Rick Moran:
Russia rolling into other countries with impunity. A declining standard of living. Stagnant economic growth. And a weakling in the White House who seems paralyzed to do anything about it all.
The second decade of the 21st century? Or the late 1970′s?
The Carter-Obama comparison isn’t new. But if history does, in fact, have a nasty habit of repeating itself, the last few years have begun to look an awful lot like the Carter era.
Consider: As has too often happened in recent quarters, the rate of growth has been revised downward as more information has been digested. GDP grew at an annualized rate of 2.4% in the fourth quarter of 2013 following an initial estimate of 3.2%. That is not an insignificant fall off and coupled with the weather-blamed slow growth in the first quarter of this year, the continued paltry job growth, wage stagnation, and a softening housing market, there is a growing belief that this is the new normal and we better get used to it.
The Congressional Budget Office is through waiting for a decent recovery and is now basing it’s economic projections on the basis that what we’re experiencing in the economy is how it’s going to be for the foreseeable future.
The part of the past that you deem most relevant can be critical in determining your outlook for the future. And nowhere is that clearer than in the changing economic forecasts that come out of the Congressional Budget Office.
This year’s short-term and long-term economic forecasts are substantially worse than last year’s, even though the economy performed better than expected in 2013. What changed was that the C.B.O. economists essentially decided that they would no longer treat the recent years of poor economic performance as a sort of outlier. They have seen enough of a slow economy to begin to think that we should get used to sluggishness.
They think that Americans will earn less than they previously expected, that fewer of them will want jobs and that fewer will get them. They think companies will invest less and earn less. The economy, as measured by growth in real gross domestic product, will settle into a prolonged period in which it grows at an average rate of just 2.1 percent. From 2019 through 2024, job growth will average less than 70,000 a month.
Not only do they forecast an economy with less growth than in any comparable period since the Great Depression, they think interest rates will rise substantially, to the great discomfort of the federal government, which will have to pay ever-rising amounts of interest to service the rising national debt.
Some economists think that the CBO is wrong, that you can’t have slow growth and high interest rates. That may be so. But other economists are forecasting similar doom and gloom.
In “Is U.S. Economic Growth Over?,” a 2012 working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon argued that the country was in for 25 to 40 years of very slow growth. In particular, Americans in the bottom 99 percent of the U.S. income distribution could expect only 0.2 percent annual increases in their real per capita disposable incomes. This is dramatically lower than the 2 percent annual increase in incomes that occurred in the century before 2007. Gordon attributed this fall-off in growth to six “headwinds” and the slowing pace of technological innovation.
Gordon extends his analysis in a new study, “The Demise of U.S. Economic Growth: Restatment, Rebuttal, and Reflections.” In this paper, also published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Gordon revisits four of his six growth-slowing headwinds: demography, education, inequality, and government debt. (The other two are globalization and energy and environmental concerns.) He also attempts to bolster his argument that technological progress is stagnating.
The 1980 presidential race featured then Governor Jerry Brown going on national television and telling Americans that the good times were over and we would have to learn to live in an “age of limits.” This was following Jimmy Carter chiding the American people for having lost faith in government, and the future, because of high inflation, high interest rates, and high unemployment.
The resulting recovery of American economic growth and optimism seems like destiny in hindsight. But Ronald Reagan couldn’t have done it without a resilient citizenry who believed in themselves and a brighter future.
The only candidate I have seen that brings a positive forward promise and a true belief in America is Sarah Palin. The lsm has done such a job on her that even Republicans are afraid of her! Imagine how bad it would have been if we’d have had someone like McLame as the Republican nominee instead of Reagan.
If we nominate another RINO, we will see what would have happened.
So….Obama is supposed to send troops to defend the Ukraine? Or that US troops were also supposed to have been put in harms way in Georgia as well?
There is no indecision here nor is there any superior moral argument that Obama should rally congress to grant any kind of war power to defend the UKraine–for one obvious reason, amongst others: The Ukraine was run by a gangster regime to begin with…
As for Palin… had she got elected president in some imaginary universe, would that ding bat have sent US troops to die for yet again a foolish cause? It is not our business to protect a neighbor of Russia, especially when a large part of the Ukraine is already Russian.
@This one:
If Obama had been smart, he wouldn’t have to. The situation would never have deteriorated this far had the US and NATO showed that it was ready and willing to defend Ukrainian independence, as was promised 20 years ago.
We should consider ourselves fortunate that we don’t have a reactionary in the White House prepared to act as rashly as the lunatic presently calling the shots in Russia.
We haven’t gotten out from the shadow of the last ill-considered overseas adventure yet, and likely won’t for another generation. What don’t republicans understand about the problems of paying for wars with a credit card when they won’t even accept tax rates that allow the nation to pay the domestic bills? And what don’t they understand about the fact that the last go-round was with a two-bit Third World dictator, while Russia is a modern nuclear power?
@Greg: How many countries were invaded by aggressors while the “reactionary” was leading (emphasis on “leading”) the nation? Actually, it is clear Obama is the reactionary because he never is paying proper attention to conditions (other than his golf handicap or the brackets) and always has to react, with total surprise, to events when they happen.
Perhaps he should have listened to Palin and Romney. Perhaps YOU should have listened to Palin and Romney.
The old Soviet leadership is going to snuff out Ukraine’s freedom…and Obama is going to stand by and do nothing. Obama has more in common with Putin than he does with the freedom loving people of Ukraine.
Both are at heart, collectivists who hate and fear the US Constitution and the freedoms it enshrines.
@Greg:
No matter what Obie does we can always expect you and your ilk to be right there with lips firmly planted on his back side. One would think that view would tire you, but you obviously like the taste.
@Mully, #7:
Yeah, right. So, what would a Proper Republican President do in this situation? Threaten Putin with a U.S. military response? Is there some military threat you’d actually be prepared to see us make good on, if Putin took of his shirt and hopped on a horse? Does risking war with Russia seem rational?
Republicans are quick with the criticism, but they always seem to come up short in the constructive suggestion department—at least until they’ve had plenty of time to carefully study a situation in the rear-view mirror.
@Greg: No one doubts we are in a tough position with a difficult decision to make. The primary point is exactly WHY are we now in such a position?
Obama’s weakness is why.
Sad as it might seem, it probably has more to do with Vladimir Putin’s lifelong psychological need to compensate for being 5′ 5″ tall. Consider the numerous photos of Putin on horseback, Putin posing shirtless, Putin posing with assorted firearms, Putin’s obsession with various martial arts, etc. He seems to have a need to be perceived as a manly man of action. There’s nothing quite like ordering a military invasion of a neighboring country to demonstrate one’s Alpha Male status. It affirms one’s position as Leader of the Pack.
Dmitry Medvedev is an ideal prime minister of Putin’s Russia because he’s 5′ 4″. Obama, at 6′ 1″, probably makes Putin uneasy, which might complicate any confrontation between Russia and the United States. It’s always necessary for Putin to appear to win in Putin’s mind, even if he’s being convinced to do something that is to someone else’s advantage.
I’m only half joking here.
@Bill Burris, #5:
Actually I did listen to them, very closely.
Dreadnought
HI,
YOU PUT YOUR FINGER ON THE PROBLEM,
I believe that they stall too much on the answer to a bully,
they are so many in the government now and they act slower
than previous government ever did with less government employees,
all unionize and only doing their day in their own time, and if you ask them for a task
which is outside their regular job, they will tell you it’s not my job, I can”t do it,
it”s someone else job, OR they will say: we don”t do that, it”s not our job,
SO you have to go find who will do it, and time goes by< imagine an emergency
in those conditions,
IT show by the reaction to UKRAINE, I took forever to see it,
don"t they get in readyness of how to react under a demand for a reaction now on the dot,
we never see it< look at other dramatic event ending with death of AMERICANS, no emergency
reaction, and it was needed now, i think they have to make a scenario and study it,
no word from their guts< only words learned,
that”s one big failure to be never ready for everything,
that”s part of his job, which he is miserably failing,
AND PEOPLE DIED
BYE
@Bill Burris #9:
Obama weak? I will stipulate that he isn’t the leader that he SOUNDED like in that speech way back when – you know, the one that woke up the Democrats? But it is America that is weak at this point. We lowered trade barriers and subsequently exported our manufacturing might to China (and elsewhere) and then we simultaneously launched an expensive war-and-nation-building exercise at the same time that we cut taxes for EVERYONE, insuring our future bankruptcy. Well, here we are now, left with no cash and a bad case of political paralysis. In light of this, exactly how strong a president do you think Putin would be wary of? I suppose that if Toronto’s crack-head mayor was our president, Putin might worry that ANYTHING could happen, but we aren’t that… lucky? In “Flopping-Aces” poker lingo, the Ukraine isn’t worth an “all-in” bet.