Right, because why would we want 5% unemployment (Obama) or a budget surplus (Bill Clinton) when we can have budget deficits and the Great Recession(Bush)? That Republicans can run the economy is the biggest fallacy in public life.
Facts are such picky little things.
Democrats brought us:
1) $9T in new debt.
2) $2.6T in money printed out of thin air, now on the Fed's balance sheet
3) The worst economic recovery in history
4) Massive gains for the 1% the past 8 years at the expense of everyone else
Year 8, Bill Clinton:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble
He left George W Bush one of the worst economies in the history of the nation. Talk about great recession! Unless you can rewrite history that Clinton wasn't president in 2000.
Clinton ran surpluses because:
a) Kasich wrote the budgets
b) Clinton taxed peoples' life savings - capital gains.
While Kasich and republicans were writing those budgets, Clinton was out making speeches saying, "we can balance the budget in 8 years," one week and "we can balance the budget in 6 years" the next.
The 4.4% unemployment rate was great, though. It debunks the idea of the need for a minimum wage. Burger King was paying $15/hour because of supply and demand. Less supply of workers means they had to pay more to attract workers.
Obama's 5%? LOL
It doesn't take much math skill to understand this:
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/art...amas_overrated_unemployment_story_102083.html
However Obama did not mention that his focal economic achievement - higher employment and a low unemployment rate - must be viewed in isolation to appear impressive. Absent that, Obama's employment story unravels - and with it, his economic record.
The key to understanding this is a rather obscure statistic: The US labor force participation rate.
From the mid-1960s, Americans' participation in the labor force increased from just below 59% to plateauing just above 67% from the late 1990s through the early 2000s. Over the next decade, it dipped, hovering around 66%.
In 2008's last two months, it fell below 66%, reaching 65.7% when Obama took in 2009. It has since declined sharply, hitting 62.4% last September. Even having rebounded to 62.9% in February, dismissing the last seven years, this is its lowest point since 1978.
The large effect resulting from participation's drop is seen by comparing employment from the beginning of Obama's administration to today.
When Obama took office, America's potential labor force (the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Civilian Noninstitutionalized population) measured 234.7 million. February 2016's employment report recorded it at 252.6 million - a 7.6% increase. Employment over this period rose from 142.1 million to 151.1 million. Although a net 9 million employment increase, its 6.3% increase is less than the growth in the potential labor force.
The effect on the unemployment rate is far greater. If America still had the 65.5% labor force participation rate that existed when Obama took office, today's official 4.9% rate would instead be an enormous 8.7%.
What made Reagan's record so remarkable is that before he took office, "Double Income No Kids" wasn't a thing, women joined the workforce in huge numbers during his two terms - massive workforce growth. What makes Obama's unemployment look "good" is that people by the millions gave up looking for work. The jobs created during Obama's presidency aren't exactly the really good ones either:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/katieso...fastest-growing-jobs-in-america/#49624e7f549f
The six professions with the highest growth rates don’t require a four-year college degree. For example, you only need a specialized associate’s degree to work as a wind turbine service technician or a physical therapist’s assistant. Other positions like home health aide and physical therapist’s aide require a GED or high school diploma.
These jobs may be plentiful in the future, but they don’t necessarily pay well. The average median pay for the jobs on the list that require an associates degree or less is $37,839. Four of the roles have a median wage of under $30,000, and eight pay less than the
national median wage of $54,000.
Thanks Obama!