Of the more negative responses to today’s column, the one that’s been most common was the one I was least prepared for: The Bush economy, my correspondents say, was actually pretty good! As one reader e-mailed, “A stock market bordering 14,000, gas prices around $2-2.5/gal, a deficit in the low billions, an unemployment rate of 5-6% . . . oh, how horrible.”
There’s something to this. Depending on how you look at it, the Bush economy was either okay, a bit weak or absolutely awful.
To make it look okay, you eliminate all context. You look at levels rather than trends. Unemployment was in the 5 to 6 percent range. The economy was growing. Deficits, though rising, were at manageable levels. The stock market was booming. Most Americans were living pretty well. That all sounds pretty good.
To make it look weaker, you add back in some context. Monthly job growth from March 2001 to December 2007 — so, from the end of the 2001 recession to the beginning of the 2007 recession — was 68,000. That’s one of the weakest expansions on record. Meanwhile, poverty and inequality were increasing even as median incomes were falling. Oh, and while Bush’s deficits weren’t huge, they came during a period of growth — normally, periods of growth are when you cut the deficit, as we saw in the 1990s. So these were deficits of an unusually irresponsible sort.
SOURCE: Yes, Bush’s economy was terrible – The Washington Post.