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We try hard to remain fair and balanced, to borrow a phrase, here at the _floss. That can be tough for a ragin’ liberal like myself, so generally my strategy is to just forget politics and blog about cats instead. (It’s tough to politicize cats — unless you’re a die-hard cat-hating dog person.) But I ran across something so interesting the other day — and so seemingly factual, that I felt we could have a civil discussion about it here without ragin’ partisanship of any kind muddying the waters. It was an article in the New York Times which pointed to a new study and a new book which tracked various indicators of U.S. economic growth since 1948 under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and looked at the numbers. And very interesting numbers they are!
Here’s the meat of it: since 1948, the Dems have held the White House for 26 years and the ‘pubs for 34, and during that time the country experienced “average annual growth of real gross national product of 1.64 percent per capita under Republican presidents versus 2.78 percent under Democrats.” Now, most economists are quick to point out that a president’s fiscal policy has only limited effect on the economy; despite all the bluster from both sides right now about what should be done about our sagging markets/wages/etc, there’s really only so much the Oval Officeholder can do. But the numbers are so striking, and the historical gap in economic performance between the two parties so significant, that it deserves examination.
Gross national product isn’t the only indicator where the differences are pronounced. Income inequality also tends to fare differently under leaders of different persuasions: “Over the last 60 years, income inequality trended substantially upward under Republican presidents but slightly downward under Democrats, thus accounting for the widening income gaps over all.” At left is a little table illustrating the different strata of income growth under both kinds of administrations: and if you give credence to the numbers, the growth gap between rich and poor would seem to have rather a lot to do with who’s in the White House. (It’s one of those things, I suppose, which isn’t a huge surprise in theory — but to see such stark numbers supporting it is.)
Yet another Times piece (this one an op-ed) describes what author Dalton Conley calls “economic red shift” amongst the wealthy during times of great income inequality — and the result is that, though the rich get richer, the pronounced inequality seems to mean that they don’t get any happier. “Like the shift in the light spectrum caused by the galaxies rushing away, those Americans who are in the top half of the income distribution experience a sensation that, while they may be pulling away from the bottom half, they are also being left further and further behind by those just above them.” So, he argues, the income gap is alienating to everybody, not just those on the bottom end of the spectrum.
And since inequality rises exponentially the higher you climb the economic ladder, the better off you are in absolute terms, the more relatively deprived you may feel. In fact, a poll of New Yorkers found that those who earned more than $200,000 a year were the most likely of any income group to agree that “seeing other people with money” makes them feel poor.
So if we follow that logic, the income gap not only has negative ramifications economically, for those on the lowest rungs of the ladder, but psychologically, for those on the top.
Picture of crazy ladder by Flickr user flowercat.
Those poor rich people….
posted by Zach on 9-3-2008 at 10:42 am
Hmm… it’s kind of hard to assume that Democrats are much better for the economy than Republicans are. Maybe the economic growth has nothing to do with sound monetary policies and more to do with the “spend, spend, spend” mentality of the Dems. Of course, you could point out Bush’s current budget deficit, but one of the GOP’s principles is small government. (So, he’s not a true Republican. He’s just a tool in general.)
posted by kevin on 9-3-2008 at 10:55 am
The rebuttal would be that it takes about five to ten years for the policies enacted in one administration to actually change society as a whole. Some actions may create a (relatively) immediate change but most rearrange society and take years to play out.
Example: the current housing crisis is an outgrowth of questionable policies during the Clinton administration. Loose credit and flexible lending rules came out of an era where there was an altruistic motive to increase home-ownership. People’s net wealth looked like it was soaring in the late 90’s because their houses were rocketing in value. This in turn encouraged creative financing for houses that were otherwise out of people’s price range. What we’re seeing now is the result of that overextension being brought back in… giving people more money to play with didn’t necessarily make them more responsible.
I really hope this kind of post doesn’t become a trend over the next two months. Everyone is entitled to their opinions and beliefs but interpreting the facts can get quite messy. Mental_Floss has always been a good site because it engendered interesting, educated debate… unfortunately, online political debate is almost always ugly.
reCaptcha: Of nothing
posted by Tom on 9-3-2008 at 10:57 am
absolutely fascinating! i’m happy to see it here.
posted by David K. Israel on 9-3-2008 at 11:05 am
I am a Republican from Texas who has a dog and dislikes cats.
Can we still be friends?
posted by Witty Nickname on 9-3-2008 at 11:13 am
I too hope this post doesn’t become a trend for mentalfloss. I have greatly enjoyed the articles in the magazine on big election issues such as healthcare and immigration over the past years. These however present facts and arguments from both sides, giving readers a better grasp of the issue as well as an understanding of both sides of the argument. Numerous statistics were also always presented, as statistics are highly susceptible to interpretation and manipulation. This post takes one statistic that few economists can agree on. They cannot agree on whether it is even the best indicator, let alone how presidential policy affects it. Please keep the blog to information and unbiased viewpoints. With the looming election, I think that political topics could be appropriate, but please keep the spirit closer to that found in the magazine’s great articles.
posted by Annie on 9-3-2008 at 11:19 am
Numerical data is almost always the most infuriating; words can be skewed and rearranged and misinterpreted, but numbers are pretty straightforward. One could argue that, as Tom said, the numbers follow a delay for policy change and enactment and whatnot, but as a fellow “ragin’ liberal,” I think this is fascinating.
I agree that political topics can get thorny (quickly, as we accidentally discovered here in the office… oops), but I think that just presenting them without arguing a point is very flossy. : )
Also fascinating, rC: sound monuments
posted by adrienne on 9-3-2008 at 11:21 am
Very nice analysis, however I think “correlation is not causation” may apply heavily in this case.
posted by Andrew on 9-3-2008 at 11:34 am
Lies, damn lies, and statistics…
posted by Trey on 9-3-2008 at 11:35 am
RE: Adrienne
“words can be skewed and rearranged and misinterpreted, but numbers are pretty straightforward”
If you ever take economics 101, you learn that this is precisely what economists do with numbers. Two economists can take the same set of numbers and manipulate them in a way that has completely opposite interpretation. I generally take any numbers that have been prepared by a historically non-biased organization as bogus.
posted by SDK on 9-3-2008 at 11:40 am
@ SDK
Point noted. As a person who thinks less about numbers and more about words, I’m definitely not an expert in anything number-related. And I’m in dread of Econ-1113. lol
posted by adrienne on 9-3-2008 at 11:46 am
I think we’d learn more by comparing more statistics - perhaps factoring in the dominant political parties of Congress — does having the executive and legislative branches of government be from the same party have an effect on the economy, I wonder?
posted by Steph Mineart on 9-3-2008 at 11:58 am
@Tom: Yes that is another point that I forgot to bring up. The reason I decided not to was because the statistics say nothing about periods where the same party holds the white house in succeeding elections, with a different president, of course.
posted by kevin on 9-3-2008 at 11:59 am
Thank you Andrew, I was going to post the same quote. How do we know it isn’t the case that the economic times dictate the president?
Is it possible that the economy is cyclical and that when times are good, people lean towards candidates preaching lower taxes, business growth, and individual fiscal responsibility (typically republican). And when times are bad, people lean towards candidates preaching entitlements, higher taxes on the wealthy, and government-run programs (typically democrat). If this were the case, this trend could be seen as reactionary where the candidates are voted in based on the prior economic season, and are in office while the next economic season inevitably comes around.
I could be wrong, but the point is that statistics never come close to telling the whole story.
I would also add that I was dissapointed to see this article on this site. If this is what this site is going to turn into, I will probably visit less frequently.
posted by Dave A. on 9-3-2008 at 12:08 pm
A lot of good points have been made that really criple the usefulness of this data.
First, the author correctly pointed out that the president isn’t entirely responsible for economic growth rate. The parts not controlled by the president are influenced by a lot of factors like the policies of the head of the Federal reserve, congress, and of course a lot of noise in the data. Many, Many one time events that were not under the control of anyone in government have occured over the past 50 years. But if we wish to “blame” a given political party we should also examine who the majority party in congress is too at these times.
Secondly, another poster hit the nail on the head saying that coorialation isn’t causation. I have seen no evidence here that choosing a democratic/republican president will have any impact at all on the growth rate of the economy good or bad.
Thirdly, a different poster was dead on about time delays. The health of the economy in a new presidents first year in office probably has more to do with the last president, just because policy takes time to actually effect the growth of the economy. Lots of other things have much larger delays. Like bubbles. Housing bubbles, credit bubbles, stock market bubbles. Oh, and don’t forget wars. Debt is a huge one too. Debt is a big one too. Bushes recent tax rebate helpped the economy tremendiously, but that debt is going to get passed off to the next guy to deal with, and if the economy drops because the next guy does the responsible thing and pays it off, he will get blamed, and his numbers in this study will show poorly. While no administration can clean their hands of bubbles, wars, or economic downturn in their administration, all of these events are generally brewing or “in the works” for long before the inaguration.
Finally, my own point, is that we are looking at averages over the 57 year period. Averages can be extremely deceptive. Here they are especially decieving because it isn’t giving us a good idea of what happened over those 50 years. If you examine the underlying data, you would no doubt see that most presidents were able to keep a reasonable amount of steady growth around 3% for most of their term, except those times when there have been large crashes where no growth or negative growth is experienced. More of these crashes have happened under republican presidents, so that is what is causing a lower average and not a “generally poorer performance” as someone might guess from the average. And going back to point 3, you can hardly rest all of the blame on the current administration, and going back to point one, even the amount of blame on the current administration can hardly be placed on the president’s party.
Interesting approach though. The article is an interesting read and does follow along side many of the things I’ve read about income disparity lately. The problem is these studies can be extremely and easily manipulated if desired by the authors… for example, why start in 1948? (well WWII obviously… but we’ve had many wars since that have impacted the economy in various ways giving the president of the time credit/blame for the events). Just one of many decisions the author gets to make that can extemely affect the outcome, especially if the author chooses them to be intentionally so to make his point more interesting… could you imagine doing all that work just to show democrates and republicans are the same? how boring.
posted by Dan on 9-3-2008 at 12:28 pm
Ah the American way… if you don’t like something someone says/posts you threaten to never listen/visit someone/someplace again. That adds substance to a debate.
The author put his disclaimers at the beginning and let it be known. If you still read and got offended instead of trying to add some insiteful words to the comments, that’s your fault. He wanted civilized debate not ‘I’ll take my toys and go home’.
I would like to see these same statistics for Congress and the President instead of just the President. Both have influence in this I believe.
Either way, I think we as Americans need to realize that we’ll never see eye to eye on just about everything. Instead we should work on agreeing on the things that are best for the majority of Americans. One of the most telling facts about these statistics is that our GNP goes up when both parties are in office. That’s something that no one else in the world can really claim. We have it pretty d@mn good.
Since it won’t let me post links, there is also a very similar story with the current candidates snd taxes on a website entitled 20somethingfinance. Look it up since ya can’t post links on here.
posted by Q on 9-3-2008 at 12:37 pm
Ah the American way… if you don’t like something someone says/posts you threaten to never listen/visit someone/someplace again. That adds substance to a debate.
The author put his disclaimers at the beginning and let it be known. If you still read and got offended instead of trying to add some insiteful words to the comments, that’s your fault. He wanted civilized debate not ‘I’ll take my toys and go home’.
I would like to see these same statistics for Congress and the President instead of just the President. Both have influence in this I believe.
Either way, I think we as Americans need to realize that we’ll never see eye to eye on just about everything. Instead we should work on agreeing on the things that are best for the majority of Americans. One of the most telling facts about these statistics is that our GNP goes up when both parties are in office. That’s something that no one else in the world can really claim. We have it pretty dang good.
Since it won’t let me post links, there is also a very similar story with the current candidates and taxes on a website entitled 20somethingfinance. Look it up since ya can’t post links on here.
posted by Q on 9-3-2008 at 12:44 pm
@ kevin -
interesting how impressions of “dems” and “reps” is so different from reality. Looking at the last 3 “rep” presidents (since ‘80), they all enlarged government, expanded the gap between rich and poor and spent us into a budget deficit. When did we have a budget surplus and growing middle class? Under the “dem” president Clinton.
posted by GizmodoDragon on 9-3-2008 at 2:02 pm
For the most part, I’m pretty impressed by the quality of debate here. Nothing really popped out as being horribly escalated. It’s nice to “listen” in on a debate that’s not just a “my party is better than your party just because it’s my party” argument.
posted by Lori on 9-3-2008 at 3:33 pm
Unfortunately, I predict it will escalate. And if not this time, it will likely escalate the next.
Add me to the group that hopes Mental Floss stays far away from political posts of this sort.
reCAPTCHA: and funked
posted by Karen on 9-3-2008 at 6:52 pm
Is the income data net or gross? It doesn’t say. And if it is gross, but a Democrat taxes more (I’m not saying that this is statistically true, but according to their philosophies, it may be), then net income could still be down.
posted by Bill on 9-3-2008 at 11:00 pm
These days ‘conservatives’ are radicals and ‘liberals’ are conservative. As both parties move further and further to the political right all I can say is: Open the field to 3rd parties, end the 2 party political monopoly that is slowly destroying the country.
posted by BassMan on 9-4-2008 at 8:54 am