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Scott Adams's Political Survey of Economists
Buffaloaf writes "Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, wanted to have unbiased information about which presidential candidate would be better for the economy, so he financed his own survey of 500 economists. He gives a bit more detail about the results in a CNN editorial, along with disclosure of his own biases and guesses as to the biases of the economists who responded."
its actually surprising how forthcoming he was about his own biases too. A nice change from the majority of statistics that show up on the internets.
How about this (according to Michael Kinsley, Larry Bartels, etc.): Democratic presidents have consistently higher economic growth and consistently lower unemployment than Republican presidents. If you add in a time lag, you get the same result. If you eliminate the best and worst presidents, you get the same result. If you take a look at other economic indicators, you get the same result. There's just no way around it: Democratic administrations are better for the economy than Republican administrations.
Unless you are already independently wealthy, you will do better under a Democratic administration than a Republican one. Plain and simple. And if you are independently wealthy, well then you probably don't really care about a GDP percentage here or there. Bottom line, if you are voting "with your feet" on the economy, a Democratic vote is the clear choice, according to historic performance.
This is a joke, right?
The only presidents since 1963 to have ever submitted balanced budgets to Congress are Johnson and Clinton. At no time since 1945 when Republicans have been in charge of both Congress and the White House have they ever reduced spending.
The vast majority of the national debt to date was accrued during the Presidencies of three men: Reagan, Bush I and Bush II, all Republicans. In Reagan's case, he was working with a Republican Senate for his first 6 years in office, and Bush had Republicans controlling both houses for 6 years as well.
The Bush II years have seen tax cut after tax cut that were, in theory, supposed to result in increased growth and therefore reduced deficit. Instead, he has posted record deficits year after year. And still, the fiction that large tax cuts will somehow reduce the deficit persists.
The idea that Democrats are the big spending party and Republicans are fiscally responsible is pure fiction, and it boggles the mind why people continue to believe it despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Even the "big spending" LBJ was more fiscally responsible than the Republicans of the past 28 years.
If people would treat politics less like religion maybe they would make decisions based on actual historical data rather than what their party keeps telling them is the truth.
Clinton never had a surplus. My numbers indicate that he wasn't even close. Despite that, the numbers are extremely favourable for democrats.
Since the end of WWII, Democrats have been in office for 26 years, Republicans 36.
Since the end of WWII, Democrats have increased the debt by 2407 inflation adjusted million dollars, Republicans 7994.
Since the end of WWII, Democrats have increased the size of the budget by 687 inflation adjusted million dollars, Republicans 1450.
Thus, adjusted for inflation, every year the Democrats were in office, they increased the budget by 26 million inflation adjusted dollars, and the debt by 92 million inflation adjusted dollars, every year they were in power.
The Republicans have increased the budget by 40 million inflation adjusted dollars, and the debt by 222 million inflation adjusted dollars, every year they were in power. My numbers are charitable in that they don't take the wars in Iraq and Afganistan into account.
Here are the calculations, done with data available commonly off the Internet.
It's incredible to realise that the Republicans are incredibly fiscally irresponsible. They NEVER cut spending. They HATE cutting spending. They ALSO hate taxes. Basically, you're looking Republicans creating MORE government than Democrats, then NOT PAYING FOR IT.
It's been a long time.