USA better or worse now then it was 6-10 years ago?

Great Debates
1

In our weekly discussion group of about 30 members split about 50-50 conservatives and liberals, the following topic was discussed almost leading to fisticuffs.

Is the US worse off or better off since the present president has been office vis a vis the Clinton administration?

The "worse off " people mentioned:

  1. the national debt is higher than ever.

  2. unnecessary war in Iraq with loss of American lives and Iraqian lives

  3. global warming is officially denied

  4. the Poor have increased in numbers and the rich are protected in great part to
    higher taxation

For those of you who believe the USA is better off under George W. Bush’s
administration, would you please state reasons to support your opinion?

2

I’d say the US as a country is worse off, but I also think that many of us are slightly better off, but not for directly political reasons.

The Medicare drug benefit, for example, has helped my family to the tune of about 300 dollars a month. Advances in medicine seem to this layperson to be happening at a deliriously fast pace. Etc.

So the US as a political entity I think is in worse shape, but it’s a good time to be alive.

3

  1. I agree with this.

  2. I couldn’t disagree more. The war in Iraq has been handled badly, but it was/is not just necessary but critical.

  3. Global warming is a political bugaboo that liberals uses to beat Republicans over the head with for their own political reasons. Unfortunately, it lacks a solid scientific foundation as to exactly what it is, and things like the Kyoto treaty are pointless anyway (Check out what Cecil has to say about it).

  4. More political classism. Lowered taxes on the rich have increased the amount of money flowing into the government’s coffers. You’d be better off focusing on the obscene spending that this administration engages in if you want to pinpoint a real problem.

Frankly, your list is, for the most part, nothing more than a collection of Democratic talking points which are, like their Republican counterparts, fairly useless in the real world, meant simply to inflame passions but divorced from reality. I think we are better off as a country than we were 6 years ago, but George W. Bush also had very little to do with that.

4

Why 6 to 10 years? Could it be that you wish to simply draw a comparison to the Clinton administration? Why not 20-30? 40? 100? Just curious.

Do you have a cite that the national debt, corrected for inflation, is at its peak currently? I have no idea if this claim is true or not.

I agree. But I think Vietnam, for instance, was worse both in terms of US loses and in terms of Vietnamese lives lost. In terms of money too.

Yes? And?

In absolute terms, are the poor better or worse off than, say, in the 60’s? 70’s? How about at the tern of the century? During the revolution? Civil war? The fact that there is a disparity between rich and poor, and its growing doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a problem…but this gets into economic philosophy. So…do you have a cite that the poor are worse off today than at any time in the past? Or again, are we only comparing today to Clinton’s presidency?

I would say that the US is worse off today than it was under Clinton, by any measure. However, Clinton was just one president, who happened to be president during a period of unprecidented prosperity in the US…prosperity that was already waning BEFORE Clinton left office. If you compare Bush to other presidents in terms of if the US is ‘better off’ (whatever that vague term means), then I’d guess he’d come out somewhere in the middle…maybe middle lower. The US is certainly not at its worst today.

-XT

5

The Bush bashing members of the discussion group also added that our repect in the world has gone down the tubes because of “our President’s” actions.

The conservative members claimed that noone could say what would have happened if Bush did NOT invade Iraq.

As has been pointed out above, the personal wealth and well being of so many US citizens has improved during the Bush administration.

They further point out that the great majority of senators who voted AGAINST English becoming our official language were democrats…catering to the potential Hispanic votes in their individual states.

The Bush bashers in the group as those all across the nation had no significant solutions…after saying that Bush is the devil himself.

6

This is just plain untrue. Bush’s tax cuts in '01 has lowered government revenue from what it would have been without the cuts. I hear this conservative talking point being pushed by the master of spin, Bill O’Rielly, and it just makes me want to throttle him through the radio.

7

Waiter, there’s poison in my well!

8

I cannot honestly see any argument that we’re better off now than we were in 2000.

In 2000, we were not at war.

In 2000, we were riding an economic high.

Now we are and we’re not. You could argue that the war is necessary and that the lessened economy isn’t the current administration’s fault, but the war is bad, and we would like to have a stronger economy.

9

I have to agree with Menocchio. Without making any attempt to assign blame or deeply analyze the situations, the end of Clinton’s administration was very strong economically, our budget was in good shape, and we were not at war.

That’s not to say the economy was in a good position to continue growing, or that the peace would be eternal (9/11 was well into the planning stages by then) but the snapshot was pretty darn good. That’s also not to say that today’s economy is bad, or that the war is as devastating as some of our previous actions, but I find it hard to say that today’s snapshot measures up.

10

Personally, I’m much better off than I was in 2000 and most of the people I know are, too. However, this has little or nothing to do with who is President. Most of the things that affect you on a day to day basis are not controlled by the President. Your job status (unless you are a presidential appointee), your marital status, your health status, etc., are not controlled by Bush or whomever else is President.

In fact, even most of the government actions that affect you on a day to day basis are not controlled by the President. Local and state governments have much more affect on you than the federal government.

Is the U.S. as a whole better off? Well, it depends on what you measure and how selective you want to be. There are more jobs than when Bush entered office and the economy is larger, for instance. However, that is true for most Presidents. We are at war, sure, but that does not affect very many people. Even my family, which has members in the armed forces, is basically unaffected by the war. As for safety, it’s arguable that we are safer today than we were in 2001, but it took a major terrorist attack to focus our attention on the threat. Like almost every President, the answer to the question of whether or not Bush made the U.S. better is going to depend on if you like Bush or not. If you like him, you’ll think he made the U.S. better. If you don’t, then he’s the worst President since Reagan, Nixon, or Hoover (choose whichever you hate most). No amount of facts or statistics will sway your view, since your view is not based on facts or statistics.

11

I always find it amusing how people who want to raise taxes don’t understand economics at all. Saying “This is untrue” does not make it untrue. It is, in fact, and in spite of O’Riley saying it, the truth. It’s always been true. The four biggest increases in tax revenue in the last 100 years have all followed tax cuts. Here, educate yourself.(You don’t have to agree with premise of the paper, but it contains all the facts you need)

12

It’s a difficult comparison because 6-10 years ago would be 1996 through 2000. Basically the rise and height of the dot-com bubble. We might have FELT better then, the same way a drunk feels better after a few shots of tequila. The only difference was that we were drunk off of tech stocks.

While on paper we are probably a bit better off economicaly in terms of unemployment and GNP, the mood is not. With two wars going on, concerns about outsourcing, the rise of China, global warming and rising oil prices, people are not as optimistic.

There is also a sense by everyone other than the wacko Christian right that Bush has diminished the “greatness” of America. His political divisiveness and handling of 9/11, Katrina and the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebenon in a manner than many view as ranging between ambivalent and incompetant has painted a negative picture of this country.

Speaking of Christian Right, they are starting to make this country look like a bunch of backward, bigoted, anti-intellectual theocrats. That can’t be good for anyone

So bottom line, in most tangible ways we are better off but in intangible ways we aren’t.

13

Did you read the op? Or even the thread title?
:rolleyes:

I feel strongly that things are much worse off now that 6-10 years ago.

According to the recent, declassified reports, terrorism has gotten worse since Iraq.
Cite. This means the threat is far greater than it was 6-10 years ago; greater vigilence helps offset this, admittedly, for Americans, but at the cost of some serious invasions of personal liberties.

The war in Iraq has become every bit the quagmire that critics said it would. Whether it was necessary or not is moot: it’s been handled horrendously badly, although I do think it would be a disaster if we pulled out precipitously. 6-10 years, we had no such quagmire to suck down morale, stretch our military resources to the limit (cite), and drain the economy.

In the past 6-10 years, the number of people without access to adequate healthcare has increased.
Cite.

The fact is, 9-11 happened on Bush’s watch, and he ignored repeated warnings from the outgoing Clinton administration and from some people in his own administration. This had led to a short-sightedly belligerent foreign policy which has greatly diminished America’s prestige worldwide. Bush has also squandered all of the sympathy America received post 9-11.

Global warming had almost universal acceptance from scientists, and is getting worse.
Cite. Yet, your government continues to try and pretend that it’s not a real problem.

Income disparity has gotten worse.
Cite.

The size of the federal budget deficit is beyond obscene.

Some Americans are indeed better off: especially the wealthiest Americans who had inordinately benefited from tax cuts.

In general, though, things are pretty fucked, IMHO.

14

I think we’re about the same from 2000. My personal situation is better, and I seem to notice that my personal situation has been better during republican presidents, but like Renob stated, that has little to do with the president.

I think the rest of the world always had a resentment for Americans. We were always too far away doing our own thing. And, compared to the former world powers, we are young, and at times, acted young. Recent events only gave an excuse for other people/nations to vent what they had been thinking all along. Regardless, though, of what they (those not liking the US), if they’re westernized, then, they’re still an ally. We haven’t lost any allies, and that’s what really counts.

Actually, I think the recession had already started. Economically speaking, we have a more fundamentally sound economy since Reagan, probably the most fundementally sound in a long, long time.

15

:rolleyes: Did you read my post? How about this bit here?

See…I think its kind of a stupid question. And I DID answer it (but you appearently didn’t actually READ my post, ehe?):

Did you? Thought not…

-XT

16

:rolleyes: The world hates us, and that doesn’t count ? Being “westernized” makes someone our ally ? Interesting; I didn’t realize we were allied to Nazi Germany and Great Britain in WW2.

Any evidence of that ? As far as I’m concerned, Reagan began the transformation of America into something resembling an overlarge, nuclear armed banana republic. A nation of the impovershed and the very rich; a far right nation devoted to corruption and brutality and religious fanaticsm.

And no, I don’t think America is better off; I think America is on an irreversable slide towards collapse. The sooner the better.

17

I don’t see any facts in that cite which say there was an increase in tax revenue after the tax cuts of 1981 or 2001. In fact, looking at the BEA’s website, it looks like there is a noticable drop in tax revenue after 1981 and a huge glaring neon sign drop in revenue after the 2001 cuts.

http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/nipaweb/SelectTable.asp?Selected=3#S3

18

The idea is that tax cuts stimulate the economy as a whole, but because the economy is so large, it doesn’t exactly turn on a dime. In 1981 and 2001, we were in recessions that had nothing to do with the tax cuts. In fact, the tax cuts were put in place to get us out of the recessions.

One theory is that the government lets people (and companies) keep more money, so they’ll spend some of the money they’ve kept (and the government will tax that transaction), then the company that received that money will spend some of it (and the government will tax that transaction), then the company that gets that money will spend some of it (and the government will tax that transaction), etc. But that takes a while, in part because the first individual doesn’t save money until tax time, and the government doesn’t make up its money until the cash has changed hands quite a few times.

Another theory (the supply siders theory) is that the growth of the economy doesn’t come from money changing hands. It comes from the return on invested capital. And the idea is that lower taxes mean more money invested in capital, and less drag on the growth of that capital.

So you can’t expect tax revenues to be higher just after the tax cuts because they’re not aimed at making more money immediately. Rather, the proponents of those tax cuts would argue that they stimulated the economy, so later tax revenues were higher than they otherwise would have been. (Naturally, it’s impossible to prove this either true or false.)

19

Worse off, but I’m going to give a different main reason.

Although the Bush administration certainly didn’t invent “spin”, they have made it an art form. They practice it on a level never before seen. And I believe this has led to a general feeling that it is OK to misrepresent reality.

Much more so than ten years ago, I see people at work and elsewhere making inane statements with straight faces. People challenging strongly supported truths with ridiculous counter-arguments. The denial of basic reality has become OK. I believe the Bush administration has contributed to the social climate that permits this. And it scares me.

20

Not us. :frowning: