It’s All About the Money
In 1980, Ronald Reagan skewered Jimmy Carter by asking the question, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Well, let’s see how that question has been answered over the past 16 years, shall we? The results [PDF] of an NBC/WSJ poll:
Hmm. Things got steadily better under President Clinton, and steadily worse under President Bush.
John McCain promises to continue the policies of Bush.
Right now, McCain is still doing fairly strongly in match-ups between himself and the Democratic candidates. But that’s probably because the Democrats are the only ones being attacked so far; when McCain comes under cross-party scrutiny, there will be several new points of contrast brought up, this being one of them.
Put this under the header of, “It’s the Economy, Stupid.”
Oh, and by the way, the Liberal Media continues to completely ignore the fact that the McCain campaign is now in outright violation of campaign finance laws. A Republican breaking federal laws in a display of utter hypocrisy? I can only guess that such a thing is now so pedestrian that the press feels it is OK to just ignore it.
Politics is almost always about the economy stupid. Everything else is a distraction.
This patter holds true for just about the entire 20th century. Democrats do better on economic growth then do Republicans.
What’s more Republicans know it.
Supply side economics is pushing on a string in an economy where 2/3rds is dominated by consumption (demand). Its just a gimmick to concentrate wealth and power.
Bush’s game has been the nastiest along these lines. The median family income is down over his 8 years while the top .01 % is up 500% (per Krugman a year and a half ago). He knows his policies will do this. How did he keep the economy’s head above water? Printing more money and barrowing from East Asian central banks, then have people remorgage their houses in the first instance, and pawn their homes in the second instance. But this is not a real increase in demand through economic growth.
His policy is simply to concentrate wealth and power on the one hand and undermine the New Deal on the other. It’s working beautifly. Printing more money means the dollar has collapsed. That means the Social Security surplus has been halved. But there’s more… Because of COLA allotments, the payouts increase faster. If all goes well the finances and the economy will be totally wrecked by the time a Democrat takes office so that they’ll eventually just throw Social Security over the side of the ship of state.
To George Bush – massive poverty seems like a good idea. That’s where we are headed. I’m not sure that Obama with 60 Democrats in the senate can reverse and right the ship of state.
On the other hand, there will be some low hanging fruit for him if things don’t get too bad. National health insurance could release massive amounts of purchasing power, and free up mobility in the economy. Pragmatic energy policies could reverse the outflows to oil countries. Infrastructure projects, aimed at improving energy utilization could create jobs in the short term.
Make no mistake. We are in 1930s territory. What we have is a slow motion unraveling of the economy. It could get very very ugly.