Quote:
Originally Posted by OverEasy
While economic growth alone is not sufficient for middle class and working class income growth, it is certainly necessary. The most systematic investigation of how parties affect economic growth was performed by economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson. Their results are unequivocal:
“The U.S. economy has performed better when the President of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance. For many measures, including real GDP growth (on which we concentrate), the performance gap is both large and statistically significant.”
Source:
http://www.salon.com/2015/12/28/thes...ic_presidents/
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There's also a strong correlation between per capita sales of sour cream and motorcycle accidents, the death rate from falling out of a wheelchair and potato chip sales, and egg sales and deaths from auto accidents. Really.
The correlations you cite are a strong function of the period you pick. I note that several in your article use 1946 as a starting point. During the period from 1946 to 1968, there were three Democrat presidents and one Republican president. Growth during this period, the rebound after World War II, was stronger than during the period afterwards. This had very little to do with who was president.
How about Congress? Congress controls the purse strings and arguably has more control over the economy than the President. And the Federal Reserve has more control than either.
One president can execute disastrous policies that make the next guy look bad. A classic example is Jimmy Carter and his Democrat Congress. GDP growth was high during the first two or three years of his administration, then tanked so that Reagan looks bad during the time Paul Volcker (Fed chairman under Reagan) was jacking up short term interest rates to double digits and cooling the economy. (Democrats might have a similar argument in favor of Obama and against George W. Bush, although I'd argue they were just as responsible as Republicans in allowing the conditions to exist that created the 2008/2009 recession.)
I'd argue that Carter was the exception to what I said above -- the economy sucked by the end of his term in large part because of his policies and a Democrat congress and dovish Fed chairmen that went along with him.
In determining what works and what doesn't, it makes much, much more sense to look at countries instead of who's president, and policies instead of parties. Kick out the petro-states and tiny countries, and you'll see the most prosperous in the world are Singapore, Hong Kong, the United States, Switzerland and Ireland. What do these have in common? Relatively free markets, smaller government, rule of law, lower overall taxation, and, maybe with the exception of the USA, regulation that's efficient and not burdensome.
These 5 charts prove that the economy does better under Democratic presidents
