Economy hasn't come far in the last decade (Thanks Bush/GOP)

[AndyA]

I guess those tax cuts really didn't do what they were supposed to do. :eyes:

http://2010.newsweek.com/essay/party-like-its-1999.html

Let's start with the single most-important economic number: jobs. Over the past 10 years, job creation has been extraordinarily weak. In September, on a seasonally adjusted basis, there were 108.544 million private (nongovernment) payroll jobs in the U.S.—almost precisely the number there were in June 1999. (To see the data, go here and then check “nonfarm private.”) In the past decade, in other words, the private sector hasn’t created a single job. That’s poor, especially when you consider that the population grew 9 percent during those years, from 282 million in 2000 to 308 million today.

Let's start with the single most-important economic number: jobs. Over the past 10 years, job creation has been extraordinarily weak. In September, on a seasonally adjusted basis, there were 108.544 million private (nongovernment) payroll jobs in the U.S.—almost precisely the number there were in June 1999. (To see the data, go here and then check “nonfarm private.”) In the past decade, in other words, the private sector hasn’t created a single job. That’s poor, especially when you consider that the population grew 9 percent during those years, from 282 million in 2000 to 308 million today.

The stock market performed like somebody running on a treadmill—a lot of energy was expended to travel the tiniest of distances. As this depressing 10-year chart of the S&P 500 shows, stocks went precisely nowhere in the past decade, despite all the efforts to help the market—from slashing capital gains and dividend taxes to keeping interest rates extremely low to bailouts.

Meanwhile, Americans seem to have lost their interest in investing. Between 1992 and 2000, the percentage of households owning mutual funds doubled, from 24.4 to 49 percent. And between 1992 and 1999, the percentage of Americans owning equities—either through mutual funds or as individual stocks—rose from 36.7 percent to 47.9 percent. To build on that impressive growth, in this decade, President George W. Bush made the “Ownership Society” a theme of his presidency, suggesting that investing in securities could be the solution to everything from Social Security’s long-term insolvency to the health-care crisis. But Americans largely ignored these calls. According to the securities industry’s Equity Ownership in America 2008 report, the proportion of the population that owned stocks or bonds fell from 57 percent in 2001 to 48 percent in 2008. And in 2008, 45 percent of U.S. households owned stocks—inside retirement programs and in brokerage accounts—down from 49 percent in 1998.

So it really does make perfect sense to put Republicans back in seats because of the lousy economy, doesn't it? They have such a rich history of success. Of course, facts are something the Republicans never want to deal with.

[avaistheone1]

1. And it doesn't make sense to put Democrats in seats who vote as thought they are Republicans either.

[AndyA]

2. True, but the Democrats at least are the lesser of two evils.

They aren't as likely to start wars, and things of that nature.

Not a great option, but better than allowing the GOP to run the show as they have for the last decade. At least under Clinton, people were improving their lives. That all went away under Bushco.