I don’t think the evidence of presidential influence on growth rates is enough to support the contention (in either direction). Yes, famously, the economy grows better under democratic presidents—but that’s a very small sample, with no clear causality. But certainly enough to reject the idea that a Romney presidency would be necessarily better for the economy.
I’m not going by past trends. Demographics combined with entitlements are going to create a massive problem for the U.S. My perception is that Romney would handle this by reducing the rate of growth of entitlements and doing everything possible to increase economic growth whereas Obama wants to handle the problem by increasing taxes on the rich.
EDIT: To be clearer - You’re comparing a high-level goal/plan of candidate A (“make economy good”) to a low-level plan of candidate B (“get money from people”). Example: “Candidate X wants to safeguard our freedom and prosperity, but candidate Y wants to send Americans to fight and die overseas.” The reason this leads to a false impression is because we readily attribute low-level plans to high-level plans/goals (“if he wants freedom and prosperity, that means he’ll do good things”) but don’t attribute high-level plans/goals to low-level plans (“If he’s going to send Americans to fight and die overseas, how can you say he wants freedom and prosperity?”).
The rhetorical effect of comparing plans on different levels may be diminished by remembering that neither candidate is an evil mutant—they both have high-level plans that are pretty much “make good things happen, stop bad things from happening.”
That is a particularly bad comparison. Reagan had the best growth rate among Republican presidents since WWII and Carter had the second worst growth rate among Democratic presidents.
You can see the annualized GDP growth rates under all the post-Truman presidents here. Four of the top five growth rates were under Democratic presidents (and that includes Carter). The only Democrat who isn’t in the top five is Obama, who is at the absolute bottom. The only Republican in the top five is Reagan at no. 4.
I don’t think the evidence of presidential influence on growth rates is enough to support the contention (in either direction). Yes, famously, the economy grows better under democratic presidents—but that’s a very small sample, with no clear causality. But certainly enough to reject the idea that a Romney presidency would be necessarily better for the economy.
I’m not going by past trends. Demographics combined with entitlements are going to create a massive problem for the U.S. My perception is that Romney would handle this by reducing the rate of growth of entitlements and doing everything possible to increase economic growth whereas Obama wants to handle the problem by increasing taxes on the rich.
You’re mixing up levels.
EDIT: To be clearer - You’re comparing a high-level goal/plan of candidate A (“make economy good”) to a low-level plan of candidate B (“get money from people”). Example: “Candidate X wants to safeguard our freedom and prosperity, but candidate Y wants to send Americans to fight and die overseas.” The reason this leads to a false impression is because we readily attribute low-level plans to high-level plans/goals (“if he wants freedom and prosperity, that means he’ll do good things”) but don’t attribute high-level plans/goals to low-level plans (“If he’s going to send Americans to fight and die overseas, how can you say he wants freedom and prosperity?”).
The rhetorical effect of comparing plans on different levels may be diminished by remembering that neither candidate is an evil mutant—they both have high-level plans that are pretty much “make good things happen, stop bad things from happening.”
The data I’ve seen says the opposite, e.g., compare the economies under Carter and Reagan.
That is a particularly bad comparison. Reagan had the best growth rate among Republican presidents since WWII and Carter had the second worst growth rate among Democratic presidents.
You can see the annualized GDP growth rates under all the post-Truman presidents here. Four of the top five growth rates were under Democratic presidents (and that includes Carter). The only Democrat who isn’t in the top five is Obama, who is at the absolute bottom. The only Republican in the top five is Reagan at no. 4.