it is hard to attribute anything to Trump.
That said, I don’t want to talk about Trump, I want to talk about Obama and the concrete damage he did to business (if it exists).
So you are saying the stimulus bill was bad for business? How exactly?
Welfare did go up, how was this bad for businesses? Also, even though welfare spiked in 2009-2010, by the end of his term it was back to levels below those seen under Bush, Clinton, Bush and Reagan as a percentage of GDP. Cite. Regarding the unemployment rate, I can look up the U-6 unemployment rate and compare it to the official U-3 rate and it is not a fact. While a lot of people were out of the workforce after the 2008 crisis, by the end of the his second term the unemployment rate (U-6, U-3, whatever), was back to where it was in 2006. Cite.
Regardless, what policies did Obama enact that besides causing welfare to go up and unemployment to sky-rocket were also bad for businesses. I would be happy to discuss unemployment, welfare spending, and how Obama was a cock-sucking socialist in other threads, this thread is about how Obama’s policies were bad for the business community and, this being Great Debates, you need to back up your opinion or shut your pie hole.
Exactly. I know it is about the mythology. I know that Democrats run up debt (even though it is the Republicans that eliminate the paygo rules and lower taxes while holding spending constant). This is why I started the thread here in GD even though I really wanted it in GQ. At least in Great Debates there is the expectation that people will back up their arguments with facts.
I don’t believe Obama was “the one” and I even disagreed with a lot of what he did. I also don’t believe that Trump is “the destroyer”, though I wish he would shut his mouth and his gutting of the state department makes me sad. And don’t get me started on the EPA.
Whatever, I just want to know if there is any evidence that Obama’s policies were bad for business? Any chart, statistic, figure, etc… that shows that businesses were worse off with a arguable connection to one of Obama’s policies.
While I agree with you that the economy is doing well, very well in fact, I think we could argue at the cause. It may be that Trump’s policies of deregulation and his madman diplomacy are tweaking growth and I would be certainly open to data in this regard, I think it is probably too soon to tell. As others have pointed out, many of Trump’s policies did not take effect until this year as the 2017 budget was passed during Obama’s tenure. Also it took a bit of time for Trump to get traction in Washington and I don’t think he accomplished all that much in his first 6 months. But, regardless of how well or poorly Trump is doing, I want to know how Obama hurt the business community. I want some evidence.
The AARP is such an unbiased source.
Indeed. They are unabashedly and 100% admittedly a group meant to lookout for the best interests of retired people. So much so, in fact, that it is hinted at right in their name.
As such they are an excellent source when it comes to assessing whether something is good for bad for retired people.