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musicpsych August 18 2014, 21:56:22 UTC
Devil's advocate:

Is it really 1:1 for job creation though? Could Carter have benefited from programs passed by his predecessors, while Reagan and Bush's job creation rates were hurt by programs passed by their predecessors?

Also, it's easier to sustain gains over 4 years than over 8, the latter of which is more likely to include more of the natural rise and fall of an economic cycle.

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telemann August 18 2014, 22:44:15 UTC
Is it really 1:1 for job creation though.

Seems so.

Could Carter have benefited from programs passed by his predecessors

Seems unlikely, given that Ford was a fiscal conservative who wanted to reign in Federal spending by using austerity, and was opposed to stimulus spending to get the economy to grow.

Your questions are also interesting, because Carter's economic policies were so heavily criticized during the 1980 election, most notably by the Reagan campaign; and certainly the country at the time blamed Carter for the inflation issue, which dated back to the Johnson administration, and certainly Reagan wasn't asking your questions. Bush never blamed Ronald Reagan for his economic troubles that I recall; and was also a one term president like Carter, so all things being equal, your point about a one term president having it easier than a two term seems to be a draw, at least for President Bush Sr.

The University of Nebraska economics dept has a great article that will likely answer a lot of your questions: "Fiscal Policy, ... )

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fizzyland August 19 2014, 00:21:04 UTC
And wasn't it really the hostage situation that doomed Carter?

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telemann August 19 2014, 16:37:39 UTC
Yeah I think so. The polling was pretty close until the debate aired. Regan was making some serious fuck-ups regarding race (he had a campaign speech in Missouri not far from where some civil rights workers were murdered, and Reagan made a speech supporting "states' rights ( ... )

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goumindong August 20 2014, 03:13:19 UTC
The race thing wasn't a fuck up. That was dead intentional. Without it Reagan probably would have lost because the racists would not have thought he was one of them.

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goumindong August 19 2014, 10:15:15 UTC

Here is the difference in non-farm payroll (annual post term) from 1975 to 1995 (so + 1-3 years on either side) (such that the average of that graph would be "average annual job growth")


... )

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hardblue August 19 2014, 13:17:16 UTC
This is one of the big Red and Blue divides, right? Their story is that the economy was tanking after decades of New Deal liberalism, and that it was the wonder of the big Reagan tax cuts, along with deregulation and cutting wasteful spending on the poor, that turned the economy around and made for an economic miracle bringing America back from the brink. No?

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oslo August 19 2014, 13:59:10 UTC
If only there were some way to accurately assess the situation without resorting to this kind of abdication of intellectual responsibility.

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hardblue August 19 2014, 14:16:33 UTC
I'm just hoping to get an interesting response from Goumindong. If he is of a mind, he can make something of it. I imagine that one can make a fairly solid academic case against the Red State picture, and that the case has probably been made a number of times, but that it does not change their creation story.

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goumindong August 19 2014, 23:10:54 UTC
It is, certainly. But there is basically no evidence to support the Republican story. While the stagflation of the late 70's had not happened before it was not something which inconsistent with the theory and cannot be construed to be a failure of Keynesian economics and new deal liberalism ( ... )

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goumindong August 19 2014, 23:11:06 UTC
Continued ( ... )

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peristaltor August 20 2014, 01:03:39 UTC
So conservatives had this attack that said that the phillips curve had broken down and so keynesianism/liberalism was bunk which played well to people who didn't understand the full situation. But it only really broke the mathematical limits of the numerical models.

Interesting. I'll have to look into this in more detail.

It did not break the theoretical structure(as anyone who has read the General Theory rather than cribbing from Hicks should know, as Keynes spends roughly the entire book talking about dynamics)

Quick question: were the people employing the numbers-modeling the economy with the numerical models-"cribbing Hicks"?

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goumindong August 20 2014, 02:36:04 UTC
Kind of. Hicks wrote the most popular interpretation of Keynes. And he wrote it in a way that easily model-able. The vast majority of post war, pre lucas, practical and theoretical macroeconomics followed from Hicks. Without Hicks it would be more or less impossible to do numerical analysis and study of macroeconomics in the Keynesian structure. The other way would be to develop a new dynamics from whole cloth. Not something that is particularly easy ( ... )

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hardblue August 20 2014, 01:13:32 UTC
That's pretty rich, dude. I wasn't expecting a treatment of the Keynesian model, but I can understand why. I actually try to read Krugman's discussions on the contention over the validity/value of the model, and his frustrations for being on the minority side of that debate, as I also see other economists and pundits talk of Krugman as if he were a sort of 'early earth creationist'. But it's kind of opaque to me. Maybe some others, such as Rowsdowerism, can get into it with you ( ... )

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goumindong August 20 2014, 02:20:56 UTC
supply is the labor market. So its the equilibrium between labor and capital ( ... )

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telemann August 19 2014, 15:50:09 UTC
Yeah, I forgot to mention the GDP to public debt was the lowest for any modern President during Carter's term.


... )

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