Bush era current dollar GDP grew 38.97% vs. Obama era at 29.62%

Had Obama era current dollar GDP grown at the Bush rate, we would have $1.36 trillion more GDP at the end of 2016 than we do.

Total government spending is well past the point of adding value

Wayne Winegarden, here:

At one-third of the size of the economy, total government spending is well past the point where additional expenditures add value.

Actually, it's higher than one third, as I previously pointed out here. In 2016 total government spending hit 36.1% of GDP. 

Repeal the income tax of 1913: It facilitates the massive growth of our enemy the administrative state

After the passage of the income tax in 1913, outlays doubled from $2.9 billion in 1911 to $5.7 billion by 1917, and they keep doubling and doubling and doubling . . ..

In 2016 over 36% of GDP is diverted from the free market and misspent, poorly spent or destroyed. Almost $6.7 trillion . . . phhhhhht.

To kill the beast, stop feeding it.

Supreme Court ruling in 2011 requiring releases from Calif. prisons to ease overcrowding results in officer slaying on Monday

The story is here.

Justice Antonin Scalia, who dissented here, called it "perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our Nation's history": 

Today the Court affirms what is perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our Nation's history: an order requiring California to release the staggering number of 46,000 convicted criminals.

What? Roe v. Wade, which resulted in the deaths of millions of innocents, was less radical? Overturning millennia of marriage law and the statutes of 30 states was less radical? Obliging people to engage in health insurance commerce was not a repudiation of centuries of contract law? 

Antonin Scalia was right to dissent in this one, but come on, Solomon he was not.

Forget "Where's Waldo?" Where's Obama's GDP?

Obama's GDP came to $133.66 trillion through calendar 2016, Obama's spending to $28.72 trillion through fiscal 2016, 21.48% of the total.

Bush's GDP came to $102.87 trillion through calendar 2008, Bush's spending to $19.16 trillion through fiscal 2008, 18.62% of the total.

Together they averaged federal spending of 20% of GDP in response to  9/11 and the Panic of 2008, but it has gotten us nowhere except in deep kimchi.

Contrast their record with the 16 years before the Income Tax was passed, 1898-1913. It's a good comparison because the Panic of 1907 was a real crisis, in response to which the Congress foolishly introduced the Corporate Tax in 1909, and both the Income Tax and the Federal Reserve in 1913.

Federal spending over the whole prior period through 1913 was just 2.5% of GDP, 8 times less than now, yet GDP increased 142% despite a whopping 11% hit to GDP in 1908. GDP didn't recover from the Panic of 1907 until 1911, but it did so without any increased federal spending.

Fast forward to America's GDP hiccup from 2008 to 2009, which amounted to a measly 2.0% hit to GDP. GDP promptly recovered by 2010, yet all these yokels could deliver us was a total GDP increase of just 80% since the year 2000, 44% less robust than that period 100 years ago, before the advent of the bureaucratic state.

Put more sharply, Obama spent nearly $10 trillion more than Bush to solve a comparatively tiny $300 billion shortfall in GDP, but got nothing for it. Where, pray tell, did all the money go? Where is the GDP?

The spending excess has left us with a pile of debt which is now costing us $411 billion a year to service, 70% of the current Defense budget, despite the lowest interest rates in history.

At some point those rates will rise, and when they do, you'd better pray we still have a strong enough military to defend ourselves when the people we can no longer pay come a callin'.

There will be blood.

Obama's GDP, $4.31 trillion, Obama's spending in excess of Bush's last year, $4.86 trillion

I don't know how to show a negative $550 billion Nothing Burger, so the regular Nothing Burger will have to do.

You want cheese with that?

Presidents ranked by average per annum real GDP growth rates

JFK/LBJ: 4.8%

Truman: 4.7%

Clinton: 3.8%

Reagan: 3.4%

Carter: 3.2%

IKE: 2.9%

Nixon/Ford: 2.7%

Bush 41: 2.2%

Bush 43: 2.1%

Obama: 1.5%


And we thought Jimmy Carter was bad.

He would have been a 113% improvement over Obama.

Alan Blinder's alternative facts about the politics of GDP

Alan Blinder, Bill Clinton's Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve, quoted and discussed here:

“Here is an interesting historical fact. Since Harry Truman, the growth rate has fallen every time a Republican president replaced a Democrat and has risen every time a Democrat has replaced a Republican.”

No, not every time, in either case.

Nixon/Ford current dollar GDP growth (Republican) was better than previous JFK/LBJ GDP (Democrat), up 100% vs. 80%.

And Obama current dollar GDP growth (Democrat) was worse following Bush GDP (Republican), up 30% vs. 39%.

For best growth of current dollar GDP in the post-war, Democrat presidents own positions one and four covering 12 years, but Republicans own positions two and three covering 16 years:

Carter: 13.5%

Nixon/Ford: 12.5%

Reagan: 10.1%

JFK/LBJ: 10.0%.

Four Republican administrations lasting 8 years each have averaged 8.2% in the post-war, and four Democrat administrations lasting 8 years each have averaged 7.5%.

Democrat Carter's 4 years at 13.5% easily beats Bush 41's 4 years at 6.0%, but this hardly offsets the better Republican performance over the long haul compared with the Democrat (see here for the figures).

Current dollar GDP growth by president in the post-war shows Obama in last place as the Baby Boomers fizzle

Obama:   29.6%

Bush 43: 39.0%

Clinton:  56.3%

Bush 41: 23.8% (4 years)

Reagan:  80.9%

Carter:    54.1% (4 years)

Nixon/Ford: 100.0%

JFK/LBJ:       79.6%

IKE:       42.1%

FDR/Truman: 72.7%

Ranked by performance divided by years in office:

Carter: 13.5

Nixon/Ford: 12.5

Reagan: 10.1

JFK/LBJ: 10.0

FDR/Truman: 9.1

Clinton: 7.0

Bush 41: 6.0

IKE: 5.3

Bush 43: 4.9

Obama: 3.7

Pretty costly affirmative action: Obama delivers his final GDP dud with 2016 growth coming in at just 1.6%

Average report under Obama: 1.475%, the worst in the post-war