When people vote for leaders that sell hope, good times are ahead but when they vote based on fear bad times are almost certain down the road. Regardless of politics that is.
Not only does it it denigrate any concern Italians have about their economy and their future. It carries the same hubris as politicians that say they are "on the right side of history".
Bernie Maddof sold hope, as do most holistic healers, it's not a great measure to go by.
You are talking about the people who are voted in, I am talking about the mindset of the voters. Optimism indicates more economic activity and less social unrest and instability.
That's an overly-simplistic breakdown. Almost all campaigns I've seen, across political stripes, include an element of "don't let the other guys win!". After all, it was Hillary's main selling point.
Also, even those candidates widely regarded as "fearful" actually had campaigns based on hope, of bringing in a better world if only certain problems could be fixed. I'll leave you to fill in the obvious blanks.
Again, you also are talking about candidates. It doesn't matter what the candidates say, if the people are voting because they are afraid that reflects on upcoming economic health and legislative activity (while democracy works that is).
In America, Obama in 08 was the last time most voters votes out of hope instead of fear. Whether you fear biden or trup, fear is fear. Bad shit ahead, buckle in haha.
If it inspires hope, sure. That was hope of victory right there not fear of doom.
Why does no one seem to read what I am saying? I am talking about how viters feel not what politicians say. "Make america great again" sounds hopeful for example but it means you are afraid america will go to shit otherwise. In other words, if not voting for your guy feels like doom ("if I don't vote for biden the world ends" to be non-partisan) bad times ahead.
Americans voted for Obama because of hope; did good times come about? I don't think so.
Then Americans voted for Trump because of fear; did bad times come about? Definitely.
You might be onto something with the fear part, but I don't think the hope part really works. People buying into hope can easily just be misguided hope and not based on reality. People buying into fear means things really have gone bad.
I disagree. Riots and protests every few months, half the country losing its shit. Everyday some messed up thing happens, it was like watching a house burn across the street. I mean, I think it is widely known that policies and actions on one term will usually show fruit in the next term. People start spending and investing money slowly once they see things looking up. Look at bush relaxing as many restrictions as he could and getting rid of taxes as much as he could before the 08 crash. Your second term is when the product of your policies are seen. Their first year is spent getting campain promises done as much as possible and getting used to the job (like any employee it takes 6mo-year to be productivr) and 4th year is election year. So it is usually the second and third year after they appointed all the important officials they do anything which means when things take effect is months or a 1yr+ down the road and then you see whatever metric's graph either start going down or up but it is rare for it to peak immediately, could happen but you really can't take credit for economic stuff at least in the first 2 yrs.
Also, keep in mind that americans take away the president's party's majority in congress mid way in the term usually so republican or democrat it is difficult to get things done in their 3rd and 4th year. So their efforts peak at the end of 2nd year and first half of 3rd year and the fruits of those efforts are seen down the road in their last year or the year or two after their last term.
Those “good times” were large an extension of Obama’s term. If you look at the GDP and job numbers of this period and fit a regression line, Trump did not meaningfully alter the slope of the curve, which means he largely inherited a growing economy and road the coattails.
If you look at every single precidency pretty awful things were done.
Fake child immunization setup to get Usama during Obama administration. Has caused an unveleivable amount of harm to children.
Not in cages, just no linger vaccinated for fear of US pursuit.
Yell bad man Trump all you want. He was never the problem, he was a symptom of what is really going on.
Same with Swedish and now Italian elections.
Get all the social media upvotes for adhering to the woke and bow to twitter as much as you want.
This is what is actually going on.
I blame super shitty journalism also for this. Thats just a personal irk I have for how oblivious and grossly overconfident and incompetent the media actually
is
I think most people are going to find a moral equivalence drawn between "locked up children in cages" and "tricked Osama Bin Laden's relatives into taking a blood test" pretty hollow, even if an argument can be made that the latter led to a complex downstream set of externalities.
>I think most people are going to find a moral equivalence drawn between "locked up children in cages" and "tricked Osama Bin Laden's relatives into taking a blood test" pretty hollow
He's not talking about OBL's blood relatives, he's talking about all the children in Pakistan who aren't vaccinated now because the US's actions caused them to distrust vaccines and those who provide them.
These are correct, though I would quibble about the "new war" thing a little. Obama pulled the number of troops deployed overseas down sharply, and they increased slightly under Trump [0].
I would also say the Trump administration's handling of COVID-19 is one of the worst in the world in terms of outcomes. It's hard to imagine any other reasonably possible president--including Republicans--doing so badly, and this is solely because they chose to politicize mask wearing. It was a historic blunder that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and billions if not trillions of dollars. Not even the Iraq and Afghanistan wars can compare, which is a wild thing to say.
Second, Trump's agenda was largely ineffectual. He didn't significantly alter immigration policy, his trade wars failed, and his tax cuts failed to produce significant economic growth (though they did increase the deficit). Diplomatically his administration was a complete failure, and it's hard to not lay some of the blame for Ukraine at his feet--whether its his weakening of NATO, his strong support for Putin, or his attempts to withhold military aid from Ukraine unless they helped him tar a political rival.
Finally, I would point to opportunity costs. Presidents can't tread water; they need to make progress over their terms on multiple time scales. While the administration was pursuing a poorly targeted agenda that would ultimately fail anyway, they were ignoring some other serious problems: climate change, US election integrity, labor relations, tech monopolies, prescription drug costs, student debt, housing costs, etc. The Trump administration slept on all of these, putting us four years behind. That's... well it's just very bad.
> he's the only recent president who didn't start a new war
Not for a lack of trying. The assassination of Qasem Soleimani was authorized by Trump and led to several direct attacks on each other and only stopped after Iran accidentally shot down a commercial passenger plane originating from their own country.
He is the first republican in a long time that didn't start a war only because there were already two undrerway and his generals stopped him from starting wars. He was a DC outsider so he didn't know the war starting protocol I guess?
Not if there is a good reason to wage a war. Everyone complains about wars but every war since vietnam had widespread public support at the time it was started.
That's not a good reason to start a war. The Iraq War (2003, not the Gulf War of the 90s) had widespread public support because the CIA fabricated evidence of WMDs to create that support.
that 5G ban was overall trend in all west, certainly not something Trump made(TM). In fact, it would look utterly incompetent for him if all western democracies rejected Huawei 5G hardware apart from US, given his anti-chinese stance.
Some points look nice and sane, but I don't know details. But there are maybe 10,000 different aspects of government, its impossible to not compile list of positive achievements for any president/politician.
I think what Trump opponents have much more beef with is the list of things he did wrong/didn't do but should. That defines politician much more than positive items. Same as person-person interaction in general - its not that important how many positive aspects the other has rather than the negative ones, they define overall tone and compatibility much more.
Sure did. The economy bush screwed up recovered, a lot of stimulus packages helped many americans. Obamacare passed, bin laden getting killed in '11 was good too. Of course I said Obama in 08 for a reason, Obama in '12 not so much and of course '16 was a shitshow.
Obama inherited an economy in free fall. By the time he left, the deficit had been cut in half (thanks to sequester), we had more quarters of 3%, 4%, even 5% GDP growth not since the 90s. Unemployment fell from 10% to 4.7%. Home prices and the stock market appreciated considerably.
Trump largely inherited a good economy from Obama, passed a reckless tax cut, and then failed to beat Obama’s final 3 years in terms of gdp growth or job growth. Those tax cuts blew a hole in the deficit before COVID and triggered a plethora of stock buyback activity depleting corporate cash reserves just in time for the pandemic leaving them with nothing to fall back on, and needing quicker and bigger bailouts that might have been necessary if they had bigger nest eggs. (Airlines especially)
Obama had international inspectors in Iran’s nuke plants, Trump pulled the US out and now the situation is far worse with respect to th nuke profliferation issue.
It always amazing how Americans think presidents have much of an impact on things like economics and housing markets.
It the same mistake people make everywhere, correlation is not causation. The Great Depression was not Hoovers fault. Hitler was not some amazing economic genius its just that he got to power after the worst of the recession was over.
Trump certainty did some thing bad things in terms of trade, but that likely doesn't explain most of the numbers.
> Obama had international inspectors in Iran’s nuke plants, Trump pulled the US out and now the situation is far worse with respect to th nuke profliferation issue.
That actually is something the president has much influence on.
They have some influence. The fed chief is nominated by them. Laws they support get priority. Their policies can have effects on consumer confidence and economic activity, I mean americans belive the president is powerful so true or not their economic behavior is affected, and that isn't just consumers but investors as well. Let's say biden threatened nuke war against russia, that will crash stocks or mention tariffs on China which will affect some stocks more than others. CEOs also use what they say as an excuse to do things.
I didn't say Obama was the cause of these things, merely that they happened on his term. This is in response to Trump fans who like to trash Obama and celebrate Trump. My point is, if you want to blame Obama for the bad economics that happens on his term, you also have to credit him for the good things, and likewise for Trump.
I have long said that Presidents don't have much effect on the economy, unless they trigger some major mal-investment or war (or a trade war). It's the Republicans who OBSESS about tinkering with marginal tax rates, as if cutting a rich guy's taxes from 39% marginal rate to 36% marginal rate transforms the economy. As Warren Buffet said, no real entrepreneur is scared away by marginal taxes, it's a nice problem to have if you manage to make it to that tier.
But again, if you're going to play the President comparison game by crediting them for trends that happen when they take office, you have to apply it consistently, regardless of political party.
(I will say that Presidents CAN have a major effect if they radically change the rules of the game suddenly, like Smoot-Hawley, or the creation Bretton-Woods/collapse of Bretton-Woods)
Also, it's not just "Americans" who think political leaders control the economy, you see this in the UK, and you see it playing out in Italy right now. People overall ignore trends and forces that take a decade to unfold, from housing prices to regional sector collapses, by the time the political system realizes it, the actual change has already happened, and there's often political response that promises to "restore" what's already gone.
Trump's year by year numbers are not that bad either, as can be seen in [1]
Final numbers have been heavily affected by 2020 covid, so cannot be compared directly. That being said:
> failed to beat Obama’s final 3 years in terms of gdp growth or job growth
Obama's YoY for the final three years are 2.3%, 2.7% and 1.7%. Trump's first three years are 2.3%, 2.9%, 2.3%. [1]
> Unemployment fell from 10% to 4.7%
Employment rate under Trump's presidency has been also growing steadily until covid [2]
"Obama's YoY for the final three years are 2.3%, 2.7% and 1.7%"
Yes, but those were brought down by a unlucky quarters in between. If you look at quarter-by-quarter GDP growth from 2012-2020, you'll see Obama had way more quarters above 3%, 4%, even 5% than Trump ever did. Trump came into office promising 4%+ GDP growth, he never achieved it in any quarter.
Let me give you an example: Q1'2014 had a post-xmas slump of -1.4% growth. But Q2'2014, Q3'2014 had 5.2, 4.7, with Q4 hitting 1.8. So yeah, if you average that out, it's ~2.4%, but that's obscurring that there were two blistering quarters.
"Unemployment fell from 10% to 4.7% Employment rate under Trump's presidency has been also growing steadily until covid"
Yes, but the scale of the change from what Obama started with was much larger and deeper hole: a banking crisis. (If you look at IMF/WB studies of historical banking crises from the Great Depression up through Japan's lost decade, over 400 in their study, they're the worst recessions to dig out of, not V shaped at all). If you look at total number of jobs created, it was 10 million in Obama's second term. Trump ended up with -3 million, but if we're fair, and just compare Trump's best 3 years, with Obama's last 3 years, Obama had 3.0, 2.7, and 2.3 million jobs. Trump had 2.2, 2.7, 2.1, or 8 million vs 7 million.
There's no sense in which the Obama economy was "bad" compared with Trump's first 3 years. Except for the fact that they didn't rescue home owners, just the wealthy and business internets, and so a ton of people lost generational wealth, and permanently exited the job market when their only factory or sector rolled up.
Which is one more thing to say about recessions: There are some business sectors that are zombies -- dead men walking. Dying a slow death, everyone can feel it, going through the motions, and it is generally not until there is a recession that these businesses are killed, never to return, often replaced by new sectors or disruptive new tech or business models.
In a way, recessions act as garbage collection, often spurring innovation. The Bush Sr recession lead to one of the greatest economic expansions since 60s.
Well, when those periods were due to freak weather and rebounded immediately the next quarter?
Q1'2014 analysis from Economists:
"Data such as employment, manufacturing and services sectors point to a sharp acceleration in growth early in the second quarter. However, the pace of expansion could fall short of expectations, which range as high as a 3.6 percent rate. Economists estimate severe weather could have slashed as much as 1.5 percentage points from GDP growth in the first quarter. The government, however, gave no details on the impact of the weather.
Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, increased at a 1.0 percent rate. It was previously reported to have advanced at a 3.1 percent pace. Exports declined at a 8.9 percent rate, instead of 6.0 percent pace, resulting in a trade deficit that sliced off 1.53 percentage points from GDP growth. Weak export growth has been tied to frigid temperatures during the winter."
So basically, consumer spending increased, but exports declined, supposedly due to freak weather.
I mean, what if I said "Trump's economic growth was great, if we ignore the pandemic", do you really think it's wrong to separate out external factors like once-in-a-century pandemics, weather events, or major external wars in order to consider what impact fiscal policy or leadership may have had?
Hope and fear are opposite sides of the same coin. Trump's slogan "Make America Great Again" was explicitly hopeful, but the hope of populism always rests on a fear of (and disgust for) modernity and its implied future. Obama's message of hope was also predicated on the ideal of moving American culture away from fear, in that case fear of the persistence of America's past. Fear of progress vs. fear of regress. People buying into hope are by definition buying into the mitigation of fear.
That’s so beautiful about modern democracy - promise peasants heaven on earth. Get some shady funding to buy ice cream/beer/organize couple village festivals. And here you go, you are elected and can stuff money into the pockets of your sponsors and of course yourself. Not big secret already known in Roman times.
> That’s so beautiful about modern democracy - promise peasants heaven on earth. Get some shady funding to buy ice cream/beer/organize couple village festivals.
I don’t know anything about Meloni or her platform and apparently neither does anyone else in this thread. Ppl are relentlessly projecting US politics on everything
Let’s just hope these places have enough time to understand exactly what policies they’re voting for before the world plunged into war like every other time in history when populism like this succeeds.
in italy there are laws against fascism and fascist and having a political party that is fascists, just because she's from right that doesn't mean she is a fascist because that would be illegal.
I think it is more about a structural change in EU politics: Far, far more right-wing adherence and populist parties at the top. This means poor stewardship and knee-jerk politics, which does tend to lead to war.
War is already upon Europe. The only question is how long will it take for the European troops to get involved in the Ukrainian conflict, against Russia. Hopefully before Putin resorts to nukes...
