Absolutely. My objection is to making generalizations about 'all republicans' based on a misleading graph.
Here's a more unbiased graph of the debt levels.
As you can see the debt kicks off in WWI with Wilson, it's generally felt that Wilson poorly managed demobilising the country, and the post-war debt. This was actually around the time when the democrats and the republicans began to switch places, something I've never really fully understood.
It begins to drop with Coolridge who cut back on the government, opposed labour unions (something that was popular at the time due to people being worried that allowing unions would cause a communist uprising, oh the irony), and even cut taxes. Hoover then got saddled with the great depression, and passed that torch onto Roosevelt, who was well known for the huge amounts of spending he did to fight the depression, but honestly, the debt didn't start to really pile up until the war started. From then on after the war the various presidents steadily brought the debt down, until Nixon came along.
Nixon got involved in Vietnam, and disallowed cashing in the dollar for gold, which removed it from a gold standard, and basically opened the floodgates for inflation.
Some say this was inevitable and a good thing, I'm not so sure.
Nixon also stopped bringing down the debt, which was something that continued with Ford and Carter, until we get Reagan, who spent like crazy. Then G.H. Bush carried on that legacy.
Clinton then started to bring the debt down, before the next Bush started bringing it back up.
Then the recession hit. yay
Something that puzzles me is why when republicans are supposed to be in favour of smaller government, they wind up incurring more debt than democrats.
I fail entirely to see how my graph is "biased," in recent history it's correct. This other graph uses a % of GDP which I'm not seeing as relevant. By that notion Obama has spent "more" than Bush, even though this is patently untrue. Rather there is less GDP now due to the recession. Moreover it takes into account an incredibly rare circumstance like WWII mobilization and the commandeering of the entire economy for military production.
I'm not seeing why we should care about GDP in relation to debt, because that picks up confounds like recessions. The same is true of recent inflation adjustments, because the bad economy has caused that (and don't say there is none, gas and groceries cost more. There is inflation official or not). I get what they're trying to do; they're trying to make an apples to apples comparison. You can't in this instance, because there are too many confounds.
Just like to point out that that if you're just looking to compare republicans and democrats, that chart's misleading (although I'm in no way defending massive government spending).
There are 3 republicans depicted and only 2 democrats, one of whom's only been in charge for 3 years. Grand total that's 20 years of Republicans represented to 11 of Democrats, so yeah, budget increases are going to be weighted towards Republicans.
(Correct me if my numbers are wrong.)
What the? You do realize this is entirely in your favor right? Ok, you wanna go further back before Regan? It does. that tiny little part is the portion of the debt before 1981. Who cares if that was Carter, Nixon/Ford, JFK, or whoever. It's nothing compared to the portion Bush borrowed. The fact that there have been more republican presidents than democratic presidents doesn't make anything biased. It's just the fact that they've had more time in power recently.
It isn't misleading, Bush spent an absolute ton of money on multiple unfunded wars while cutting taxes.... That makes deficits. Simple. The point is moot, because Bush spent 40% of the current debt in real money that we have to pay back no matter how you cut it. There is no way that is good.
Bush spent 40% of what we currently owe and he was in for 8 years. Obama has spent about 10% of what we currently owe and he's been there 3 years. If we double that for 6 years and even make it times 2.5 to equalize it to 8 years, Obama's still ahead of Bush.
13.5 x .40 = 5.4
13.5 x .10 = 1.35
13.5 x .25 = 3.375
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Topic: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread (Read 853842 times)