Here's a comparison of GDP growth under Presidents Trump and Biden. I have deleted the last three quarters of 2020 since Trump can't be held responsible for the pandemic.
Nobody ever shows this comparison. Is that fair? Why or why not?
23 thoughts on “Chart of the day: Economic growth under Trump and Biden”
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not directly comparable if biden's numbers get bumped through deficit spending but of course biden also inherited pandemic issues so not sure how you arrive at a completely fair comparison between the two
Biden has brought the deficit down. It’s delta_deficit that affects GDP growth (delta_GDP), so this factor is working against him.
Regardless Kevin’s numbers don’t appear inflation adjusted, which is odd for him.
Also note that the first principle effect of deficit spending is as follows: money borrowed from domestic sources has no impact on GDP (private spending goes down as public goes up), but money borrowed from foreign sources goes straight to GDP (public spending up, no offset). In practice these are about even, so an additional dollar in deficit spending boosts GDP by about 50 cents at first approximation.
Assuming it was going somewhere, which is a bad assumption. During the pandemic the additional domestic monies just chased stocks, creating a bubble, they didn't produce meaningful investment.
It’s counted as part of GDP even if it’s for digging holes and filling them in the next day.
My life was good when trump was president and it’s still good. It was also good before trump… going back to president Johnson. So really, it doesn’t matter who is president.
No one can destroy the economy like the Republicans. It has happened several times, including in recent memory. The fact this isn't generally known or acknowledged is both astonishing and the greatest failure of journalism in our time.
For gosh sakes, the post internet media lives on making people scared of things. Here's a great opportunity: make people frightened out of their wits about what Republicans do to the economy. Guaranteed stardom and riches.
It cannot be repeated enough:
Reagan: recession
HW Bush: recession
W Bush: recession
Trump: recession
Clinton: no recession
Obama: no recession
Biden: no recession
(This isn’t coincidence. The donor class loves recessions, because that’s when they get to scoop up middle class assets at fire sale prices.)
Neither president should be held responsible for GDP growth since it depends on many factors not under the control of US presidents. But for some reason pundits and uninformed voters do so anyway, so if you're going to do it then count all the data, not just cherry-picked snippets.
What other data?
GDP growth during the pandemic.
The CDC says the start of the pandemic I was January 2020: https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html#:~:text=January%2020%2C%202020,respond%20to%20the%20emerging%20outbreak.
I suspect you need to ignore 2020 in its entirety.
And it isn’t entirely clear the effects of the pandemic and response to same were contained to 2020. An argument could be made that 2021 should be omitted as well.
I remember the start of the pandemic. It wasn’t January. I made my last business trip the first week of March, from ground zero of the pandemic (Seattle) to a red state. I felt nervous and begged off shaking anyone’s hands. (My hosts thought I was being silly.) The rest of the country didn’t slow down anything until the NBA got involved. That was mid-March.
Trump’s “fabulous greatest economy in human history” was fizzling badly months before the pandemic actually started.
I caught COVID in January 2020 when it was the 'mystery flu'.
The pandemic actually started in October 2019 in China, but the effects weren't until later. Which is why it's called COVID 19
Oh the drama. You had a cold. Good grief.
So unnecessary. Also, clearly you didn’t have covid.
Also, from other comments, you’ve lived a privileged life. Good on you, not the case for everyone else tho. #willfulblindness
I’m pretty sure this conclusively proves that Kevin is. Marxist who hates America.
I'd gray-shade he Covid drop and the snap-back. That might be all of 2020, 2021, and half of 2022 (because of the massive stimulus). That still puts Biden ahead of Trump - about 7% to 5%.
A difference in the trend lines of 4.2%. Oddly similar to the difference in their ages.
Hmm. I smell a rat.
Wait a minute. Those aren't real numbers. How can they be jamming the real numbers if they don't know... we're coming.
Pull up! It's a trap!
Nobody ever shows this comparison. Is that fair? Why or why not?
Because MAGAts flood them with hate-mail, threaten to firebomb their house and/or kill them or their loved ones, and sometimes follow through.
They're Brownshirts. And like all Brownshirts, being generally stupid and belligerent, they fall back on the tools available to them, notably intimidation and violence. See also under "Events of January 6, 2020."
If you do that, then you have to delete the first few quarters of 2021 given that mitigation of the shutdown's economic effects started under Trump.
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