Reagan recovery vs Obama recovery

[kentuck]

The right wing is comparing the jobs recovery of Ronald Reagan to the jobs recovery of Barack Obama as a way to show that Reagan's policies were much better. And they say that Reagan's recession was worse than Obama's because unemployment went up to 10.4%. However, they say, at the same time in the recovery, Reagan was creating many more jobs. They cite this as evidence of the failure of Obama's policies and the success of Reagan's policies. No doubt, the Reagan recession was very serious.

However, the two economic downturns were as different as night and day. With the Reagan recession, we were recovering from the first oil shocks and embargoes and the first wave of inflation to hit our country in a long time. This was also left over from the spending of the Vietnam War. Reagan and the Republicans blamed Jimmy Carter but Nixon and Ford did nothing to prevent or to cushion the inflation blow, other than to print out WIN buttons. It was a severe recession.

But with the "Obama recession", which really began before he took office also, it was deeper and worldwide in its scope. It was on a depression level, with the collapse of the banks and the bubble bursting on the housing market, like none we had seen in our lifetimes. We were in dire straits. In many ways, we are still there. We have never recovered.

History will likely record that Barack Obama saved the capitalist system just as much as FDR did, or maybe even moreso, and prevented the nation from sliding into a deep depression with 20% unemployment. We are actually very, very lucky to only have 8.3% unemployment at this time. Obama inherited a much more dangerous economic downturn than did Ronald Reagan, there is little doubt.

Unfortunately, the President did not do a good job communicating the depth of the problem to the country or the time it might take to recover from the depression. Perhaps they underestimated the severity of the problem or they did not want to put too much of a negative spin on the disastrous situation we were in?

Regardless, the Republicans are now able to spin the economy as a failure on Obama's part by comparing it to Reagan at the same time in his recovery. In hindsight, it may have been better to have informed and warned the people from the beginning that this would take more than one term to fix? Perhaps it would have been better to move people's expectations a little more slowly?

Now, the Republicans are taking advantage of the slow recovery by saying that it is a failure of the Obama Administration. It didn't have to be this way.

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[Enthusiast]

1. The top marginal tax rate under Reagan was 50%.

I'm just saying.

[No Elephants]

3. That seems pretty damned relevant, Enthusiast. Thanks.

[PatrynXX]

2. Reagan also hired big TIME Public workers

which Republicans govs have been firing across the nation. hello firing. = higher unemployment. = more people to unemployment line. No president has ever had a congress do this before. More or less if they use Reagan as a comparison, they are saying they should be hiring public workers and not firing them. This is Greece at its worst.

[No Elephants]

4. Was Reagan President before WWII?

Bush's Republican Secretary of the Treasury said on every Sunday morning talk show one weekend that we were in the worst economic situation since World War II. (if you recall everyone was using that terminology, to avoid saying "since the Great Depression.") He didn't say "since 1980."

And on one of those talk shows, Paulsen was asked if we were in a Depression. He said, "You never want to use certain words because just using them can cause problems." Politician to English. "Yes, we are in a Depression, but i will never say so publicly."

And, he said that the bailout had to be done within a day or two. Congress took a little longer, but he got it and, in federal government terms, got it at light speed. (When was the situation that Reagan faced ever that dire and emergent?)

So, either Republican Secretary Paulsen and Republican President Bush did something beyond horrible to the country through heinous lies, or the 2008 collapse was far worse than anything Reagan faced, or Reagan was President before WWII. There are no other possibiities.

I think the collapse of 2008 may well have been worse than the collapse of 1929 in quite a few ways.


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But wait.


What is the point of this again?

Is Obama running against Reagan?

Because Romney has his own record of "recovery" in Massachusetts. just as Obama has his own record.

So, remind why are we looking at a man who is not running and can never run again, instead of at Romney? Are we shooting a zombie movie or electing a live President? Because if it's zombie time, to hell with Reagan and his mega failed trickle down. He had 8 years and messed us up beyond belief. I say we give JFK a chance to finish out his term and see what would have happened.

Or is bringing up Reagan to distract us from Romney's economic record in Massachusetts? If so, why are Democrats allowing Repubicans to draw the playing field and making certain that we stay within the lines the Republicans drew wherever it benefited them to draw them?

Hell, kf we're going to go the dead Presidents route instead of assessing both live candidates on their own merits, let's match Reagan up against FDR.

If FDR was more creative and brilliant at handling a worse crisis than Reagan and with fewer existing tools, Obama gets the WH. If not, then Romney gets the WH. That seems fair.

So does Obama v. Romney.

Obama v. Reagan though, is just totally messed up.

[No Elephants]

5. P.S. Which specific policies of Reagan's are no longer in force?

If the RW says something like "Reagan's policies," we should at least make them be specific. Still, I'd rather take the approach at the end of my prior post.

Reagan is not running. Let's discuss Romney's policies and Romney's administration in Massachusetts.