But the “lag” should make at least intuitive sense to anyone. You can see it in the stimulus package, 830 billion dollars. Most will say it was dubious but even if it wasn’t, there was a long lag.

I understand ER’s point about there being “two economies”

To Mcfly, I didn’t think it was necessary to go to the source to vet his numbers.

Economics is a science which hasn’t even a passing familiarity with the concept of precision, which fills the gaps in its absurdly simplified models with heaping helpings of subjectivity.

Having said that, some great ideas have come from economists. But if you get a bunch of really smart people and tell them to contemplate their feet, you’ll also get some great ideas.

Its purpose is ideological, not scientific.

I’d rather spend my time listening to my Spirit albums.

Spirit
The Family That Plays Together
Clear
The Twelve Dreams of Dr Sardonicus

Ask yourself why there’s such little agreement amongst economists. How could that be the case in what is supposedly a quantitative field? What would change if 50% of economic analysis were replaced with the reading of tea leaves?

Edit: my point, which I’ve probably left too abstract: cherry picking your economics is fine, everyone does it. But it’s kind of like saying that your favorite band is better than all the rest.

C’mon Rob. There are two economies. One for those who are doing well, and one for those who are not. Unfortunately, those who are doing well are in a much better position to affect the economy the way they want than the other. And if they can’t change things for their benefit by their economic behavior, they use their economic clout to influence them politically.

There are variations, exceptions and a lot of overlap, but in general, Republicans want an economy that favors owners rather than workers. They have managed to convince themselves that if they are doing better, then everyone must be doing better. They want lower taxes (especially for owners), lower regulations, less unions and lower worker salaries and benefits. They want a little bit of unemployment because it makes workers more docile, and a bit of inflation because it makes yesterday’s loans easier to pay off in today’s dollars. Anything that makes their enterprises more profitable is desirable because they will IMMEDIATELY plow those higher profits into more jobs. Yeah, right.

There’s no mystery about this, people tend to want what is good for them, not for everybody. But they have a tendency to believe what is good for them must therefore be good for everyone else too. Its just human nature.

Sure, if these policies are in place, they (the well off) are better off. And when you are better off, its easy to convince yourself everybody is better off.

The Cuban Missile crisis. The consensus of his advisors was to attack Cuba. Had Nixon been in office, with his “hard on communism” reputation he would have taken the advice of his folks. Result would have been millions upon millions of people dead. As it was, Kennedy got the missiles out at a minimal cost. Thank God.

The economy inherited by Clinton was tanking fast. I remember that. Clent left Bush the Second a trillion dollar surplus. Buth squandered it, and left Obama with a seriously tanking mess, so bad it even scared Bush. And Obama is leaving an economy which seems to be in good shape.

Now one can get fancy, and obfuscate, drag in things not mentioned, and confuse matters in the finest tradition of conservatives on the HZ. I’m related instances I remember in plain, simple English.

Thank God for Democrats protecting us from Conservative ineptitude. “If your child can speak at all, thank a Democrat.” “If your child doesn’t glow in the dark thank a Democrat.” “If YOU can read this, thank a Democrat!”

Or if you like broke, homeless, radiation sickness and no health care, vote Republican. It really is that simple.

“If you buy the 1-year-lag theory, something even more interesting pops out of the data. In looking at the trend over the last year of each term (the right-most column in the previous table), we see that every time an administration changed from Democrat to Republican, the trend was negative. That is, the Democrat left a decelerating economy for the Republican. Every single time: Truman to Eisenhower, LBJ to Nixon, Carter to Reagan, and Clinton to Bush 43.

Conversely, every time an administration changed from Republican to Democrat, the trend was positive. That is, the Republican left an accelerating economy for the Democrat. Every single time: Eisenhower to JFK, Ford to Carter, and Bush 41 to Clinton.”

Of course the cycle was reversed for Obama

Article here….