I agree that Obama inherited a crappy economy, and I think it is silly to assert that he bears any responsibility for the severity of the 2007-2009 recession.
But it is very fair to hold him responsible for what’s happened since the recession ended. I’ve cited data from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve on both employment and gross domestic product to show that Obama has presided over the weakest recovery in the post-World War II period.
And I think it is fair to blame Obama for the economy’s anemic performance during that time, largely because his agenda of faux stimulus and Obamacare exacerbated the statist policies of Bush. In other words, he promised “hope” and “change,” but delivered more of the same.
Well, now that the election is over, even the Washington Post is willing to admit that Obama’s economic performance is dismal. Here’s a remarkable chart showing that growth is far below the average.
There are actually two very important conclusions to draw from this chart.
- First, the economy has not recovered the lost output from the recession, which is a point made by Nobel laureate Robert Lucas. That’s bad news.
- Second, it appears that the economy is now a lower-growth trend line. That’s worse news.
Indeed, I fear permanently lower growth is the legacy of the Bush-Obama years. We now have a substantially bigger burden of government spending, and things will get worse rather than better in the absence of real entitlement reform.
And we have a lot more cronyism and interventionism, which undermines economic efficiency. To make matters worse, Obama wants higher tax rates and more double taxation of saving and investment.
To be blunt, those are not the policies that create jobs and wealth.
Last century, a good rule of thumb was that the United States was about halfway between the high-growth, small-government economics such as Hong Kong and Singapore and the low-growth, big-government economies of Europe.
But as we move closer and closer to European-style economic policy, it should be no surprise that we get anemic European-style economic performance.
We know the recipe for growth and prosperity. But the political elite is oblivious or doesn’t care.
International Liberty 
[…] we are critics of Keynesianism for reasons I explain in this video. And if you look at current economic performance, it’s certainly difficult to make the argument that Obama’s so-called stimulus was a […]
[…] https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/11/19/now-that-the-election-is-over-the-washington-post-a… […]
Reblogged this on kommonsentsjane and commented:
Reblogged on kommonsentsjane/blogkommonsents.
For your information to give you the truth.
kommonsentsjane
[…] get that growth under Obama. We didn’t get a period of above-average growth, which meant we never recovered the lost output from the recession. We never even got back to the historical […]
[…] And things got worse when statists were in power, as even the Washington Post has acknowledged. […]
[…] Via Dan Mitchell: […]
[…] that lack of growth – acknowledged by both the Washington Post and Congressional Budget Office – is because politicians have been increasing the burden of […]
[…] Interestingly, now that the election is over, even the Washington Post is willing to publish charts confirming that Obama’s economic track record is […]
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[…] how bad Obama’s record is on jobs compared to Reagan and Clinton. And the paper also printed this chart showing how the economy’s performance is way below average under […]
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[…] Interestingly, now that the election is over, even the Washington Post is willing to publish charts confirming that Obama’s economic track record is […]
[…] Now that the Election Is Over, the Washington Post Admits that the Obama Recovery Has Been Terrible […]
[…] And things got worse when statists were in power, as even the Washington Post has acknowledged. […]
[…] And things got worse when statists were in power, as even the Washington Post has acknowledged. […]
[…] the current recovery to a normal recovery, though you won’t be surprised to learn that they conveniently waited until after the election before sharing this vital bit of […]
[…] Interestingly, now that the election is over, even the Washington Post is willing to publish charts confirming that Obama’s economic track record is […]
[…] how bad Obama’s record is on jobs compared to Reagan and Clinton. And the paper also printed this chart showing how the economy’s performance is way below average under […]
[…] bad Obama’s record is on jobs compared to Reagan and Clinton. And the paper also printed this chart showing how the economy’s performance is way below average under […]
[…] we are critics of Keynesianism for reasons I explain in this video. And if you look atcurrent economic performance, it’s certainly difficult to make the argument that Obama’s so-called stimulus was a […]
[…] we are critics of Keynesianism for reasons I explain in this video. And if you look at current economic performance, it’s certainly difficult to make the argument that Obama’s so-called stimulus was a […]
[…] guess we have to give Sunstein credit for chutzpah. We’re suffering through the weakest expansion since the end of World War II, and he wants us to be grateful for Obama’s policies since they supposedly “helped […]
[…] Interestingly, now that the election is over, even the Washington Post is willing to publish charts confirming that Obama’s economic track record is […]
[…] Interestingly, now that the election is over, even the Washington Post is willing to publish charts confirming that Obama’s economic track record is […]
[…] In large part because of an excessive burden of government, the American economy is suffering European-style stagnation, with even the Washington Post now confessing that growth far below the long-run trend. […]
[…] In large part because of an excessive burden of government, the American economy is suffering European-style stagnation, with even the Washington Post now confessing that growth far below the long-run trend. […]
[…] In large part because of an excessive burden of government, the American economy is suffering European-style stagnation, with even the Washington Post now confessing that growth far below the long-run trend. […]
[…] In large part because of an excessive burden of government, the American economy is suffering European-style stagnation, with even the Washington Post now confessing that growth far below the long-run trend. […]
Daniel, it would be good to have approve and disapprove buttons next to each post so readers can agree or disagree with each one. Please!
growth for growth’s sake matters little if the sacred few reap the rewards. a second graph showing over time how income has become increasingly concentrated in the rarified few will demonstrate that people will continue to suffer from lack of real income regardless of the economy’s performance unless something is done to empower the middle class. a good start would be to ask the question: “why is the usa spending 25% of the budget on the ‘defense’ department?”
what is the basis for the “average” recovery? I am just curious the measure in which you are using. Excellent article by the way
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
But don’t you dare call it a “biased media.”
Reblogged this on Gds44's Blog.
[…] late than never, I guess. The Distinguished Veteran has a good laugh at the stunning admission by WaPo that Obama’s economic recovery was a tad oversold. Which immediately put me in the mind of […]
Amen on the slower growth tendline being essentially the only determinant of our mid-long term prosperity.
But I also think something even worse has happened. The ever shrinking margin of Advantage that America has held over the entire rest of the world for more than a century was crossed. America is no longer the most economically efficient, most motivating, most dynamic environment in the world. That is also reflected in the rather precipitous American fall in the world economic freedom rankings. That is a great discontinuity that has been crossed and the definitive entry into the vicious cycle of decline. Growth trendline if irreversibly down from the historical American three percent, but Euro-level growth trendlines are not quite here yet. However, the only important factor at this point is that societal dynamics make it certain that America will continue converging and arrive at the European slow growth rate to decline in a few short years. As the slower economic growth brings seemingly inexplicable pessimistic mood over the electorate, voters will redouble on their hope of prosperity through the work of others and the unimaginative homogenizing approaches of central planning. The path to Europeanization and the decline it implies is inevitable now.
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Indeed, HopNChange was supposed to take the money out of politics. The exact opposite happened. The number of fortune five hundred companies that have set up offices in Washington has skyrocketed in the last four years. That is hardly a surprise to someone who has experienced European mandatory collectivism and thus understands HopNChange for what it is: When the public decides to start exercising collective communal control over the economy, everything becomes politics. That hope concludes into a vicious cycle of low motivation decline in the end.
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Finally it is not only the political elite. The political elite has always had the same motivation. Statism is the product of their work. It is unrealistic to expect them to go against the philosophy that justifies their professional existence. Anti-statist politicians are rare outliers, and it is only logical that it be so. It is THE PEOPLE, yes, The American People, who gave in to the dream of top world prosperity through less effort. In a way, one asks why did it really take so long for Americans to enter the classic irreversible cycle to decline. Inertia perhaps. Inertia of the initial historical serendipity of having discovered a brand new continent, serendipitously colonized by an individual-freedom-loving English minority who would have never been given the light of day at home in England.
Europeans must be basking in the delight of American decline. Americans with their indomitable unadulterated capitalist effort-reward curves are finally down! No more successful economic superpower to throw egg on their low-motivation slow-growth welfare states.
Alas, the biggest change in the world, the one that the less than one billion western world voter lemmings are still burying their heads in the sand about, is the marvelous awakening of three billion plus souls in the emerging world. They are awakening from the very mandatory collectivism that western world voter lemmings are suicidally turning to as their last hope – talking moths headed for the light. A world where these three billion souls, now still at one tenth the standard of living of the western world, achieve even half of the western world per capita prosperity, will be a different world. A world that will feel different. Very-very different!
I mean, really, who in the western world even dares put forth a realistic implementable liberating aspiration to start growing at five percent annually? Any such politician would be voted out in zero time. And that is the growth rate that would merely support survival amongst the prosperous. Genghis Khan is at the gates and the public’s hope is to decrease incentives to produce by being envious of their neighbors. A deterministic destiny of decline indeed. I’m optimistic that cultural natural selection will continue, and after this phase of western world decline, some breakaway countries will eventually burst through in a new cycle of individual freedom. Its just hard to discern right now who those will be. And then future historians will write, “How could early twenty first century western world voter lemmings not see the decline path they were falling into? “
But we have hope!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I recall the original author of the phrase Hope and Change was Fidel Castro! Fits right in with our Marxist Commander-In-Chief don’t you think??
Obama voted for or support most of the policies that created the economic crisis — indeed Obama pushed for most of those policies to be far worse, eg when Obama worked for Acorn.
It’s not silly at all to hold the political elite who wrecked the economy responsible for their policies and the ideas behind them.