Those in the Tea Party Movement claim to oppose Barack Obama and the Democrats out of an opposition to the rising deficit. If they were really consistent in their views they would be backing the Democrats over the Republicans who are actually responsible for the deficit. Here’s a chart to make this simple for them:
Another comparison of spending under recent presidents was posted here.
They fall for Republican claims that Obama is responsible for record deficits due to the stimulus spending but most of the deficit came from George Bush, not Obama’s stimulus plan. Here is a pie chart breaking this down:
We are also seeing benefits from the stimulus spending, such as the news today that the GNP rose by 5.7 percent–the highest increase since 2003. While this might be exaggerated by a bounce from companies replacing inventory, this remains a sign of greater confidence in the economy. Christina Romer, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers explained:
This inventory bounce, though likely to be transitory, is a normal part of healthy recoveries. As firms’ confidence in the future increases, their desire to run down inventories wanes. This change in behavior is often a powerful force for growth early in a recovery. Other components of GDP also rose strongly: business investment in equipment and software rose at an annual rate of 13 percent and residential investment rose at a 6 percent rate. And consumer spending rose at a rate of 2 percent. This broad-based rise in GDP was surely fueled in part by the tax cuts and investment spending in the Recovery Act and other rescue actions, but some appears to be the result of private sector demand returning.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson believes that if not for the stimulus unemployment could have hit 25 percent. Those who are angry about lack of jobs and the size of the deficit are definitely channeling their rage against the wrong source.
#liberal Tea Party Members Upset About Deficit And Unemployment Are Blaming The Wrong Party http://url4.eu/1GVPo
#liberal Tea Party Members Upset About Deficit And Unemployment Are Blaming The Wrong Party http://url4.eu/1GVPo
» Tea Party Members Upset About Deficit And Unemployment Are … http://bit.ly/dnPFK1
Unemployment, both in the U.S. and the world as a whole, marches ever higher because the field of economics doesn’t account for the relationship between population density and per capita consumption.
Following the beating the field of economics took over the seeming failure of Malthus’ theory about overpopulation, economists adamantly refuse to ever again consider the effects of population growth. If they did, they might come to understand that once an optimum population density is breached, further over-crowding begins to erode per capita consumption and, consequently, per capita employment.
And these effects of an excessive population density are actually imported when a nation like the U.S. attempts to trade freely with other nations much more densely populated – nations like China, Japan, Germany, Korea and a host of others. The result is an automatic trade deficit and loss of jobs – tantamount to economic suicide.
Using 2006 data, an in-depth analysis reveals that, of our top twenty per capita trade deficits in manufactured goods (the trade deficit divided by the population of the country in question), eighteen are with nations much more densely populated than our own. Even more revealing, if the nations of the world are divided equally around the median population density, the U.S. had a trade surplus in manufactured goods of $17 billion with the half of nations below the median population density. With the half above the median, we had a $480 billion deficit!
If you‘re interested in learning more about this important new economic theory, then I invite you to visit my web site at http://PeteMurphy.wordpress.com.
Pete Murphy
Author, “Five Short Blasts”