JohnStOnge wrote:UNI88 wrote:
Absolutely.
No matter how much JSO wants to boil it down to simple statistics, the economy is complicated and impacted by a yuge number of short and long-term factors - oil and gas production being bigly.
Can you make a legitimate argument that Trump has just continued the positive Obama economy? Yes.
Can you make an argument that it's a major accomplishment for Trump that the economy has maintained its positive trend despite the headwinds? Yes.
Can you say that some of the headwinds were self inflicted? Yes, tariffs being a prime example.
Whether by design or dumb-luck, the economy has continued to steam ahead under Trump.
The statistics tell us what the bottom line is. The situation. Cause and effect leading to the situation is a different question. I have for years taken the position that it's a mistake to vote based on the economy because it's a very complex situation with a multitude of factors. I've argued that one can't say there's a direct cause and effect between who is President and what the economy is doing.
My position is not to try to argue cause and effect. It is simply to counter the argument that the economy is good because of Trump. It was good before Trump. Before one can even speculate about cause and effect one has to be able to show something "significant" happened. And nothing "significant" has happened. Again: If someone woke up from a Rip Van Winkle nap and looked at graphs showing trends in all the economic indicators people look at over the past 10 or 20 years they would not see anything to indicate a significant change in the way the economy was going around the end of 2016 or the beginning of 2017. They'd see that something significant happened around 2008 and 2009 and that the economy has been in recovery since then.
I'm not the one arguing cause and effect. The people who are claiming there was some kind of turnaround or change caused by Trump are doing that.
And again, NO ONE here is arguing there was a turnaround. We’ve acknowledged numerous times it’s a continuation. You keep wanting to have that straw man argument when literally no one here is saying that.
What you fail to understand or refuse to acknowledge is that Trump has improved on virtually ALL of Obama’s numbers despite 9 rate increases by the Fed (Obama faced ZERO increases), despite the Fed unwinding their $4T balance sheet (as opposed to Obama enjoying precisely the opposite in QE2 and QE3), and that he’s taken economic numbers to places not seen in decades. Breaking 50, 60, 70, 80 year old records. Setting ALL TIME HIGHS in a number of indices.
Just say it John...admit it. You won’t explode. You won’t go to hell. I mean Christ, for me it’s the only thing that makes Trump tolerable.
"Ah fuck. You are right." KYJelly, 11/6/12
"The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam." Barack Obama, 9/25/12