All told, growth under Obama averaged less than 1.5 percent annually. Analysts have called into question just how much a particular president actually impacts the economy during his tenure. But even though the labor market surged under the Obama administration, GDP numbers stubbornly held back.
https://www.usnews.com/news/article...9-percent-in-obama-administrations-final-days
Let's break this down. During Obama's first two years, he did have majorities in Congress but he was partially hemmed in by unified GOP opposition, conservative Democrats and a business and political elite enthralled to manufactured hysteria over "THE DEBT!!!". All this was happening in the midst of a economic depression brought about by previous administrations and congresses.
Given those limitations, Barack Obama did stop the free fall for jobs and GDP with the stimulus, he limited the worst behavior of Wall Street with the CFBP and he got us more expansive healthcare. All three of those could have been better and Obama bears some blame but other power brokers deserve most of the blame. Despite all those issues, Barack Obama's first two years were a net positive for the average person, when one considers the myriad obstacles that he faced.
The final six years all looked about the same economically and politically. Obama was in the White House, GOP controlled one both houses of Congress. The GOP did as much as they could to sabotage the economy, the Fed printed tons of money and we chugged along at 2.0 or so GDP growth. net job creation expanded, wages stagnated.
You're right that GDP never grow at over 3% but you're missing the bigger picture and that is the fact that our economy's rules and its structure, shaped over four decades, insures that few people outside of the top 10% will do well if GDP is under 3% and usually GDP has to hit 4% for non stock owning, non managerial workers to get a "taste." The problem is that in order to get to 4% growth in the US economy, with is an advanced economy, one usually needs to inflate some enormous bubble in financial markets and that leads to recession and workers losing whatever modest gains that they enjoyed during a brief, speculative driven boom.
If the rules of our economy did not empower finance so much and if our rules empowered workers, sustained 2% growth and job creation would have resulted in growing real wages for workers.
Let's get down to brass taxes here. You felt left out and I don't blame you. It was appalling to see Obama administration officials declare a recover and then an economic boom when the vast majority of workers enjoyed little to no wage increases and many workers found themselves working in more precarious jobs with fewer benefits then they worked in 10 or 20 years ago. I share your outrage but I am just bewildered as to why to focus on something and not other, more fundamental things.
oh yeah? what happened to them shove ready jobs again?
most economics concede that most of da stimulus didn't go anywhere but to bail out banks & special interest that didn't learn their lesson in da first place.
Two quick things on that and one longer point:
One, I will concede that too Democrats have a white collar, professional class bias. (All Republicans have that same bias well but they conceal it by pretending to be working class when they are in public). Barack Obama should have declared States with high unemployment to be in a State of emergency and he should have leaned on governors to invoke emergency clauses in their state constitutions and ease environmental restrictions and expedite building permits.
It amazes me how after the 1994 earthquake, when bridges and freeways were down and rich people in West LA were inconvenienced, man oh man, did the red tape vanish until the infrastructure that served Bel Air, Santa Monica and Malibu was made whole again. The 2008-2009 recession should have been treated like an Earthquake or a massive Hurricane and if the Democratic Party (and the Republican party) actually cared about blue collar workers, as much as they claimed, we would have had lots of shovel ready jobs.
Two, the stimulus was under powered. While 900 billion sounds like a lot, it was charged with rescuing a 14 trillion dollar economy that was in free fall. At the time, people like Paul Krugman were saying that the stimulus needs to be double. It was under powered, many people lost their jobs and homes and it happened that way because the sort of people for whom you vote, wanted it to happen that way.
Third and finally, you should blame the bond market vigilantes for so much of the stimulus going to simply plug holes in State and local budgets. You have to keep in mind that bigwigs in finance, deliberately conspire against governments that take on sustainable debt to finance fiscal stimulus. A perfect, rational market would price States issues bonds in such way that their interest would be low so long as that State took on a reasonable amount of debt. A rational bond market would know that State revenues fluctuate a great deal and that when the economy contracts, States revenues shrink a great deal and that in more robust years their revenues grow a great deal. A rational bond market would allow States, to take on some debt during lean years in order to stabilize their budgets and to push some fiscal stimulus. a rational bond market would know that those States can pay back those bonds during good economic times and therefore, the bonds should be issues at very low interest rates.
Sadly, the bond market is not very rational, the bond market is rigged. What happens is that even most and easily repayable debt on the part of States, causes the bond market's leaders to conspire to purchase that debt at very high interest rates. In the short run, it helps the finance guys make extra money. In the long run it disciplines States and their citizens into a State of permanent austerity. Due to an artificial lack of access to low interest loans.
Due to its size, ability to print money and its status as holding the world's reserve currency, the bond market's leaders cannot punish the Federal Government of the United States. So I have no problem with Obama giving a bunch of Federal money to States and cities that have been besieged by bond market vigilantes. Maybe if States had more flexibility, they could have created their own stimulus programs in 2009 and 2010 and the feds could have been free to fund projects that could have stopped mass unemployment from ever happening.
