ELDER PATRIOT - here are many things to dislike President Obama about but the fact that he finds it necessary to denigrate the institutions and individuals that served to make America great is perhaps his most detestable trait.
Yesterday, he used the New York Times as the vessel to spew his hatred of conservatives, conservative principles and its past successes while trying to make a case in defense of the anemic economy his term in office has visited on America.
“I actually compare our economic performance to how, historically, countries that have wrenching financial crises perform. By that measure, we probably managed this better than any large economy on Earth in modern history,” Obama told his interviewer in denial of historical evidence to the contrary.
The he took a shot at conservative icon Ronald Reagan who actually inherited a worse economy that did Obama: “If we can’t puncture some of the mythology around austerity, politics or tax cuts or the mythology that’s been built up around the Reagan revolution, where somehow people genuinely think that he slashed government and slashed the deficit and that the recovery was because of all these massive tax cuts, as opposed to a shift in interest-rate policy — if we can’t describe that effectively, then we’re doomed to keep on making more and more mistakes.”
What are the facts surrounding Reagan’s economic recovery and Obama’s?
One measure of economic vitality is new business startups. Not only is that an indicator that the American dream is alive and well, but small businesses has historically accounted for 75% of the jobs in America. When Ronald Reagan left office startups numbered well in excess of 700 per 100,000 working age Americans. Today, startups have plummeted by 25%.
Things are now so bad that the number of small business closings have eclipsed the number of new startups.
Obama has instead concentrated on growing large-cap corporations so that he could point to the stock market as an indicator of economic recovery. So what about that?
GDP, the measure of a nation’s economic output, grew by 32% during Reagan’s 8 years in office despite having inherited 18% interest rates. Even with interest rates at historic lows the Obama “recovery” has only grown by 13% since he took office. Reagan’s policies led to an annual economic growth rate (4+% ) that was more than twice the rate (2%) that Obama’s policies resulted in.
Then there’s the number of unemployed workers that Reagan and Obama will have left behind. This is not the grossly manipulated unemployment rate that has been rendered meaningless but rather the actual number of Americans who want to work but cannot find employment.
Today there are at least 60,000,000 people who cannot find work of any kind while tens of millions more are under-employed having been left no choice but to take jobs for which they are over qualified. When Reagan left office in January 1989 that number was slightly over 6,000,000 unemployed workers.
Reagan’s policies led to real per-capita disposable income growth of 18% during his eight years of managing our economy. The American middle-class boomed with new consumer clout and their standard of living grew by over 20%. Compare that to Obama’s shrinking middle class who are suffering from stagnant, and declining, wages.
There is no amount of spin that our despicable president can use to advance his Globalist-Marxist views that any student of economic history would have difficulty refuting in five minutes. The fact is that when the costs of Obamacare begin kicking in next year Obama’s drag on our recovery will continue beyond his disastrous eight-year term.
The Obama presidency has been an economic disaster. Despite $3 trillion dollars spent intending to stimulate economic growth, and zero interest rates Obama has failed the American people. The people hurt the worst have been those who worked so hard to get him elected and who trusted his rhetoric that he would help them.
Only the most arrogant demagogue would brag on his record, only a truly ugly American.