Oh ye of little faith. How about we put some of you guys' hypotheses to the test with some actual numbers.
Reagan was supposedly an economic mastermind whose tax cuts saved the economy. Yet unemployment rose for 22 months after the tax cuts were passed. The tax cuts were passed in the summer of 1981. With a slanted reading of the numbers, you could even argue based on the data that the tax cuts INCREASED unemployment (like some people are claiming about the Obama stimulus). So by that standard, the Obama stimulus is doing fine (about 5 months old).
Most people's expectations for employment numbers are pretty unrealistic given just how bad things have been. Economic contraction compared to the 80's is already significantly worse. Those numbers never even dropped below -3%. They have already averaged -6% in the last two quarters. That's only comparable to the Great Depression this century.
Unemployment now is at 9.5%
Unemployment in the 80's:
GDP:
In the 80's:
And we are sure as hell beating the hell out of what happened in the 30's
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
