n previous posts, I’ve used data from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank to show how Obamanomics is leading to very weak results, particularly compared to the economic boom triggered by Reaganomics.
So you can imagine how I was anxious to participate when U.S. News & World Report asked me to contribute my two cents to a debate panel on the question: “Is Obama Turning the Economy Around?“
Here’s part of what I wrote.
…we can hold the president at least partially responsible for an extraordinarily weak and slow recovery. It’s been nearly three years since the recession officially ended in June 2009, yet jobs are still well below their pre-recession levels. And overall economic output, or gross domestic product, has just now finally gotten back to where it was when the downturn began. This is an anemic record. Especially since an economy normally enjoys a strong bounce when coming out of a deep recession. The problem is that Obama has tried all the wrong policies. He tried a big-spending Keynesian package that was supposed to be a “stimulus,” but that’s the same failed approach that Bush tried in 2008, the same failed approach that Japan tried in the 1990s, and the same failed approach that Hoover and Roosevelt tried in the 1930s. Taking money out of the economy’s productive sector and letting politicians engage in a spending spree is the opposite of prudent policy. The president also has continuously expanded subsidies for unemployment, even though academic scholars (and even left-wing economists) all agree that such policies cause more joblessness. And now he’s demanding higher tax rates, holding a Sword of Damocles over entrepreneurs, investors, and small business owners.
By the way, you can impact this debate by voting to approve or disapprove of the various submissions. Just click here.
I did come out ahead (at least in online voting) in previous U.S. News & World Report debates, one on the desirability of double taxation and the other on the fiscal crisis in Europe and the United States.
I’d hate for that winning streak to come to an end.
