I
want to start by saying that if you see a number in brackets [for
example this is what it would look like] it correlates with a
reference point at the end.
We
have lots of Liberals, Progressives, Democrats (I know all the same)
trying to tell us how great President Obama is for the economy and
the country overall. They are attempting to equate Obama with Reagan,
and in doing so they are using different measuring sticks to obtain
their “facts”.
The main issue with
their logic is that when you put garbage in, you get garbage out.
They use each other as spring boards, and claim that their opinion
pieces are factual. But, enough of my opinion. Which happens to be
very low of anyone that supports Keynesian economics, or any Democrat
policies. For this long article I am going to be looking at two other
articles. Which can be found at the links in the bottom marked [1]
and [2]
The
first claim that these titans of Keynesian economics make is that the
deficit is lower now than it was during Reagan. To do this, they
resort to a percentage, which is fine. But, Have you ever tried to
pay your bills on a percentage? I, like many of you, enjoy looking at
the bottom line. I am not going to say that I cut my spending 30%,
when my income went up 35% and my spending stayed the same, or went
up a little. To me it is better to look at it as I had a salary of
$35,000 and I spent $40,000 last year ($10,000 deficit spending, or
14.28% deficit percentage), and this year I had a salary of $36,000
spent $41,000 (13.8% deficit spending). You could make the case that
I lowered my deficit spending, but in truth I added more debt that
will have to be paid back at a later time and date. In the case of
this country, that deficit spending and added debt is something that
our great grand children are going to be paying off. That is why I
have an issue with the way our Federal Government is being ran during the
last 34 years. Now, Adam Hartung at Forbes.com is the one floating
this idea that Obama is better for the country than Reagan. He makes
some very moving points, that are based on information he gleaned
from various government sources.
The
Deficits are getting smaller, 680 billion in FY2013, compared to 1.29
trillion in FY 2010 for example. The claim that Obama has been better
at spending than Reagan is a bit shady. First off, the total Debt
added during Obama's first 4 years as President sits at 4.362
Trillion Dollars. The First 4 years of Bush the debt added was 1.056
Trillion dollars. You cannot add debt, if you have no Deficits to add
to that debt. The total debt that Reagan added for his 8 years as
president was 1.259.6 [3].
You can go to the website listed in my references and plug in the
years for yourself. The FY (fiscal year) starts October 1, and ends
September 30 of a given year. This means with our Presidents being
elected every 4 years, they do not take office until the following
year, that also means that they are not responsible for the deficits
and debts added to the table until their 2nd year in
office. For Reagan, he was elected in 1980 and the FY would have
ended for Carters Budget September 30, 1981. This means that Reagan
did not have a say until FY 1981, Obama FY 2009, and Bush Jr. FY
2001. With all of that said, Obama has added more debt to the
country, and more deficits, then all Presidents combined from
Washington to Clinton. The total debt at the start of FY 2009 was
11.9 trillion dollars, today that debt is at 17.9 trillion and
counting. Meaning that in just 6 short years, Obama has added 6
trillion dollars in debt to this country, and has carried us with 6
trillion dollars in deficit spending. The total debt to the country
at the end of FY 2001 (Clintons last year) was 5.807 Trillion. [4]
You can get this information from treasurydirect.gov the link is
located at the bottom. You can put in any year you wish as the
starting and ending and see how our Government is spending money.
The
second point that Liberals, Progressives, Democrats, bring up is
unemployment. The problem is that they neglect to take into account
that the method for collecting that data has changed from the 80's
[5].
For example the Unemployment rate in the 80's took into account
everyone that is looking for work, working part time, but wanting
full time, and those that left the labor force. Today, this was
broken up into various different categories. The U3 of today just
looks at those looking for work, these are the people that are on
Unemployment and claim to be looking for work. While U4 covers those
that are part time, U5 covers those that are just not looking (this
would be those that have ran out of unemployment and given up getting
a job) and U6 is the people that are unemployed looking for work,
part-time and wanting full time, and those that have given up [6].
In other words if we want an accurate picture to compare two
Presidents, one from the 80's and before 1994, and one after 1994
when the Federal Government changed the way Unemployment was recorded
and distributed to the media. We have to compare the U6 number of
today, to the U3 number during Reagan. When you do this, what you get
is a Unemployment rate of around 12% as of 2013 compared to 8.1% at
the time that Reagan was in the start of his 6th year.
That 12% is a far cry from the reported U3 of today at around
6.2%[6]. 95 million Americans
[7]
have given up the hope of finding a job during this Great Depression.
Those that side with the current occupier of the White House, would
try to have you believe a majority of that 95 million are baby
boomers, when the truth is a majority of them are 16 to 24 that just
cannot find anyone to higher them at the current minimum wages. And
our Unions, Liberals, Democrats, and Progressives want to raise the
minimum wage? If our young entry level works cannot get a job now
with the current minimum wage, what are they going to do when a
company decides that to get a job with them you need 2 years
experience in that field, and a 4 year degree? We can argue about
what caused it, the truth is nothing has been done to stop it, and
the chance of anything really bringing us out is very slim.
As
this is already approaching 1200 words, I will stop here and be more
than happy to go into the other 14 points made about how great Obama
is. The truth is that out of all the Presidents that have served this
great country. Obama has been the worse for our future, with mounting
debt and the cooking of the Unemployment books the likes we have not
seen since, well forever.
References:
