Quote:
Originally posted by Colin@Mar 23 2004, 06:29 AM
Buff,
Nothing happens in a vacuum. If you want to compare economies we have to do that. Compare real economies. How does the Clinton economy stack up historically? Damned good.
Solid GDP growth, historically low unemployment, low inflation and reduced deficits.
If that was a "false boom", where's the bust? If this is it, it was sure as hell worth it. The last recession was years ago. Or maybe you are still predicting The Great Depression II starting .. when .. next month? How about a timeline?
I'm not assigning credit. How much credit does Clinton deserve for the roaring 1990's economy? No one knows. I have no idea. You can't disentangle that. You mentioned NAFTA but left out all of Clinton's trade agreements. He worked all over the globe arranging regional trade agreements. Hundreds of them.
Under Clinton, government spending compared to GDP fell to a 35 year low.
Even the number of people on welfare dropped. I would think you would be a big fan.
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Hiring millions of new government employees to reduce the welfare ranks is not the mark of an ever-increasingly prosperous economy.
Take a look at the value of the dollar, Colin -- vs other currencies and commodities. Take a look at real purchasing power -- what one dollar buys today vs 10 or 20 years ago.
And if you want to know what an impending disaster looks like, check out the debt statistics for households and factor that in with the national debt.
Americans are not saving. Period. There's a great article about the economic implications of that here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north254.html