Any slower, and it would have been completely flat. Anemic job growth is not something to crow about.
The Dow was rising? Wow, that never happens, film at eleven! So, tell us what happened after the peak?
Your title was inaccurate. I corrected the inaccuracy. We’re here to fight ignorance, so you’re welcome for helping you out. Whatever.
I’m not quite sure what you mean to suggest by the quotation marks. Clarify?
$250,000 per year might sound like a lot to some people, but it’s hardly ‘rich’. To me, you don’t start dropping the quotes until you are talking millions or tens of millions per year, with assets to match. yMMV of course.
-XT
The stupid Bush tax cuts and the non funding of 2 wars is the reason for the deficit. Without those totally ignorant moves, we have have a pretty close to balanced budget. Bush deliberately created the deficit. The Repubs planned on it and they said they would do it. where is the surprise.
They said “deficits don’t matter, Reagan proved it”. They had an idea to cut taxes ,create a huge deficit and eliminate all government programs for the poor , which they labelled entitlements .
I don’t know, when I made almost that amount during the Bubble I felt pretty rich.
Rich enough not to mind paying the onerous and confiscatory Clinton incremental rate, at least.
Letting all the Bush tax cuts expire is probably the best solution and will solve a big chunk of the deficit problem right there. Failing that, letting them expire for the top bracket will raise a significant chunk of revenue. Refusing to raise taxes at all is completely irresponsible and a recipe for serious fiscal problems down the road. Worst of all is the Ryan “plan” which actually wants to reduce taxes for the top brackets even further and is a recipe for a massive fiscal disaster.
If the US is lucky there will be a standoff between Democrats and Republicans next year over the extension of the Bush tax cuts, nothing will get done and all the tax cuts will be repealed. Combined with a certain amount of spending restraint, this could turn around the deficit quite quickly as happened in the 90’s. It will help growth because as the recovery proceeds interest rates will start to rise and deficit reduction will be central in preventing them from rising too quickly.
Don’t forget the completely unfunded giveaway that was Medicare Part D.
Tell us again why the GOP insisted on it, as their top priority in fact, and has yet to find a fiscally responsible backbone?
and the Republicans will find a way to scare Obama into caving…again.
But your argument was that
not that US unemployment was lower. I note that you conveniently picked the only years that unemployment was down during Bush’s presidency, but he ultimately left the country in a shambles.
[
](United States Unemployment Rate 1920–2013)
That table only goes thru 2008, but when Bush left office in January 2009, the unemployment rate was at 7.8%, almost twice what it was when he took office. This chart illustrates it even better, with monthly rates listed.
Also, unemployment rates don’t necessarily have anything to do with prosperity. In fact, your assertion of prosperity during the Bush presidency can be shown to be false.
[
](http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2008/08/14/logan-american-dream/)
If you want to argue that we were prosperous during Bush’s years in office, you’ll need to provide some cites to back up your argument before anyone is convinced.
Pls pardon my laziness but where was the figure $250K discussed? The quote I heard included millionaires and billionaires.
Between me and my wife, we’re in the $250K ballpark, and no, we are not rich…at all, but we are very comfortable. Although I wouldn’t like for my taxes to be increased, I’d deal with it if they were. Everyone’s personal circumstances are different, of course; we don’t have children, for example, but raising my taxes another, say, 10 to 15 percent wouldn’t change my lifestyle. I wouldn’t like it one bit, but with expenditures I’m able to write off yearly in addition to deductions for certain assets, I recoup a higher percentage of what I’m taxed than someone making, say, half my salary anyway, so I really don’t understand Republican’s cry to protect those making upwards of a million annually. Also, I think it is a misperception that millionaires drive job growth. There are many, many people in this country who make multiple hundred thousand dollar salaries who are just working schlubs like me. We don’t own companies and we don’t drive crap. We save and invest a high percentage of what we make. I don’t buy, at all, that someone making 4 or 5 times my salary, or more, needs protecting. There are so many loopholes in the current tax code that are skewed to benefit the wealthy that some end up paying little real tax personally.
Rant over.
We’re getting off the subject here, but this is very misleading. He also pushed policies that encouraged more people to buy homes, and one of the results was that more people bought houses they couldn’t afford. Which is not to say the whole thing was his fault, because it certainly wasn’t. But your post doesn’t tell the whole story at all. Here’s a brief discussion.
I was there. I don’t agree.
(I strongly suspect this will not cause you to change your views in the slightest, or even stop you for using this kind of flawed argument in the future.)
Cite? One with actual numbers, such as this one from the libertarian/conservative Ludwig von Mises Institute. Note that, even in the context of rebutting the general claim of stagnant real wages, it clearly shows a period of declining real wages spanning most of the GeeDubya years (arguably all of the GeeDubya years if one considers the first six-twelve months as more indicative of outcomes resulting from the previous administration’s policies).
Would he have been better to say, “If you were there, and didn’t have an ideological stake in convincing yourself it was a prosperous time”?
In context, “If you were there” clearly means “If you were paying attention and understood what was happening” rather than just “If you were occupying space and emitting greenhouse gases and 310K blackbody radiation”.
You should probably go back and look up what parts of the Bush Tax Cuts™ are going to ‘end’ and which parts aren’t. Specifically, what level of annual income they will ‘end’ at. If you still have any questions, feel free.
Did you have to continues to work, or was working a choice? Could you take several months off and go anywhere in the world you wanted, or did you have to be more circumspect in your vacationing habits? Could you buy pretty much anything you wanted on a whim, or did you still have to control your spending?
During the dot com growth period I made about this much, including bonus structure and stock options (which, in the end turned out to be worthless…well, when the company finally failed they were worth something like $.28/share from a high of $48/share) and other perks. Knowing REAL rich people, however, I never saw myself as anything close to ‘rich’…I was solidly middle class. I had to go to work every day. I had a house in a nice though unremarkable suburb in Maryland. I drove a nice, mid-range car and had 3 weeks of vacation a year. If you feel that this made me part of ‘the rich’, then as I said, MMV. To someone making minimum wage at Walmart it probably IS ‘rich’. To most middle class Americans it’s just a small step up…same kinds of work, more compensation. To a professional (a doctor, say, or a lawyer) it’s…meh. To someone who is wealthy or actually rich, it’s nothing at all…just another middle class professional.
-XT
Is this intended to be a factual statement? Or merely an unfounded opinion based on nothing more than wishful thinking?
Or is it hyperbole? Ya that’s it right?
BTW, just FTR I’m good with ending the Bush Tax Cuts™. I think that if they are going to end, they should ALL end, however. I mean, if the country is in such bad shape then we all have to pull together and chip in, right? So…end them all. Let’s go back to the tax rate we were at before Bush was president.
-XT