John James, Michigan Senatorial candidate: are you familiar with him?

@JP1119 The man he spoke to on the street in Michigan is now able to earn more money and got a better job because there are now MORE jobs due to deregulation. This is simplistic. This man on the street and his family are actually eating better now...and when you are hungry, that makes a huge difference.

You might want to watch this video of Obama.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKpso3vhZtw

Uhhh, no. You're wrong. The economy improvement is directly related to the tax cut Trump initiated. Obozo was an economic drag anchor. @JP1119

@redredred Okay then, riddle me this: why was the economy so strong and improving [i]before[/i] the tax cut even passed? Why was it so strong and improving at the end of the Obama administration? You’re telling me it’s all because of a tax cut that hadn’t even been dreamed up yet?

The economy began to improve as the awful obozo era was coming to an end and much more so when it was clear Trump was taking office. Instilling confidence and optimism is an amazing economic stimulus. @JP1119

@redredred So people went out and spent more money simply because “Obozo” was leaving office? Never mind that most people believed Clinton was about to become president....

Even Hillary would have been an improvement on demonstrably the worst president in the history of the republic.

For the purposes of this discussion let me tell you I hold an MS in Economics so clearly, I have much to learn on the subject no am eager to do so. I'd love the benefit of your insights on the economy. Could you tell me the precise economic mechanisms that have made it too soon for Trumps efforts to produce this improvement? I want to know EXACTLY the mechanisms that delay the effect of economic measure not just vague blandishments about how hard obozo worked.

Keep in mind how Zuckerburg list sixteen billion in a matter of minutes when Facebook numbers were not what was expected. Economic reactions can be very fast given the tight impetus.

@redredred Just reading your response to JP1119. I listened to a discussion of the GDP (was it last night?). At any rate, it was emphasized by someone or other that it is the annual GDP which counts, not the quarterly, and that Obama had a 2.97 annual GDP at the end of his 8 years in office, having begun with a 1.97 GDP.

I listened with interest, also, to a recording of Obama stating that "those jobs are never coming back"....and now they are back due to dramatic tax cuts for business and deregulation. Many of the regulations that hampered business were put into place by Obama. So he did make a very small recovery while shooting business in the foot with over-regulation, and put many small businesses under.

@redredred I've never taken an economics class before, and I'm not really a details kind of guy, so I'm sorry, I can't offer to explain to you any precise economic mechanisms; however, from studying history I get the big picture that tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation is not how you build a nation into a world power nor how you cement the status of a nation that already is a world power. Quite the contrary.

The growth of the United States from middling-agrarian developing country into global superpower didn’t happen because we cut taxes; it happened even as we raised taxes to support our investments in our military, in our manufacturing capacity, our business and scientific and technological development.

Meanwhile, the set of policies advocated by our socialism-scolds (unregulated free markets, unregulated industry, unregulated banking and non-enforcement of antitrust rules) are proven not to work. We know these things don’t work because we have our own history to look to: prior to regulating finance, the USA experienced depression-scale financial panics and bank rushes every 15 years or so. Monopolies, boom and bust cycles enriched the very wealthy, impoverished most people (there was no such thing as a middle class then), and made the USA a playground for its industrial barons.

The thing is, what liberals actually want is largely proven to work. Meanwhile, what the american right is working to deliver is an America that more closely resembles the one that existed in 1900: an America in which the wealthy ruled, in which there was no regulatory capacity to the government to limit their abuses or predatory behavior.

I think it is important to point out that the America of 1900 was NOT a world power. Many Americans with a poor background in history think America became a world power the minute John Hancock flourished his signature upon the parchment known as the Declaration of Independence. The truth of it is that the U.S. did not become an important world power until after WWI and did not become the world’s most powerful economy until after WWII and the progressive revolution led by FDR.

Under Trump and his fellow Randists, the U.S. will likely not only lose its stature as the most important world power (that is being handed to China with our current nationalistic and protectionist agenda), but also likely lose its global dominance in economic power, as it devolves into a third world economy.

So, unsupported claims and a clear lack of education on the subject is all you've got. Thanks, I'll ignore you in the future.@JP1119

@redredred What, is my history wrong? Which part of it do you dispute? Why don’t you educate me on some of those precise economic mechanisms?

You've made claims at variance with the facts. Both JFK and Reagan cut taxes and the economy soared. In JFKs case the rates were confiscatory and his cuts were long over due but you claim tax cuts had no effect. You claim the US wasn't a world power until after WWI but that doesn't explain how the (criminal) Wilson was able to command the world to listen as he dictated the post war terms. It wasn't the bone-headed stack of errors by FDR that made us the strongest economy in the world, it was the virtual destruction of all the other nations' economies that moved us in the unchallenged first place..

You say that tax cuts and regulatory relief don't work but the history shows they always have. You claim conservatives want to essentially reconstruct the US of the 19th century; I challenge you to cite one who has put that policy forward.

Progressive policies produce Venezuelas, Trumps policies produce the sort of economic gains occurring right now in front of us. @JP1119