# Which party does a better job at managing the economy? My thoughts (long) **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [August 19, 2020, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-party-does-a-better-job-at-managing-the-economy-my-thoughts-long/918503 "2020-08-19T17:21:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2020, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-party-does-a-better-job-at-managing-the-economy-my-thoughts-long/918503/21 "2020-08-20T16:20:05Z")
This is dumb for a variety of reasons. It totally ignores policy. Top tax rates were cut by a large amount under JFK, welfare was reformed under Clinton. Is that what is generally thought of as Democrat policy? This ignores the Fed, which is what actually controls the economy to the extent it can be controlled. It ignores all the exogenous shocks. Was it Nixon’s fault that OPEC formed, or did Clinton cause the internet bubble? The great recession was caused in part by banking regulations, globalization, Fannie Mae, immigration policy, etc. almost none of which happened under Bush 2. The economy is incredibly complicated, trying to distill it down into who has president at a given time makes no sense, and is at best superstition. This is like peasants who blame a poor harvest on whether God favors the king. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2020, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-party-does-a-better-job-at-managing-the-economy-my-thoughts-long/918503/22 "2020-08-20T16:53:43Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > I mean… that first paragraph is kinda circular, is it not? “The Dems economic numbers are good because the economy was good under Dem presidents No, it’s not circular. Democrats were presidents during _global_ economic boom times. There’s no reason to think that who the American president was caused that to happen. It’s much more likely that the correlation runs the other way or that you’ve simply captured enough noise in a very small sample size to overwhelm whatever signal you’re trying to measure. > [@JohnT](#): > > Anyway, my counter: The Repubs had the 50s and 80s, two periods where the economy was supposedly so “great” a good chunk of Americans want to recapture that greatness even today. I mean, you can’t counter the actual numbers with the word “great” in quotation marks. Whatever beliefs conservatives might hold about recapturing the magic of certain decades, there are global economic forces that are much larger than which party holds the American presidency. > [@JohnT](#): > > Again, not a Ph. D. thesis, but going through the post-war elections I would argue that we had ‘good times’ in 1952, 1956, 1972, 1984, 1988, 2000, 2004, and 2016, all Republican victories, and the 'bad times" of 1948, 1976, 1992, and 2008 were won by Democrats. You could argue that, but it’s not remotely rigorous. Again, I’m not saying your claim is _wrong_. I agree that Democrats are better for the economy. I just don’t think that your analysis of this data really supports that claim at all. > [@JohnT](#): > > (But really, I did it just to keep things simple. 😛 ) I expect that it is not possible to support any interesting claims about something as complex as the interplay of politics and economics with such a simple model. ---
**Author:** ![ThisIsTheEnd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thisistheend/32/4713_2.png) [@ThisIsTheEnd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisIsTheEnd)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2020, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-party-does-a-better-job-at-managing-the-economy-my-thoughts-long/918503/23 "2020-08-20T18:10:22Z")
All administrations want to create booms, it’s just a matter of which policy levers they choose to pull. You can start a boom any time you want (if you can get the policy(s) implemented). All booms lead to busts, but the timing of busts might as well be random. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-party-does-a-better-job-at-managing-the-economy-my-thoughts-long/918503.md?page=1)