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"The facts are stubborn things." This quote is often attributed to founding father, John Adams, and he did say so, but did not create it, according to quoteinvestigator.com.
President Donald Trump is not in agreement. He clearly believes that he can make sure that the facts play his music and make his core fans dance. He is constantly lying and ignoring the disturbing truths, especially the facts that make him questionable, and especially the facts that could well reflect his scorned predecessor, Barack Obama.
Journalists are attached to the importance of the accuracy of the facts, what a compulsive liar / braggart like Trump can not imagine or think to be for suckers. Dishonesty occupies an important place among the Trumpian traits that bother me and the fact that its supporters do not know that they are being lied to or that they do not care is very difficult to accept for me. But there.
Investigators, whose work is increasingly important to those who prefer facts to lies, monitor the dividing line between facts and lies every day and do an excellent job. Today, my little contribution is to give you a very good overview that reflects one of Trump's favorite falsities. To know:
"Obama bad; Trump good 'is pretty much his analysis
Trump describes an America in which everything went wrong under Obama, which is why we needed Trump for America to become big again. And he says the project has been successful, with America setting records of prosperity under his direction and direction. "Bad Obama; Trump good "is pretty much his analysis in all areas and his measure of US activity, especially in economic terms. Even if it were true, it would have negative consequences on Trump's character, but it poses the additional problem of being false, a big lie made up of many little lies.
Personally, I do not assume that all economic measures directly reflect the leadership of anyone in the Oval Office, nor am I smart enough to understand what is causing what is in the economy. But the idea that presidents are credited or responsible for the economy during their tenure is a political fact of life. Trump, in his adorable and shameless lie, not only claims credit for all that is good in the economy, but tells people, literally and specifically, that they must vote for him even if they hate him, because without his advice 401 (k) the accounts "will go into the tubes." It would be shocking even if it was true, but it is absolutely wrong. The stock market has been experiencing a steady stream of gains for 10 years beginning in 2009, the year of Barack Obama's inauguration. But why would anyone care about that? It is only an indisputable and stubborn fact.
Nevertheless, in terms of facts, measures and indicators of the economic situation are so numerous that those who are not engaged in an honest investigation can find evidence of what they want to believe. Trump and his most committed supporters want to believe that everything was terrible under Barack Obama and awesome under Trump.
The data
It's hogwash. Anyone who thinks he believes something wrong. And a series of charts and graphs released Monday in the Washington Post and explained by the economics correspondent, Heather Long, provides data that tells the story. The details are complicated. Click on the link above and you will learn a lot. But the overview is rather simple:
The US economy has experienced a major collapse in the last year of George W. Bush's presidency. Again, I'm not smart enough to know how much this is due to Bush's "fault". But he had been in power for six years when trouble began. So, while it is still reasonable to hold a president accountable for the performance of the economy, the timing is bad for Bush. GDP growth has become negative. Employment growth fell sharply then became negative. The median household income has decreased. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 5,000 points! US manufacturing output fell, as did average home values, average hourly wages, as well as measures of consumer confidence and most other indicators of economic health.
(The backup for this is contained in the article that I linked above.)
Barack Obama inherited this jumble of figures in free fall, which continued during his first year in office, in 2009, as he set up policies designed to turn the tide. In 2010, Obama's second year, almost all negative numbers had become positive. By the time Obama was to be re-elected in 2012, all were heading in the right direction, which is certainly one of the reasons why voters offered him a second term with a solid (and not slippery) margin.
Following the second term
Basically, all these good numbers continued throughout the second term of Obama. US GDP, probably the best measure of the state of the economy, rose 2.9% in 2015, marking Obama's seventh year and was the best GDP growth rate since the Bush Crash. GDP growth slowed to 1.6% in 2016, which is perhaps one of the indicators in support of Trump's election campaign argument that everything went wrong and that he alone could fix it.
During the first year of Trump, GDP growth reached 2.4%, which is decent, but not extraordinary and anyway, a reasonable person would recognize that – to the extent that economic performance is up to credit or fault of the president – the performance of the first year of a new president is a mixture of old and new policies.
The second year, 2018, of Trump GDP, GDP rose 2.9%, which corresponds to the best year of Obama. Until now, in 2019, the growth rate has fallen to 2.1%, a mediocre figure and a drop for which Trump apparently accepts no responsibility and blames the responsibility on Nancy Pelosi, Ilhan Omar or if he can, Barack Obama.
I suppose that it is natural for a president to take for credit everything that is going well under his direction (or someday it), but not to blame anything serious. Trump is more blatant about this than most. Judging by its mediocre but remarkably stable approval ratings (today, according to the average established by 538.com, this is 41.9 approvals / 53.7 disapproval), the good economy does not he does not win new supporters, nor his constant exaggeration of his achievements cost him many old).
I have already proposed it above, but the Washington Post's full report on these figures, as well as the comments and explanations of the economics correspondent, Heather Long, are here.
About this deficit
In the same vein, if you care about what was once called financial conservatism, namely the belief that the federal debt and deficit are important, here is a New York Times analysis, based on on Congressional Budget Office data, suggesting that the annual budget deficit (that is, the amount the government borrows each year, which corresponds to the fact that federal spending exceeded revenues), which has steadily declined during the Obama years, rising from a peak of $ 1.4 trillion at the start of the Obama administration to $ 585 billion in 2016 (last term in Obama), will reach $ 960 billion dollars in this fiscal year, and more than $ 1 trillion in 2020. (Here is the New York Times article detailing these numbers.)
Trump is currently proposing various tax cuts for the rich and the poor which, if adopted, will likely worsen these forecasts. As the Times reports:
The rising deficit forecast is a result of weak federal revenue growth following the introduction of Trump's 2017 tax cuts and several bipartisan agreements to increase domestic discretionary and non-discretionary military spending. defensive, that Mr. Trump signed … As a rule, the budget deficit is reduced when unemployment is low. Trump's administration challenged this trend.
I really wonder how much Trump's supporters, who are likely to see themselves as "Conservatives", including "fiscal conservatives", know about these trends and how much they care about these things.
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