Note that the only one leftist in the clip who actually knows what a Keynesian is. He is also clearly stoned off his gourd, so he is probably enjoying the protest more than most.
Gross domestic product (GDP) expanded at only a 0.7% seasonally adjusted annualized ratein the fourth quarter of last year, the Commerce Department reported today. That’s quite weak.
2015 as a whole wasn’t so good either. GDP expanded at only 2.4%, the same as in 2014. That’s called limping along. For as James Pethokoukis points out, from the end of World War II through 2005, the economy grew at an average annual rate of 3.5%.
But no amount of adjustment can obscure how bad the recovery has been for most American families. By many measures, 2014 was the strongest year of the recovery so far; the economy added nearly 3 million jobs, the most since 1999. Yet incomes were stagnant across virtually all groups: young and old, married and single, rich and poor.2 Virtually the only group to see a statistically significant gain in income was immigrants, whose median household income rose 4 percent to just under $50,000. Native-born households saw their income decline 2 percent to just under $55,000.
The recovery has utterly failed to lift the fortunes of the poorest Americans. The official poverty rate was 14.8 percent in 2014, nearly unchanged since the immediate aftermath of the recession, and far above the prerecession level. Some 15 million children and 5 million seniors are living in poverty.
I’ve mentioned before that Sander’s stump speeches on the topic of immigration are even more hard lined, on both legal and illegal immigration, than Donald Trump’s stance on the subject.
There are two other common themes to a Sander’s speech.
The first sounds a lot like Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. One of the major catch phrases of that campaign was, “It’s the economy, stupid!” The brilliant James Carville gets credit for that. For those of you who don’t remember the early 1990’s, in Q492, when the election was held, the US had just come out of a recession. When the President at the time, George H.W. Bush, correctly stated that the recession was over, and the recovery was starting, the Clinton team would go into full attack mode, calling him a liar. Since the recovery had just started, the effects were not wildly felt. This tactic was wildly successful for Clinton, especially since the economy really was starting to recover, and he got to take credit for something that was already happening after he took office.
Bernie Sanders is pounding the pulpit and telling people not to believe the economic news coming from the Obama White House. Obama is telling you that unemployment is 5.6%, and Bernie is telling it’s 10.7%. Thing is that they are both quoting the current federal Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers. Barry is using the more commonly used U3 number. Bernie is using the U6 number, which is considered by rational economists to be a more accurate indicator.
If you have read my previous posts about the Obama Economy, you would think I’m siding with Bernie on this. I have to admit, the self identified Socialist does have a point. The so-called “recovery” has been going on for just over five years now, and it has been described everywhere from CNBC to NPR as “lackluster” and “jobless.” With a U3 of 5.6%, we should be damn close to “full employment”, yet the number of people not in the work force is at levels we haven’t seen since the deep recession of the late 1970s. Barry’s policies have managed to kill most of the economic gain that you typically get coming out of a recession.
While Sanders may be right about our Dear Leader‘s handling of the economy, odds are he will screw it up even more with his socialist economic policies.
One of the shining qualities of Creepy Uncle Joe, the current Vice-President, is that he will occasionally let the truth slip from his mouth.
Yup, the past six years have been really, really hard for America. That is what you get for letting an admitted socialist run the federal executive branch.
Clearly, the so-called “economic policy” of our Dear Leader and the Congressional democrats have hindered economic growth, which is not a surprise to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention. It’s a tribute to the robustness of the American economic engine that there has been any growth under the Obama regime’s anti-growth policies of massive tax hikes, “wealth distribution”, and record setting levels of crippling federal debt ($18.1 Trillion and climbing).
Dr. Charles Krauthammer makes the following astute observation:
“To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.”
Example: Republican line: “Your Obama for President bumper sticker might as well say ‘I’m with Stupid.'”
The U3 number for June 2014 was 6.1%. Now if you were paying attention, you would know that there was a net gain of over 200,000 jobs in June. Which is generally a good thing, since it was about double what is needed to just offset population growth. Anemic growth by other recovery standards, but pretty damn good in the Obama economy. If you were paying attention to the details, you wouldn’t be popping the corks on the bubbly yet. Those 200,000 new jobs were part of the 700,000 new part time jobs, offset by a loss of 500,000 full time jobs. Yup, in the Obama economy, full time work with benefits is out, and wearing a name tag and asking, “Would you like fries with that?” is in.
It gets worse for minorities. They key democrat voting blocks of blacks, hispanics, and the ‘youth vote’ have gotten the nasty end of the shafting in the Obama economy. These are the official government June unemployment numbers from the BLS. Look ’em up if you don’t believe ’em.
Hispanics: 7.8%
Blacks: 10.7%
Aged 16-19: 21.0%
You know that the overall 6.1% number is only so low because the feds have stopping counting more and more of the long term unemployed. “Not in the labor” force is at 92.2 million and still climbing. If they were added back in, that number would be comfortably in the double digits. So inflate the minority numbers by the same factor and you have 2 out of ten black Americans out of work.
Compare and contrast to the Reagan Recovery, where unemployment for minorities when down and their net income went up. To be honest, unemployment was down and net income was up for everyone. That is what you get when you have an economic policy geared for growth, rather than ‘income distribution.”