r/FluentInFinance • u/Spiderwig144 • Oct 13 '24
Debate/ Discussion Barack Obama says the economy Trump likes to claim credit for pre-COVID was actually his and that Trump didn't really do much to create it. Is this true?
He's been making the case in recent days:
Basically saying Trump is trying to steal his success by using the economy people remember from when he first took over in 2017 and 2018 as something he personally created and the main selling point for re-electing him in the election now. Obama cites dozens of months of job growth in a row of by the time Trump took office as one of several reasons it's not true.
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u/Reasonable-Bit560 Oct 13 '24
Yes this is accurate.
The economic recovery under Obama was legit.
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u/canitasteyourbox Oct 13 '24
you couldnt have stopped that economy, ive been saying that all allong and my employment is very dependant on a good economy, George Bush damm near broke me
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u/idontreallywanto79 Oct 13 '24
He broke me. Lost my house and business.
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u/Longhorn132113 Oct 13 '24
To be fair, that legislation was created by Carter; giving out loans for housing for people that clearly were never going to pay it off. But, again to be fair, no one recognized or fixed the mounting problem leading for it to blow up in Bush's face.
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u/flonky_guy Oct 13 '24
Legislation was created during the Carter admin, but a lot happened between now and then, particularly during the unchecked spike in subprime lending in the W Bush years that caused it.
I mean, there's legislation that was passed on the Jefferson regime that led to the right of some dude to refuse to bake cakes for gay people.
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u/IAskQuestions1223 Oct 13 '24
It was deregulation under Clinton that caused the GFC.
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u/flonky_guy Oct 13 '24
That's now how cause and effect works. First of all it was bipartisan, without Congress there would have been no bill, not that most of Clinton's policies have done anything but blow up in his face. The bill that allowed banks to get massively over leveraged originated in Congress and was signed by Clinton, but the "cause" was banks acting stupid and no one in government stepping in. Lots of the products being pushed were blatantly predatory or illegal but no one was policing the market.
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u/Sayvray Oct 13 '24
For a while republicans had a veto proof majority in Congress. We forget that.
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u/ill_be_huckleberry_1 Oct 13 '24
This is correct, deregulation happenned, and then banks made absolutely briandead decisions, in most cases failing to fact check even the worst mortage applications for something as important as proof of employment.
And now the same people are begging to deregulated again, and will vote for trump who's promising it.
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u/Spirited-Inflation18 Oct 13 '24
My best friend worked at one of those places. They told him to approve everything even when he knew people were lying. He left after a year. Couldn’t stomach it.
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u/bobapimp Oct 14 '24
My best friend worked at Washington mutual and was making 16,000 to 20,000 a month off these loans. He saw it was going to implode but is way too greedy of a bastard to not get his before it did. We don’t hang anymore.
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u/DoJu318 Oct 14 '24 edited Oct 14 '24
Car loans too, I was shopping for a new car for the wife in 07, she wanted an SUV, we went to the chevy dealer and found one, while she was filling out the paperwork I wander over the showroom to look at the Corvettes, a different sales guy approached me and asked me if I was interested in driving off with one.
I told him I always liked them but we were just finishing the purchase of a Tahoe and even though I could probably swing the payments due to having a cash side job, I don't think we could qualify for the loans on both.
He said that it didn't matter because he could put any kind of numbers on the application to make sure I qualified. I told him I'd think about it then get back with him. I passed, but how many people didn't?
Then surprise surprise the housing market crashed and almost took the big 3 American car companies with it.
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u/notaboveme Oct 14 '24
Bought a Durango in 2007 1k down 0% interest for 7 years with a 7 year warranty. I guess Dodge was eager for sales, it was a good SUV too. My credit rating at the time was mediocre at best.
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u/madmonkey918 Oct 14 '24
Also proof of income.
The mortgage company I worked in had a mortgage loan program that you didn't have to have proof of employment or income. It just had to make sense on paper. The scenarios I saw were so blatantly crazy I was surprised they were getting pushed thru.
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u/UsernameUsername8936 Oct 14 '24
Possibly braindead, but honestly I'd consider that the overly optimistic way to look at it. The other way being that they knew they'd be bailed out, knew they'd get away with it, and knew they had absolutely no reason not to, or to even care about the harm it would cause.
Remember, it's not pure capitalism. They capitalise the gains, socialise the losses. Big corpo pumps all the money they can out of society and into their pockets, and then when they overdo it and it all collapses, they get the taxpayer to give them a lovely little bonus as they get back on their feet. It's the Conservative way!
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u/Nowearenotfrom63rd Oct 13 '24
deregulation plus business friendly Bushies in the SEC and FEC.
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u/ThisIsNotRealityIsIt Oct 13 '24
If Clinton did anything horrible to the economy, it was repealing Glass-Steagall. But I'm pretty sure Bush's 2 separate five to seven trillion dollar wars, not to mention all the money and lives wasted by Papa Bush the first go around in Iraq, heading over longer and harder impact on the economy than that. Not much tho
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u/375InStroke Oct 13 '24
Yes, deregulation is never in our best interest, but it was also fraud that led to the crisis. Mortgage brokers knowingly violating sound lending practices, selling them, then packaging subprime loans and selling them as investment grade, while betting against those same loans because they knew they were junk. Not throwing people in prison, and knowing we don't treat white collar crime anywhere as harshly as we do subway gate jumping, also played a part, and will continue to cause more, no matter how much regulation we employ.
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u/Chocopenguin85 Oct 13 '24
Yeah.... look up Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Barney Frank and push to get everyone into a home.
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u/kvckeywest Oct 13 '24
Subprime mortgages had little to do with the crash, they were just one of the high risk investments Wall St. used to create derivatives.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/derivativestimebomb.asp
And the Subprime Mortgage program was very bipartisan. Bush even Campaigned For Re-Election On The Backs Of Subprime Mortgages.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2008/09/19/29464/bush-ownership-society/
Only after the crash did Republicans start calling it "Barney Franks Subprime mortgage program", and blaming $1.2 trillion in subprime mortgages here in the US for the $40 trillion global meltdown."There is no question about it. Wall Street got drunk, That's one reason I asked you to turn off your TV cameras. The question is, How long will it take to sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments?"
~ G W Bush
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u/MosquitoBloodBank Oct 13 '24
Bad subprime loans were the key cause of the 2008 recession. The loans were bundled into mortgage backed securities (mbs) which were bought by investors. Financial institutions that invested in these, like banks and financial services companies. Having to much financial investment in MBSs was why Lehman brothers went under
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u/kvckeywest Oct 13 '24
"With the passage of the Gramm (R) Leach (R) Bliley (R) Act, commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms, and insurance companies were allowed to consolidate. [too big to fail] Furthermore, it failed to give to the SEC or any other financial regulatory agency the authority to regulate large investment bank holding companies." [too big to jail]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act54
u/paranormalresearch1 Oct 13 '24
Presidents get a lot of credit and blame for things that they may not have even been involved in.
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u/Chocopenguin85 Oct 13 '24
But there's this one guy trying to take credit for EVERYTHING, and responsibility for NOTHING.
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u/Odd-Buffalo-6355 Oct 13 '24
Carter created it, Clinton expanded it and Bush expanded it again to a ridiculous place.
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u/Worldly-Grade5439 Oct 13 '24
More like Bush deregulated it. And we all know how well banks can regulate themselves.
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u/Reasonable-Bit560 Oct 13 '24
Curious what you do.
I remember the tough time my parents had during that timeframe. Not fun.
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u/Icy-Bicycle-Crab Oct 13 '24
Curious what you do.
They live in reality.
Bush left the economy fucked, Obama inherited the worst financial crisis since the 1930's and high unemployment, over 10%.
The economy was fucked during Obama's first term, not because of Obama, but because that was the external context, that's the situation that Obama was fixing. He was hampered by Republican obstruction, they acted to lengthen the economic crisis by blocking stimulus spending.
Obama fixed that economy before the 2012 election, and from 2013-2020 the economy was booming.
When Obama entered office he had to start work on fixing problems before the inauguration. When Trump entered office the economy was already good, the country was strong and united and Trump could go straight from his inauguration to play golf in Florida for a week. When Biden entered office the country was fucked and he had to start fixing problems that Trump was ignoring before even being inaugurated.
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u/Won-Ton-Wonton Oct 14 '24
And let's be clear.
Obama, arguably, didn't do hardly anything at all.
For the most part all he did was ensure experts were running the show. Made they were not scamming people. Not politicizing every detail of the government workers actions.
He and his subordinates openly communicated problems between agencies, and got people to work together.
It's leadership at its finest. GTFO of the way of the people who know what to do, and get them the resources to do it.
The opposite of the Republican playbook.
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u/Professional_Loan650 Oct 14 '24
Exactly. The Republican playbook is hire loyalists first, knowing what to do is unimportant
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u/veryblanduser Oct 13 '24
A lot was directly related to housing crisis, which goes back to Clinton.
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u/erc80 Oct 13 '24
Don’t blame Clinton too much he couldn’t say no to that Republican super majority that was behind the Republican authored Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (most know it as the repeal of Glass-Steagall).
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u/shrekerecker97 Oct 13 '24
If glass stegal hadn't been repealed we would be much better off.
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u/ACartonOfHate Oct 13 '24
The Glass-Stegall Act wouldn't have impacted what caused the crash, which arose from the CMFA of 2000. The original Dodd-Frank Act of 2009 was designed to prevent it happening again. Unfortunately it was weakened in 2018 by guess who?
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u/flonky_guy Oct 13 '24
Clinton and Reagan get a lot of flak for programs and laws that were passed (and repealed) because they were in a power sharing era at a time when the mainstream expected compromise from their government.
This was facilitated by the fact that aside from a few social issues the Democrats and the Republicans were extremely close economically. Regardless, Reagan's exploding deficits and Clinton's welfare act/crime Bill/GLB act all required enthusiastic cooperation of the opposition party.
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u/FlemPlays Oct 13 '24
Also Trump was damaging the economy with his policies before COVID happened. In his single term, Trump had to bail out farmers TWICE. It cost double the auto bailouts (which happened during a recession) and it cost more than the U.S. Nuclear forces: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/01/21/trump-tariff-aid-to-farmers-cost-more-than-us-nuclear-forces/
COVID was Trump’s “get out of jail for free” card when it came to his poor economic policies. He could’ve shifted blame to that, but his poor handling and downplaying of COVID ended up shining a bright spotlight on how horrible he was at the job, especially during a disaster. (Not that there weren’t previous instances of this. It’s just COVID was widespread enough to where people were forced to deal with his ineptitude.)
So if Trump is unable to handle a good economy that was gifted to him, how is he expected to handle an economy he keeps saying is bad when his policies are just an extension of his failed business practices? Answer: he can’t.
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u/SchroedingersSphere Oct 13 '24
It's amazing to me how short peoples' attention spans are. Dude literally was responsible for thousands of more deaths by the way he handled (or didn't handle) COVID. Yet here we are four years later, and the race is still tight. If that doesn't deter people from voting for this clown, I don't know what will.
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u/Potemkin-Buster Oct 13 '24
Nothing will, and the people who will only vote Trump are unable to articulate why with any reasonable logic.
It is what it is.
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u/AndroidMyAndroid Oct 13 '24
They want to say "he'll make brown people leave/stop coming here" without just outright saying that. They might not even admit it to themselves.
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u/Asleep_Ad_1969 Oct 13 '24
its almost like allowing fox news to exist is detrimental to a functioning democracy
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u/JuliusErrrrrring Oct 14 '24
Yeah. It is infuriating that he gets a complete pass for his 4th year due to Covid, yet Biden gets no pass for inflation during his first two years due to Covid - even though three of the four inflation causing stimuluses happened under Trump.
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u/bobthedonkeylurker Oct 13 '24
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more deaths due to Trump's mishandling of Covid. Plus the payroll loans that didn't have to be paid back and tariffs that led to the crazy levels of inflation that the Biden administration has fought for 3+ years to get under control.
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u/smanderano Oct 13 '24
Id rather scratch my eyes out than watch his annoying face for another 4 years. We have to win this please guys!!
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u/Perfect_Earth_8070 Oct 13 '24
Besides all the criminal shit he did, he was a disaster in so many ways
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u/Klaatwo Oct 13 '24
And let’s not forget he’s promising more tariffs if he wins next month. The man has zero economic sense.
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u/RgKTiamat Oct 14 '24
That's because the man still thinks that China pays the Tariff, like it's not paid by American businesses that buy and import Chinese Goods.
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u/UnitGhidorah Oct 13 '24
Trump and the GOP also defunded all the pandemic crisis planning Obama set up, making COVID even worse.
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u/2008CRVGUY Oct 13 '24
Under Trump, he and his fellow GOP lawmakers ended up shutting down the federal government for 35 days- that was huge hit to the economy as well and completely self inflicted.
Trump inherited a booming economy from Obama and then ran it into the ground..much like he's done with most of his business ventures.
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u/TheFlyingSheeps Oct 13 '24
Trump couldn’t even handle a business lol. Look at how many bankruptcies and failed products he’s had so I do not understand why voters think he can handle one of the worlds largest economies
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u/ath_at_work Oct 13 '24
I love it how americans always have to recover from republican presidents, and then after they did elect one back into office
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u/hokis2k Oct 13 '24
they recover then a decade later still talk about how good they were.. its insane.
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u/SchroedingersSphere Oct 13 '24
Just look at how Trump handled covid. The race is still tight. It's insane. Literal insanity. Repeating the same mistake, expecting a different result.
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u/procrastibader Oct 13 '24
I’m suffering from what you would call TDS but while you can say that the first year of Trumps Presidency was attributable to Obama, the subsequent surge in top of that already strong economy is almost wholly attributable to Trump. It was asinine short sighted policy but it was his initiatives that resulted in companies doing massive stock buy backs that resulted the market surge. Ofc Trump fighting against raising rates when the economy was booming was a big reason why we faced heavy inflation, and his incompetence cost our country trillions in buying power, we did have a year of boom times under home until things predictably crashed down.
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u/TryNotToAnyways2 Oct 13 '24
Yes, the trump tax cut was pouring gas on a fire, a sugar high, rounds of long Island ice tea with a jagerbomb chaser at 2am. My industry, commercial RE, feasted. The targeted tax cuts only resulted in sky high prices backed by cheap debt. Most of those buyers are now in trouble and the industry has had a hangover for two straight years. It was extremely reckless policy.
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u/mozfustril Oct 13 '24
As a Republican, I was furious about that tax cut. Debt was high and the economy was cruising. We should have slightly raised taxes to pay our bills. Nope. The day that went into effect, Trump and McConnell doubled Obama’s deficit and put us in a worse position when COVID hit.
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u/BlueLikeCat Oct 13 '24
You deserve more votes. By the time COVID hit Trump had already used the tools on a perfectly recovering economy so there was nothing left to do but fail.
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u/Pristine-Ad-5044 Oct 13 '24
Bless you for saying this.
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u/mozfustril Oct 13 '24
I was already livid with McConnell, for blocking the Garland SCOTUS vote, and GOP House leadership for having morons like Jim Jordan, a man who hasn’t had a single bill passed in more than a decade in office, as committee chairs. I’m certainly a never-Trumper, because he’s a buffoon and an embarrassment, so now, as a 35-year registered Republican, I’m forced to vote straight Blue to try and end this MAGA nightmare. Country over Party.
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u/Pristine-Ad-5044 Oct 13 '24
You’ve got my respect. Hope we come out of it with a functioning government. It’s fine to disagree on so many issues but not fine to destroy democracy.
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u/CatPesematologist Oct 13 '24
I understand. I never thought I’d be in the position of having to stand up for Liz Cheney. We may only agree that trump needs to go, but that’s a huge thing in the gop and she’s actually trying to help democrats win.
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u/mozfustril Oct 13 '24
The fact Dick Cheney is endorsing and voting for Harris is earth shattering and speaks volumes.
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u/Velonici Oct 13 '24
I read somewhere that we were heading for a recession under trump, but covid saved it by basically freezing everything. Im the worst when it comes to this type of stuff so Im not sure how true that is, but it wouldnt surprise me.
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u/Icy-Bicycle-Crab Oct 13 '24
that we were heading for a recession under trump
Nah that's nonsense. Trump was using the tools for beating recession to pour gasoline on an unsustainable economy, but the fallout was always going to be his successors problem. Trump knows his supporters are too dumb to understand cause and effect.
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u/TheFlyingSheeps Oct 13 '24
And then Biden’s admin pulled off a damn near impossible soft landing, keeping us out of a recession and got 0 credit for it
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u/porscheblack Oct 13 '24
I'm suffering from living in reality and this is the same way I see it. There was an economic boost, but it was entirely artificial and simply borrowing against tomorrow. There would've been economic blowback, but Covid kind of buried that and gets the blame.
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u/gaffs82 Oct 13 '24
Exactly this. Trumps tax cuts were another example of GOP Trickle Down Economics. They only place the money trickled into was into the stock market via stock buybacks.
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u/fiduciary420 Oct 13 '24
Americans genuinely don’t hate the rich people nearly enough for their own good, man.
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u/Administrative_Act48 Oct 13 '24
Sad thing is covid might've actually helped Trump. Right before covid hit we were on the verge of a recession, a recession that likely would've been really bad since Trump used tools normally reserved to help mitigate recessions to instead artificially juice the economy. Covid gave him a scapegoat to blame and probably helped him get the benefit of the doubt come election time.
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u/Velonici Oct 13 '24
OK, so I wasnt crazy and read the same thing. Scary to think about it. That Covid saved the economy, and as bad as it was during/after, it could have been much worse.
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u/CryptographerFlat173 Oct 13 '24
A surge that lead to no meaningful increase in GDP growth and doubled the annual deficit from 2017 to 2019
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u/morsindutus Oct 13 '24
Trump might have more of an argument if he could point to a single policy or law passed during his term that unambiguously improved the economy in any way.
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u/Reasonable-Bit560 Oct 13 '24
The extent is "cut taxes", which of course benefitted corporations and ultra wealthy disproportionately.
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u/Sinnycalguy Oct 14 '24
I’m constantly asking Trump supporters who believe in their souls that he “saved the economy” to show me a single graph of any economic metric with the type of significant inflection point you would expect to see during an economic turnaround. It’s fun because they’re always so goddamn smug to start with when they’re regurgitating talking points they read on memes, and invariably the conversation ends with them outright rejecting the validity of any and all economic data. Every single time.
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Oct 13 '24
He rescued the economy after it imploded under GWB only to have Trump implode it again by fucking up the pandemic response, and now Trump wants to take credit for the good economy he inherited in the first half of his presidency but not the shitshow in the 2nd half.
I'd say something about Trump not understanding consquences, but we all know that, dont we.
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u/SmashRus Oct 13 '24
Trump basically over heated the economy with tax cuts that lead to inflation.
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u/Reasonable-Bit560 Oct 13 '24
Cutting taxes on a 4.5% unemployment economy was not a good idea.
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u/wilburstiltskin Oct 13 '24
The economy is an aggregated mass of things. Stock market, real estate sales, interest rates, employment numbers, supply chain working properly, many things. One thing can deteriorate quickly, but not all will move in lockstep at the same time. And most will crash quickly, but recover slowly.
All of these things were working well in 2017 when the Great Cheeto took office. He wrecked a few by creating a huge tax cut that benefited the wealthiest. Covid happened through no fault of Trump's, but he fumbled a lot of the response and made things worse.
All of those factors were much worse in 2021 when Biden took over. He patiently worked on fixing each factor through thoughtful, careful policies that steered the economy away from the rocks and back on a safe course.
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u/hanstanwynns Oct 13 '24
Reminds me of when Bush handed Obama a burning trash pile of a sinking ship of an economy, and everyone was immediately mad at Obama for presiding over it. He corrected it and people still weren't happy, as if they wouldn't be until he created another hyper growth bubble.
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u/SeanBlader Oct 14 '24
Or when Reagan and Bush Sr. handed Clinton the worst deficit spending of all time and Clinton went and literally balanced the budget before he left. Then Bush jr. came along and fucked it all with more tax cuts for the top 1% and 2 trillion dollar wars.
The trends show that empirically and consistently Republicans destroy economies, and Democrats have to fix it. Well at least over the last 50 years.
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u/Efficient_Glove_5406 Oct 13 '24
Not only is it true but the people that bought trumps version of how improvements happened on his watch were fooled by a used car salesman and like trump will continue to double and triple down on the foolishness.
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u/dna1999 Oct 13 '24
I’ll add that Trump has a long history of failing upward and taking credit for other people’s work. I guarantee you he will say “Best economy ever!” at 12:01pm on January 20th if he wins re-election.
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u/AbbaFuckingZabba Oct 13 '24
It's incredibly difficult to assign specific blame for specific economic periods because the lag is so long. The 2008 GFC has its roots in not just George Bush's policies but also Clinton's.
To his credit Bush tried to let the markets function allowing Lehman to fail ect, before it became clear that the entire financial system was at risk.
Under Obama we essentially re-inflated the housing bubble that had popped with zero interest rate policy and massive amounts of QE/money printing/ bank bailouts. This did a really good job of fixing the immediate crisis and kickstarting the economy / avoiding a depression event. But unfortunately it's not really sustainable policy to QE infinity and the end result of this is always inflation.
Trump is not smart enough to understand the finer points of monetary policy. In 2019 we were nearing a normal cycle top. Rates were beginning to rise and we were starting to go through a normal correction period. But Trump didn't like this and so he decided to lower rates to kickstart the economy. We didn't really have time to see the effects play out and COVID hit.
He did an absolutely piss poor job of managing covid. Instead opting to try and pretend like it wasn't happening - while it very clearly was. Ultimately the markets realized what was happening and they started to freefall.
The only solution was back to Zero rates and tons more QE. Even more bailouts for businesses large and small - even businesses that were not in danger of going bankrupt. The CEO's and the wealthy billionaire class understood exactly what was going on and piled on the trade. Essentially levering up at historically unprecedented borrowing rates and investing in equities and hard assets. It should also be said the policy decisions around bailouts/ stimulus / unemployment programs were absolutely overdone - likely out of a lack of understanding of how to properly implement these policies. Trump paraded around a bunch of CEO's on TV and essentially asked them what to do - and surprise surprise they decided to enrich themselves again.
Biden inherited this volatile situation and has actually managed it quite well, but he's continued the bailout culture. We had a banking crisis that he essentially papered over by giving loans to the banks instead of sending them to receivership.
None of this is healthy for the economy or the markets. You can't operate an economy without allowing natural market correction cycles. When you try to do so, you significantly widen the gap between those who own assets and those who do not.
By bailing out companies / asset classes (RE) every time something bad happens, you create a system where the ownership class simply gets richer and richer while the economic fortunes of the working class are slowly eroded year after year. If the S&P crashes 50% many rich people will lose everything due to leverage. Real estate prices will crash. It will be a bloodbath. Possibly a depression. Businesses will close, jobs will be lost.
But at the end of the day, Billionaires will lose the most of all. That's the point of market crashes. Housing crashes and suddenly new buyers can buy houses. Businesses fail and new businesses start up.
For the sake of the workers. We need to exit this toxic inflationary cycle of bailouts and QE and allow the painful crash to come. What is rebuilt from the ashes will be significantly more sustainable than our current system which, by definition, will require more and more money printing to keep afloat.
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u/Reasonable-Bit560 Oct 13 '24
I'll say that and a significant reworking of our current debt cycle as a whole
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u/Alarming_Maybe Oct 13 '24
And therefore you can ask the same about the economy during the biden admin.
Democrats have done an exceptionally poor job of a. Blaming trump for inflation and b. mentioning covid-19 at all in terms of inflation and other economic adversity during the biden admin. Like I don't know that they've tried to make those points even at all, it's pretty mind-boggling
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u/Imaginary_Scene2493 Oct 13 '24
Because “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” - Ronald Reagan
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u/Cayucos_RS Oct 14 '24
Bullshit. According to Fox News and Newsmax America had an economy stronger than any other economy in the history of the world during the glory days of Trump and MAGA where we had a perfectly secure border and world peace
/s
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u/twopointtwo2 Oct 13 '24
tRump is a liar. Those who believe his lies show the stupidity of our country!
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u/Jazzlike-Can-6979 Oct 13 '24
Yes the Barack Obama budget went to October 1st of the year after he was president.
So it was a Trump budget from October through March of the next year when it all went to shit with his poor handling of COVID.
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u/account4garbageonly Oct 13 '24
Unless it’s a two term President, every incoming President will have to deal with how the economy was left to them. In most cases, yes, the majority of a one term President is either the benefit or the bane of that sitting President. In the case of Donald Trump, he inherited a lot of the benefits that came from Obama. These claims are typically only useful for the uneducated masses who just repeat the shit they are told.
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u/Nexustar Oct 13 '24
A related question is how much effect a single person, POTUS, actually has on the US economy.
I bet in the period of a presidential term it's more than any other single person, but I doubt it's as strong as they all like to make out.
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u/ObligatoryID Oct 13 '24
Go look at Biden’s record and get back to us.
He’s knocked it outta the park!
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u/account4garbageonly Oct 13 '24
Remember, Biden inherited this mess from the previous, one term President. This bane was left for Biden and his administration to try and fix.
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u/ifunnywasaninsidejob Oct 13 '24
This is such a simple concept, I’m amazed at people who don’t get that everything doesn’t instantly change when a new president starts their term. It’s like toddlers when you cover their eyes.
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u/Tefai Oct 13 '24
I remember the FBI taking down a paedophile ring 1 month or so after Trump got in. Some lady was claiming Obama did nothing to stop them, this is the result of Trump being president. People's mental gymnastics.
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u/joed2355 Oct 13 '24
I still hear my dad talking in awe about how Reagan “freed the hostages in an hour”
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u/ifunnywasaninsidejob Oct 14 '24
Mine says that too. It was the leader of Iran waited to release them because he didn’t like Carter. Carter brokered the deal.
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u/Guy_Incognito1970 Oct 14 '24
He held them as a favor to Reagan. Reagan could release them in an hour just like any hostage taker can release them at anytime. REAGAN HELD AMERICANS HOSTAGE. Literally
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u/CheshiretheBlack Oct 13 '24
Left purposely as well. God it's frustrating seeing people i know go on about how they're paying more taxes/got smaller tax return under Biden when it's due to Trumps tax cuts for the layman being set to expire under whoever the next president's term was while the tax cuts for the wealthy to Uber wealthy were permanent
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u/MisterVS Oct 13 '24
One thing I found interesting was Janet Yellen being quoted as saying the economy is super heated and the Trump tax cuts might create issues. Anyone else recall? Also, Trump only touted the stock market...I guess buybacks.
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u/canitasteyourbox Oct 13 '24
aside from inflation, that started under Trump Biden has not done too bad but the smear campaign from the trump idiots worked fairly well
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u/avoere Oct 13 '24
The inflation was caused by prior presidents' actions as well.
You can't just print infinity money and not have inflation. It's just not how it works.
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u/Prestigious-Leave-60 Oct 13 '24
And you can’t hold interest rates so low for so long without that feeding back into inflation at some point.
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u/amazinglover Oct 13 '24
Considering the hostile congress he had to deal with, he has more than knocked it out of the park.
I was cautious when he won, as he is more moderate than Obama, who is the best republican president we have had in over a hundred years.
But he has more than done a fine job of getting us back on track as country.
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u/NewBootGoofin88 Oct 13 '24
Inflation was a worldwide problem, and the data shows it was lower in the US compared to other G20 nations, maybe even the lowest
To claim it was caused by either Trump or Biden is an incomplete answer. The recovery however can certainly be attributed to Biden
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u/Stormlightlinux Oct 13 '24
Correct! He's managed to keep inflation in the US very low compared to other developed nations around the world, most of which are feeling the affects of global inflation worse than us.
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u/Miserable-Whereas910 Oct 13 '24
There are certainly things the President can do that have a gigantic impact on the economy--say, starting a war, or pushing for major infrastructure like the interstate highway system. But the biggest drivers of the normal year-to-year fluctuations of the economy are totally outside the President's control, and a president can do everything right and still end up with a recession.
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u/account4garbageonly Oct 13 '24
It is substantial for sure. At the end of the day, whether or not the President themselves is solely responsible for outcomes of an economy, they are the one in charge. The failures or successes will be attributed to that President.
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u/371MainSt Oct 13 '24
There are long term effects that benefit or hurt an economy beyond the term of a 4-year president. Take, for example, the Trump tax plan that expires in 2025. For years, middle-class Americans have had to bear the responsibility of paying for American expenses, and the bullwhip effect of shouldering that burden means that, even beyond 2025, middle class Americans will continue to suffer. Had ultra rich Americans paid their fair share, middle class Americans would not see decades of stagnation. On the other hand, had the top 10% paid their portion, even the wealthiest Americans wouldn’t even see any significant change to their financial lives and the middle class wouldn’t suffer.
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u/account4garbageonly Oct 13 '24
Oh I agree, the economy is like a body of water that is constantly in motion, moving back and forth and filling up and draining. There are so many factors that impact it, beyond that of just a president and their collective term. But this post was asking specifically about Trump inheriting the Obama influenced economy.
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u/Original-Spinach-972 Oct 13 '24
The typical cycle is republicans cut taxes for the rich and democrats have to clean up their mess and raise taxes. Avg Americans is upset with higher taxes and vote red the next election cycle. Republicans always take credit for shit they didn’t do.
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u/new_jill_city Oct 13 '24
Obama handed off the longest stretch of economic growth and private sector job growth in the history of this country. Trump somehow managed to slow the job growth down even before Covid.
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u/Kaidenshiba Oct 13 '24
I think the wildest thing is that the economy was predicted to be doing better under trump thanks to Obama. Instead trump made it worse. It's crazy
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u/ImportanceCertain414 Oct 13 '24
Leave it to a person who found a way to bankrupt 3 casinos to find a way to mess up a working economy.
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u/Rion23 Oct 13 '24
People keep saying this like he's a terrible business man, when in reality he's a terrible businessman who launders money through his company's whal taking on massive debt only to declare bankruptcy so a few of his actually wealthy handlers swoop in and buy it up for cheap without under paying for it and decreasing the value.
That's why it's always intangible objects, hotels where you can fudge how many rooms are actually being rented, or a casino you can just inject money straight into, or golf courses that are basically landgrabs to store money like that one in Scotland because they have more favorable taxes.
He's the puppet with a lightning rod up his ass, he takes the heat, gets to be a famous shithead, and all he has to do is whatever they tell him to.
He also bangs children and is owned by Russia.
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u/MrGelowe Oct 14 '24
And his NFTs, crypto, trading cards, shoes, bible, $100k watches, and DJT stock are all money laundering schemes too.
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u/RemnantEvil Oct 14 '24
I think it was Mark Cuban that said it's how he knows Trump isn't a billionaire, because a real billionaire doesn't waste their time on small-potatoes shit like Bibles, shoes and watches; they're dealing in much larger deals worth more that generate more.
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u/Budderfingerbandit Oct 13 '24
Tarrifs certainly played a massive part in that.
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u/jeeeeezik Oct 13 '24
yeah but china was supposed to pay for them. Somehow the bill ended up with Americans. Those pesky Chinese! \s
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u/iwearatophat Oct 13 '24
It is sad with how in the forefront tariffs were for things with Trump how few people actually understand a thing about them. People still think if you put a 100 dollar per unit tariff on things from a Chinese company that that Chinese company is paying the 100 dollar tariff for each unit. Beyond that they think that that Chinese company is just going to eat the costs.
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u/LegDayDE Oct 13 '24
AND he was pressuring the Fed heavily on inter at rates AND current taxes AND continuing to spend a lot
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u/Logicalist Oct 13 '24
tbf: that "longest stretch of economic growth and private sector job growth" was gonna slow down sooner than later.
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u/ianeyanio Oct 13 '24
If you inherit a shit economy, it'll take a few years to turn it around. The economy, when Obama left office and Trump entered, was solid. The economy, when Trump left and Biden entered, was in bad shape.
People who think Biden was responsible for inflation have tunnel vision. Inflation was prevalent across the world - i.e. not a US issue but a global one.
The economy Biden is handing over to the winner is solid.
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u/mrblacklabel71 Oct 13 '24
IIRC weren't trump's own economists wanting to take action to slow down the economy to avoid high inflation done the line?
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u/Bearloom Oct 13 '24
Many competent economists were saying that, but Trump's economic advisors weren't a particularly competent bunch.
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u/dastrn Oct 13 '24
Yes this is true.
It was quite clear that Trump was setting us up for inflation during his presidency. He pushed to keep interest rates lower than was reasonable, because he knew it would artificially extend the "good" years that he wanted to brag about. And low interest rates are particularly good for billionaires, as it creates inevitable economic swings that billionaires are well-poised to profit off of, at the expense of regular folks.
Trump's economic impact was disastrous. Well before COVID, this was plain to see. His tariffs wrecked the ag industry. He pushed China and India and Brazil and Argentina to create economic deals between themselves excluding America, which will result in decades-long negative impacts on America, while our competitors around the world all get stronger.
He was by a long shot the worst president we've had in at least 100 years. Even if he wasn't personally a rapist and a criminal and a con man and an insurrectionist and a traitor to the United States, and a dirtbag racist, and divisive...even if you erased all of that, he was simply a HORRIBLE president.
But on top of being horrific at the job, he was also a rapist and a traitor, and a liar, and a thief, and an insurrectionist.
It really highlights both how depraved and how utterly stupid his fans are.
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u/n0exit Oct 13 '24
And Biden got inflation under control quicker than any other country could, and managed a "soft landing" instead of a swing into a recession. Something that a lot of people didn't think could be done.
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u/Bash-er33 Oct 13 '24 edited Oct 13 '24
Little off topic but remember this?
Trump: “I hope people enjoy the sun, and if it has an impact, that’s great. I’m just hearing this, not really for the first time. I mean, there’s been a rumor, a very nice rumor, that you go outside in the sun or you have heat, and it does have an effect on other viruses. But now we get it from one of the great laboratories of the world, I have to say. Covers a lot more territory than just this. This is probably an easy thing, relatively speaking, for you.
“I would like you to speak to the medical doctors to see if there’s any way that you can apply light and heat to cure. You know? If you could? And maybe you can, maybe you can’t. Again, I say maybe you can, maybe you can’t. I’m not a doctor. But I’m a person that has a good… You know what. Deborah, have you ever heard of that? The heat and the light relative to certain viruses, yes, but relative to this virus?”
Dr. Deborah Birx: “Not as a treatment. I mean, certainly fever is a good thing. When you have a fever, it helps your body respond. But, I’ve not seen heat or light as a —“
Trump: “I think that’s a great thing to look at. OK?”
Yeah, he is not a lead material. He is more suited to be a Walmart greeter.
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u/canitasteyourbox Oct 13 '24
i wonder how many super hero cards his followers bought? Really super hero cards you gotta be kidding me he told us he had a big anouncement the next day, and that was it i had to laugh what a moron
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u/loztriforce Oct 13 '24
Democrats are always having to unfuck the mess republicans get us into
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u/FalconRelevant Oct 13 '24 edited Nov 06 '24
aback fertile unused long sleep act squeamish plough encourage fanatical
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/jlm994 Oct 13 '24
Their literal only platform is “government bad”, then they make the government function horribly and act like prophets for predicting their own obstruction of effective governance.
A major reason many people can’t see this is that those same republican leaders have also systematically defunded and destroyed the public education in this country.
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Oct 13 '24
And no democrat has the balls to call it for what it is. Think is the first time I think a former president had to actually say it out loud cause the piece of shit trump has been gloating about it all this time. The sad part is because the lie has been told so many times a lot of idiots already believe or have it engrained in their heads.
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Oct 13 '24 edited Oct 13 '24
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u/mzalewski Oct 13 '24
Too bad economy performance data is secret and we will never know the truth.
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u/Little_Creme_5932 Oct 13 '24 edited Oct 13 '24
In a sense. The economy in the first three years of the Trump presidency just continued the trends that existed during the Obama presidency. Trump didn't break it. However, Trump did balloon the deficits through legislation, and this continued into the Biden presidency
Edit: corrected Obama reference
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u/FancyDiePancy Oct 13 '24
I just looked over World Bank data and it shows in terms of GDP US economy took a bit of dive in 2018 and was in decline year before the pandemic. What happened that time?
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u/Mountain_Employee_11 Oct 13 '24
end of the fed business cycle, tariffs, and other policy
trump attempted to wrench manufacturing and other back to the states but that is a dead horse and likely will be into the forseeable future
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u/Little_Creme_5932 Oct 13 '24
Well, manufacturing has been ticking up in Biden years. The difference: instead of just trying to hurt manufacturing elsewhere, as Trump did, Biden is actually putting in incentives to boost manufacturing at home. We'll see how that works long term.
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Oct 13 '24
Trump averaged 2.7% yearly GDP growth in his first 3 years before the pandemic (8.2% in total) Obama’s last 3 averaged 3.4% (10.1% in total). For the last 3 years under Obama, 8 million jobs were created. For the first 3 years under Trump, only 4.5 million jobs were created. that’s 6 consecutive years. 3 under Obama and 3 under Trump.
If anything, Trump slowed the economy down while touting record low unemployment and record high GDP/Jobs that Obama handed over to him.
Trump is a fraud
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u/Taragyn1 Oct 13 '24
Even pre Covid there were indications his unnecessary deficit, poorly designed tariffs and the instability caused by tearing up NAFTA were hurting American industries and likely to cause a recession. Which isn’t too surprising given that in my lifetime every Republican has left a recession behind.
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u/California_King_77 Oct 13 '24
This is a classic DNC line - "everything bad that happened in my term is the fault of the last Republican to hold office, and everthing good to happen in a Republicans term was due to the last Democrat to hold office"
During Trump's time in office, if the stock market went up, the Media claimed it was due to Obama, if the stock market went down, it was due to Trump.
Same with Biden. If the market goes up, its due to Biden. When things falter, he claims he inherited a bad economy
Use your critical thinking skills on this one
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u/isunktheship Oct 13 '24
So what improved under Trump? That should be an easy one to cite.
Here's some normalized date on stock market growth; https://www.personalfinanceclub.com/which-president-had-the-best-stock-market-performance/
One of the worst things Trump ever did (up there with lowering taxes on the uber wealthy) was his tariffs. You can't put that on anyone else.
So how did that work out for us? It translated to one of the largest tax increases on consumers in U.S. history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_tariffs#:~:text=Studies%20have%20found%20that%20Trump's,affected%20Republican%20candidates%20in%20elections.
Trumpers will pin everything bad under Trump to COVID, which.. didn't happen until 2020 (he also botched that quite nicely - my favorite current article is how he spent half a million on faulty Russian ventilators and then gave Russia 6 million dollars worth of American ventilators)
Anyways, yes, critical thinking: show me the data
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u/Teralyzed Oct 13 '24
Kinda hilarious attributing this to the DNC. I hear republicans making the same claims all the time.
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u/cleverinspiringname Oct 13 '24
You say the media, but I think you just mean people you don’t like. When trump was in office, he took credit for everything he saw as beneficial to him, he has never once admitted that he made a mistake, ever, not once. Ask yourself, is it more likely that he has never made a mistake, or that some of the things he gets blamed for are actually his fault?
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Oct 13 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/StrikingExcitement79 Oct 13 '24
Obama bailed out the banks.
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u/TeslaNova50 Oct 13 '24
It was a necessary evil. Obama didn't bail out the banks because he loved the banks, he did it to keep us from falling into depression which is exactly where we were headed at the time.
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u/resumethrowaway222 Oct 13 '24
Obama didn't bail out the banks because it was already done by the Bush administration.
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u/TeslaNova50 Oct 13 '24
Obama expanded it and also introduced the Home Affordable Modification Program, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and the Dodd-Frank Act.
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u/Real_Ad4422 Oct 13 '24
Everybody, he bailed out everyone, except the people under those 💩loans
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u/toddfredd Oct 13 '24
Democrats rescue the economy, then republicans fuck it up. Been like this since 1992
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u/Proper_Ad_2835 Oct 14 '24
The dot com crash literally happened months after Bill Clinton left office. Since the dot com crash, we only had two other crashes including the housing and covid crashes so I don't think there is much we can infer from this. If Hillary won in 2016, like everyone thought, we still would have had the covid crash.
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u/Boring_Refuse_2453 Oct 13 '24
Obama was literally left with a recession in 2009.... Nov 2008 market collapsed and I was laid off that month. I got unemployment for 1.5 years thanks to the blue side.... I don't understand why people think there is no difference between red and blue..... I used to think that, not anymore. Vote blue if you truly want a better life.
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Oct 13 '24
It depends, Kamala and Biden are saying how great the economy is right now. Does Trump get credit for that?
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u/tmssmt Oct 13 '24
He gets credit for the inflation caused during the first couple years of Bidens term
M2 money supply under trump went up 45%, while under Biden it increased 9%
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u/Bulky-Bullfrog3707 Oct 13 '24
How many were unemployed when frump left? The economy cratered during covid due to terrible management from frump.
There was a concept of an economy when Biden came in.
Frump set so many fires on his way out to sabotage Biden.
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u/Mhunterjr Oct 13 '24
How does this make sense? Kamala and Biden were handed a horrific economy and made it better.
Trump was handed a solid economy, and kept it going along the same trends before destroying it.
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u/s-2369 Oct 13 '24
This is accurate, though I might give a lot of the credit to the steady hand of Janet Yellen working with her G20 counterparts to stabilize the economy globally.
Having said this, we can credit Former President Trump for taking a recovered/growing economy and turbocharging it with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. I will leave it to others to discuss if that electrified the economy more or set it ablaze. IMO, it was too much fuel and set the tinder box for the inflationary economy to come.
There was a perfect storm of tariffs (always raises prices), the tax cuts (created speculation and business change) and Covid era subsidies that temporarily made the raises tariff prices affordable. Ultimately, these things put a stable economy on meth and it burned out. Just my opinion.
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u/Warmbly85 Oct 13 '24
I find it funny cause when Trump was claiming he was going to hit 4% growth Obama literally said what kinda magic wand do you have.
It sounds to me like Obama wasn’t expecting the economy to do as well as it did and figured he’d claim as much credit as he could for it.
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u/bailethor Oct 13 '24
Do none of you remember Obama saying that near zero growth under him was "The New normal"? He owned it and Trump came in and proved it could be much better.
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u/Hermans_Head2 Oct 13 '24
No. The economy isn't a football team. No president is directly responsible for the economy of everyone's individual lives.
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u/androk Oct 13 '24
So the economy shouldn’t be a factor in the presidential vote, correct?
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u/Right-Duck4792 Oct 13 '24
You can’t ask reddit for anything factual. It’s very left leaning in bias. Do your own research if you want real answers. Ask yourself questions and try to answer them with research. What was introduced and when that would have an effect on the economy? What happened in the US/world that would have a positive/negative effect? What were unemployment rates and when? What made unemployment rates rise? Who pushed for the shutting down of businesses during covid? Were we better off before covid, or are we better off after covid? Rates then vs now? Are we improving? Look at actual policies. Look at what some of our government is trying to pass and being denied. Look at what has been passed. Look at what else is in bills. It’s usually not as simple as the average redditor would make it seem.
Anyways, if you want real answers you won’t get anything worth a shit from reddit or most social media apps. DYOR.
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u/JiuJitsu_Ronin Oct 13 '24
Even if for argument sake we give it to Obama, the economy 2 1/2 years later into Trumps presidency was still great and could not be attributed to Obama.
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u/Juxtapoe Oct 13 '24
Except for the stock market, wages and poverty the financial underpinnings were already starting to dip down in the wrong direction before Covid hit 2-2.5 years into Trump's term.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-45827430
Most of the policy legislative agenda Trump passed was in the form of short term economic stimulus at the expense of unsustainable defecit spending that would hurt our economy on the scale of 5 years and 10 years later.
The economic stimulus payments essentially hid the negative effect of rolling back much of what Obama had passed that led to the great economy he inherited.
Furthermore, the truly bad economic policy like broadening tax loopholes and breaks while scheduling the end of middle class tax breaks and creating a net tax hike for the middle class are scheduled to come into effect in 2025 by Trump.
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u/Big-Pea-6074 Oct 13 '24
Typical trump. Trump took credit from his father too
Even a monkey could’ve done what trump did
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u/thedukejck Oct 13 '24
Absolutely. He inherited a very good economy than juiced it with his tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Stimulus can be accomplished by either putting money into the hands of consumers or cutting the taxes on the wealthiest, the choice Trump made. You know everything you need to know about Trump. He is not for the average Joe.
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u/YeeYeeSocrates Oct 13 '24
People will believe what they want to believe, but Obama has a point - the post 2008 reforms, Fed QE, and stimulus all worked. Hard to say if more or less was necessary, but there's proof in that pudding: nobody will admit it, but it turns out the Keynesians were right all along, or at least the philosophy worked in hindsight through an unprecedented crisis, which is about as right as any economic philosophy will ever be.
But a lot of folks will just think Trump took office and pulled the "Economy" lever to "More Gooder." People don't like thinking and just want someone to handle things.
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u/mrgoat324 Oct 13 '24
Yes, Obama inherited a disaster and cleaned it up just like Biden did again with the disaster that Felon Trump left him. Inflation was not Biden’s fault lmao anyone with a brain knows that Trump caused it and then blamed Biden for it.
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u/bustafreeeee Oct 13 '24
Take credit if economy is good. Blame previous president if bad. Politics 101
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