David Leonhardt: “A president has only limited control over the economy. And yet there has been a stark pattern in the United States for nearly a century. The economy has grown significantly faster under Democratic presidents than Republican ones.” “It’s true about almost any major indicator: gross domestic product, employment, incomes, productivity, even stock prices. It’s true if you examine only the precise period when a president is in office, or instead assume that a president’s policies affect the economy only after a lag and don’t start his economic clock until months after he takes office.”
The economies after Bush and Trump left office say otherwise.Its the worst 2 economies in the last 90 years.
It’s obvious democrat presidents perform better when compared to republican presidents if for no other reason than Republican presidencies tend to end in disaster. What’s interesting to me is when you look back historically the make up of congress doesn’t impact presidential performance. My hypothesis is that the executive branch has become much too powerful. For example, we just saw a president be able to reallocate money congress authorized for the military to be spent on border security. When you think about how presidents can govern via executive order rather than execute as legislated by congress things like shoddy oversight on financial regulation and disease prevention becomes much more clear, which in turn will inevitably lead to disaster. The failure of the electoral system is also another interesting tidbit. Republican voters either have a short term memory issue or are in denial because it’s almost impossible to insulate yourself from the nationwide disasters republican presidents bring about. I see this as akin to domestic violence. People wonder how the spouse of an abuser could stay with the abuser but how can Republican voters stay with Republican presidents? There has to be a psychology to this.
U.S. economic performance and the stock market has very little to do with solely the President in office. The market (and the economy) in the U.S. perform best when different parties hold the Presidency and chambers of Congress. The market performs best when there is "deadlock" with opposing parties and a single party does not control the Presidency, House, and Senate. "Deadlock" normally means that no significant regulatory changes will be coming out of the government -- and the market & economy can operate under the existing known government policies. This stability is greatly desired by companies and Wall Street -- and leads to superior economic performance.
brb, start middle east war because daddy issues, brb botch pandemic response because anti-intellectual. But nah, presidents have little to do w/the economy.
So, 1. Remove the stock market from the discussion because it doesn’t represent the economic condition of the average American (democrats still do better) 2. Businesses are a conduit to the market, the market is made up of consumers. Business performance on whole is much more dependent on the heath of the consumer than the regulatory and tax environment (Prove me wrong!). My point is I think you’re looking at this all wrong. The majority of focus should be on the consumer, not businesses. From my own experience, I spent way more hours and days chasing customers than fretting over tax rates and regulations.