MORE PROOF THE GOP IS WRONG ABOUT OBAMA BEING A “JOB KILLER”

 



…Workers at an American Amazon warehouse

 

As usual, Republican “talking points” are all just that....“talk”.

 

A conservative friend of mine recently mentioned the “Bush Boom” which he said was the increase in Jobs during the Bush years before the economic debacle in 2008.  This so called “Boom” was back then considered a vindication for the Bush tax cuts.  My friend then asked, “Well, where is the Obama jobs boom?”

 

I hadn’t thought of it that way, so I decided to see just how successful Obama’s jobs programs had been.  I knew that the official unemployment rate was down to 5%, but like most people, I had not kept up with the actual jobs numbers.

 

After the economic melt-down in 2008, I remembered that the country was losing 700,000 jobs a month when Obama took over the Oval Office.  I also remembered that it wasn’t until around 2010 that the jobs curve really started skyward.  But when I dug into the latest figures, I found that today, at the end of Obama’s 7^th year in office, 14 million jobs had been added in the US.

 

In a recent article by my favorite Nobel economist, Paul Krugman, even he was surprised when he found out how many jobs had been added since Obama became president.  But Obama still has another 12 months to go and the expectations are still looking very positive for an even more sizable increase.

 

So, how does Obama’s numbers compare to the aforementioned “Bush Boom” of the early 2000’s?  Well, for the same amount of time at being president, Obama’s numbers are about double of what Bush’s numbers were before the financial crisis.

 

But even according to Krugman, when asked if Obama should take any credit for these job  increases?  Per the economist, “No. In general, presidents and their policies matter much less for the economy’s performance than most people imagine. Times of crisis are an exception, and the Obama stimulus plan enacted in 2009 made a big positive difference. But that stimulus faded out fast after 2010, and has very little to do with the economy’s current situation.”

 

But if you listen to the political pundits and the candidates from both parties, especially those on the right, they insist that the chief executive’s policies matter significantly for giving the economy positive results.

 

As we are all aware, the Republicans have been calling everything the Obama administration has done to only be “job killing” policies.  As was stated by Krugman, “The former Republican House speaker, John Boehner, once used the “job killing” phrase seven times in less than 14 minutes. So the fact that the Obama job record is as good as it is, tells you something about the validity of those attacks.”

 

But it must be noted that the Republicans only have their talking points, no matter how incorrect they are.  They have blamed the Dodd-Frank financial reform act; Obamacare; alternative energy programs; Obama’s tax increases on higher incomes; and the GOP has claimed that all of these actions were responsible for crushing the nation’s employment to devastating results.  But as you can see, they were totally wrong.  In addition, there is absolutely no evidence that Obamacare led to a shift from full-time to part-time work, and no evidence that the expansion of Medicaid led to large reductions in labor supply.  In fact, the employment in these areas increased.

 

Not one dire prediction of “job killing” from the GOP has occurred on Obama’s watch

 

So, what can we learn from all of this?

 

Well, I think Mr. Krugman said it best: “That the conservative economic orthodoxy dominating the Republican Party is very, very wrong.”

 

As some examples:

 

I know it’s hard to believe, but some of the Republican candidates are still pushing “Trickle Down Economics” which has proven multiple times to not work.  No matter how much you cut corporate taxes, there is no proof that doing that has ever resulted in an increase in jobs.  But it will increase corporate profits.

 

The conservatives have always seemed to think of what they call “job creators” as highly capable economic super-heroes.  But as Mr. Krugmans has stated, “They are sensitive flowers who wilt in the face of adversity — raise their taxes a bit, subject them to a few regulations, or for that matter hurt their feelings in a speech or two, and they’ll stop creating jobs and go sulk in their tents, or more likely their mansions.”

 

Think about it.  Don’t you find it interesting that the conservative doctrine is one that is totally in support of the nation’s financial elite.  It’s a doctrine that says that these conservatives should do nothing to protect the average American family from financial risks unless it also supports the top 2%.  It’s also interesting that this same group just happens to be the largest financial donators to these same conservative politicians.

 

Why do these same people not just take a look back at the economic history of the nation’s most lucrative years?  That’s because it would show them just how wrong they are today.

 

America achieved amazing and unprecedented income growth in the 1950s and 1960s.  This was all despite some of the highest tax rates beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.  And back then, the US was not the only nation that had those same results.  At the same time, in Europe, Denmark had combined their high taxes and generous social programs with excellent, long-term employment performances.

 

Why is this so hard for the conservatives to digest?  They will look back in history for learning about other aspects of politics, but they will totally ignore what has shown to achieve past economic successes.

 

I will end this article with a final comment from Mr, Krugman:  “The Obama economy offers a powerful lesson in the here and now. From a conservative point of view, Mr. Obama did everything wrong, afflicting the comfortable (slightly) and comforting the afflicted (a lot), and nothing bad happened. We can, it turns out, make our society better after all.”

 

Just sounds like common sense that worked to me.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016