Econ Mess; No Cleanup Crew in Sight
Wednesday, August 07, 2024
Writing at The Washington Examiner, Brady Leonard offers a rare, honest assessment of the economic policies of the two underwhelming presidential incumbents contesting the 2024 election:
I have long held Trump to be essentially an old-fashioned Democrat in terms of his economic policy, and I am glad I am not the only one to see this.History has proven that Democrats are terrible for the economy, but the GOP's case against Harris would have a lot more teeth if Republicans hadn't spent the last several decades proving that they don't understand economics either. Former Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump both campaigned on sound economics, at least partially, and added $4.2 trillion and $6.7 trillion to the national debt, respectively. Trump cut taxes in 2017, but unlike previous tax-cutting Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he made no effort to cut spending.
Herbert Hoover (Image by the Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons, no copyright restrictions.)
Conservatives brag about the Trump economy, sometimes explicitly ignoring anything that happened post-March 2020. Unfortunately for that narrative, Trump was indeed president of the United States when he handed the power of his office to Dr. Anthony Fauci and company and when he signed the largest financial bailout in U.S. history into law, adding $2 trillion to the national debt in one fell swoop. Trump even attacked conservative Govs. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Brian Kemp (R-GA) for refusing to destroy their states' economies. [links omitted, bold added]
Aside from my other, more fundamental objections to the current GOP candidate, the prospects for improving the economy are dismal, long- and short-term if he wins.
In the short term, there will, for starters, be more of the same anti-trade, free-spending foolishness as before -- only he will rightly end up being blamed for inflation this time around. (And we're not even talking about the further damage his Hooverian tariffs might wreak to the economy.)
And in the long term? The left, as it does any time a Republican presides over a bad economy, will blame "capitalism" for the problem, as if that's anywhere in sight, and use this as an excuse to do what Harris/Walz would or, or worse, after its next win.
-- CAV
1 comment:
every administration over the last 50 or more years are mostly economically illiterate. However as far as inflation is concerned (meaning price inflation) we have had an almost 40 year trend of money printing and government spending with endless libertarian type promising of a return of inflation.
The reason for the lack of price inflation (more or less) from 1980 to 2019 is because we coupled money printing and excessive spending with a (relatively) deregulated economy. Unlike the 70's and today, we had money printing and spending, and we (mostly) produced are way out of it.
As I said in 2020 (and wrote it down) as a prediction for a Biden presidency (and NO I was not specifically trying to blame biden. I just wanted some theme for all the writing I was doing), there WOULD be a return of SIGNIFICANT inflation, much to the denial of some right leaning libertarian types who where saying "you guys have been saying that for 40 years)
The different between the ignorant economic policy of the left and the economic ignorance of the right is ONE point (at least) The LEFT through government shutdowns makes no distinction between a money printing inflation, mitigated by production, and printing and spending AND forcing people to sit at home all day watching netflix.
It WAS trumps job IDEALLY to stand up against this and he mostly failed and deserves the blame for it including stupidly blaming ron desantis etc.
That being said, OVERALL, he may hold the usual print and spend economic policy, but he does not envy the opportunity to destroy the economy and cause inflation deliberately. Call me whatever you want, but MY vote (not that I can vote) is for the imperfect candidate who's goal is to have the economy moving. I am not a big fan of intentions absent the desire to correct them, but in this case the alternative is a deliberate intention to destroy the economy, by a foolish unserious and unqualified candidate and her choice of a blantantly marxist running mate.
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