Was George W Bush a good president?

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They are all in context, and I would be happy to present my sources. The main point to some of the graphs were to show a raise in price, while others were the show a change in Value.

The first graph was to show the money supply, so you would see just how much we are printing. The second was to show you rising costs (real dollars) in one of the very basic factors in food costs, Farm food packaging (The CBO tells us that price of food is closely related to the initial cost of that food’s ingredients(Graph 2), the energy to create the food(Graph 4 real dollars), and the fuel to transport the product to market(Graph 5 real dollars). Americans spend on average 12.5% of their budgets on food each year (Thats the Bureau of Labor Statistics) and food prices went up 5.9% (Thats the Consumer Price Index)

Graph 3 was to show that the value of wages (Purchasing power) went down. And Graphs 4 and 5 show the actual price of Energy and Gasoline in dollars.

So I do not see where my logic was flawed or deceptive. The only graph that was adjusted for inflation was wages. The value of their wages went down, meanwhile costs went up in 'real dollars'.

The whole point of the post was to illustrate the negative effect of inflation on the poor. Wages lagging behind price increases on the necessities of their livelihood.



If you can not invest more than a complaint and backhanded comment on my integrity on a post that I invested my time in crafting, rather than genuinely asking me to elaborate more to address your concerns; then you have already withdrawn from the argument. I am disappointed as I feel I wasted my time.

But mixing and matching those, without any clarification as to which is which, leads to an extremely misleading impression.


OK, but it still seems out of context. You look at the graph and initially it appears that we have a massive expansion of the money supply, but once you factor in the growth of the economy, the growth in the money supply doesn't seem so outrageous. Our economy has grown, so obviously the money supply needs to expand to accommodate that.


So it was real dollars in that graph? As far as food goes, malnutrition is less common in America today than it used to be. It probably is at the lowest level it has ever been in any human society. As long as we don't have people starving in the streets, the cost of food is not terribly interesting to me. I also don't really see what that has to do with inflation being bad for the poor.


Nope, that's the inflation-adjusted minimum wage. Very few people actually get paid minimum wage. A better graph would be to show would be the real value of the median income over a similar time span, although this would still not be a complete picture. The very poor receive government aid in obtaining food, shelter, and healthcare, so the poor are doing relatively better than they used to.


Graph 5 is in nominal dollars, over a short timespan, and appears to stop at the peak without showing the subsequent drop in gas prices. And referencing Obama administration policy in reference to that graph was blatantly inappropriate, as it only included data from before he took office. (I'm not a fan of Obama's energy policy, by the way, but fair is fair)


I hope I've explained at least some of my objections.


But you showed one in inflation-adjusted dollars and the other in nominal dollars. That makes the situation look much worse than it actually is.


Well, there is an increasing movement in several states to index the minimum wage to inflation (many states set their own minimum wage above the federal level) and this resolves the only serious objection you've managed to make. But still, most people aren't making minimum wage so it's largely a moot point.

If you could show that the real (inflation-adjusted) median wage was declining relative to the real (inflation-adjusted) cost of living, you might almost have a case. But then you would have to demonstrate that the relative decline in purchasing power was actually due to inflation, which would be very hard to convincingly argue. The only method I can think of to test such a hypothesis would be to compare median wage vs cost of living over the past century for several dozen different countries, and see if there is any correlation between the change in relative purchasing power and the average rate of inflation. That would require a lot of very tedious data analysis, and still would not likely give you a very confident answer because there are so many confounding variables; conditions may be different in one country than in another, governmental policy might be different and have significant effects, the "cost of living" might well be different if two countries have different lifestyles, etc ad nauseam.

So really, trying to make an empirical argument here is going to be extremely difficult and is unlikely to get reliable results anyways. It would be better to stick to theoretical arguments. My null hypothesis is that poor people are more likely to be debtors than savers/investors, and inflation benefits debtors at the expense of savers and investors. Thus, inflationary monetary policy is more likely to benefit the poor than to hurt them.

Bad, bad to the bone and a ruthless one at that.

Guess I could give him some credit for his hillarious neologisms and quotes:

"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."

"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

"I've heard the call. I believe God wants me to run for President."

"This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while."



What boggles me is how a man like that not only gets elected once but twice into office....

Bad, bad to the bone and a ruthless one at that.
quote]


"ruthless"?

The G. W. Bush administration was far from the best but it was not the worst. The Carter administration was an economic disaster by comparison. The legacy of L.B.J. still persists. And far above all, the ghost of the New Deal still haunts us. FDR let out the American fascist genii out of the bottle (it was always there, from the day the Republic was founded).

ruveyn

Well, I think he was average. But he did get us into a useless war that still goes on today, make a lot of unconstitutional laws, and so forth. Obama's presidency is nothing more than a continuation of the Bush administration, if not worse.

So, donate all of your social security checks to the fascist cause of your choice. And, refuse your medicare. Just die in the street somewhere when the time comes.

Like Buchanan, Bush left the country in shambles, and did everything possible to wreck the country.

Much to the chagrin of the South, Buchanan's successor freed their slaves. And, again, much to the chagrin of the South, Bush's successor launched health care reform.

Abraham Lincoln = freed the slaves

Barack Obama = mandated people to buy "private" health insurance or face fines/jail time

lolwut

And both measures really pissed off a lot of white people.

He said h was going to hange the education system and help improve it. He did.....in Iraq. He should have just gone after Bin Laden and left Iraq alone.

Was Bush a good President? Hmm, I don't know - was Lucifer a good angel?

No. But he had one redeeming quality. I felt safer under his watch than I do now.

While I didn't agree with Bush on everything, I believe it remains to be seen how history ultimately views him. It does seem like he'll be remembered more fondly than his immediate successor, however.

Reminds me of D.W. Griffith's greatest fear in the movie Birth of a Nation. He was especially afraid of the mulattoes taking the role of leadership in America.

Interesting. I'll need to watch that film.

Griffith disliked Jews also.

ruveyn

Well, 100 years ago, who didn't like Jews and Mulattoes?

Yes, the film is definitely worth a watch. It is over 3 hours long. Very fascinating. It gives a Southern perspective on the Civil War and reconstruction.

Did Mr. Griffith also make a film about Jews?