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| "When you are done with Obama, could you send him our way?" - Richard Brunt |
People like you, who were confused by the U.S. Midterm Elections, do not have a complete grasp of the facts. You demonstrate this confusion with the rest of your rant against the American Electorate. I will address them point by point.
Richard Brunt: Consider, right now in America, corporate profits are at record highs,
First, record profits do not always mean that the economy is doing "great." Without getting into the customer sales side of the house, a company could reduce its expenses on the production side of the house. This may include reduced hiring, layoffs of current employees, closing down non-profitable production, etc.
These variables would lead to "improved profits" on paper.
Second, keep in mind that whatever they are earning, it's despite the fact that President Obama's, and the Democrats', economically destructive policies are in place. The cold hard reality is that if his economic policies, as well as that of his Democrat allies, were not hamstringing the United States economy, our economy would be doing much better.
It would have done much better month for month.
Richard Brunt: the country's adding 200,000 jobs per month,
First, most of that was part time jobs. A job may be a job, but an increase in part-time jobs relative to full-time jobs is not necessarily "good news" for the economy as a whole. Realistically, people need to work two or three of those part-time jobs to help make ends meet. This is in addition to doing away with a lot of things that they could enjoy if they had one full-time job.
Second, you ignore the fact that jobs were also lost during that period.
Third, you ignore the fact that given the United States' growing working age population, we're going to need a lot more than 200,000 new jobs each month. We're going to need more than 200,000 new full-time jobs that is. Not part-time.
Richard Brunt: unemployment is below 6%,
Unemployment doesn't mean the amount of people that are currently not working versus those who are working. It just means the number of people, looking for jobs, who have not found it. Anybody that has stopped looking for work is no longer considered "unemployed."
Another group of people, not considered as "unemployed", are people who have decided to no longer participate in the workforce.
In 2014, and continuing into 2015, the United States saw one of its lowest percentages of labor force participation rates.
So, combine those people who decide to no longer participate in the labor force, people who stop looking for jobs, and people who have to do a part-time job because they cannot find full-time job, and all of a sudden you no longer have a rosy picture about our labor situation.
A Republican/conservative economic policy may take longer to hold. But, when it does kick in, it provides better numbers in terms of job and economic growth.
Richard Brunt: U.S. gross national product growth is the best of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.
On OECD's website, one of the tables list GDP from 2009 through a projected rate at 2016. For 2014, the U.S. tied with Canada, and both fell behind the United Kingdom.
Here's some ranking from the World Factbook:
The United States had a 2.40 GDP growth rate in 2014. We ranked 130. The United Kingdom, also a member of the OECD, had a 3.20 GDP growth rate in 2014. They ranked at 97. Hungary is also in the group of countries. At 2.80 GDP growth rate, they ranked at 116.
Do I need to go through the list, of OECD countries, and match it to the World Factbook 2014 GDP growth ranking to find additional countries that ranked above the United States in GDP growth?
Richard Brunt: The dollar is at its strongest levels in years,
This has little to do with President Obama's, and the Democrats', destructive economic policies, and a lot to do with people's confidence in the global market. In this case, the dollar. There is a supply and demand process when it comes to investing in currency. This is driven on a global scale.
Richard Brunt: the stock market is near record highs,
That's like bragging about the record number of churches and bars a town has compared to before.
As the US population grows, as more people participate in its markets, the US economy would get bigger. This will contribute to the stock market getting higher. It is performing better now than it did during the Clinton years. That's expected.
As time progresses, our stock market generally grows. This will happen regardless of who is president, which party this president comes from, what kind of policies are in place, etc.
There are other factors in play that's causing our stock market to go up.
Richard Brunt: gasoline prices are falling,
This has a lot to do with supply and demand, despite President Obama's, and the Democrats', destructive economic policies.
Because of fracking and other technologies, our energy companies are able to extract energy sources that can compete with foreign oil. Without these additional technologies, OPEC would be in position to sucker us economically, forcing us to pay more at the gas pump.
They could no longer do that. Thanks to American dedication and ingenuity, we managed contribute to OPEC's decision to let the markets dictate price.
This is one of the reasons to why we are paying lower at the gas pump. There are other reasons as well.
Richard Brunt: there's no inflation,
Actually, inflation in the United States rose .8% during 2014. Also, many employed personnel saw their paychecks increase each year due to inflation adjustment. If there is no inflation, this would not have happened.
Richard Brunt: interest rates are the lowest in 30 years,
These rates are being kept artificially low by the Federal Reserve and its counterparts throughout the industrial world. President Obama is not the one that made these interest rates low. Low interest rates does not necessarily signal a "good economy."
One of the reasons for keeping these interest rates low is a lack of trust in how the economy would handle higher interest rates.
Richard Brunt: U.S. oil imports are declining, U.S. oil production is rapidly increasing,
See my explanations above regarding fracking and other alternative fuel sources. Despite President Obama's, and the Democrats', restrictive and destructive economic policies, our energy producers are forging ahead with increasing energy supply.
With our leveraging our technologies to increase our oil and other supplies, we are decreasing our dependence on foreign oil. This is not because of president Obama's policies, but despite them.
Richard Brunt: the deficit is rapidly declining,
First, deficits and surpluses deal more with how much the government spends relative to what it collects. If the government spends more money than what it collects, we have a deficit. If the government collects more than what it spends, we'd have surpluses.
Here's one variable that contributed to the deficit picture. The US government spiked its spending relative to tax revenue. Once the spending stabilized at the new rate, a new baseline was established. A decrease relative to the baseline shows a decrease in deficit.
Then we have the economic expansion, despite progressive destructive economic policies, leading to more money being collected by the federal government.
This doesn't change the fact that our debt still remains. It grew substantially under President Obama.
Second, the improving economy can result in people paying more taxes, as higher earnings put them in higher tax brackets. This will increase the amount of money that the government collects. This makes more money available to the government relative to what it spends.
Richard Brunt: and the wealthy are still making astonishing amounts of money.
See explanation above regarding corporate wealth. The rich and super rich, the wealthy, happen to be also those that own and run corporations. What the corporations above did, with regards to production, adjustments in operation, setbacks/cutbacks in nonproductive operations, and other activities, helped improve a company's bottom line. This ended up benefiting the wealthy.
Richard Brunt: America is leading the world once again and respected internationally -- in sharp contrast to the Bush years.
Not really. Under President Obama's leadership, the United States has taken a "lead from behind" approach to foreign policy. This is spliced with a lot of indecisiveness. He has also taken other actions that has frustrated our efforts to fight against the enemy.
For example, the actions regarding Libya and the Arab Spring. A lot of the problems, stemming from the Arab Spring, can be attributed to lack of leadership from the United States under Obama.
Our failure to capitalize on the Arab Spring in Syria, when it started, blew the opportunity for us to prop up and support the good guys over there.
Obama's failure, or rather refusal, to work with the Iraqis and the US military... to forge an agreement to allow the US military to remain in Iraq after 2011... contributed greatly to ISIS's success in Iraq and Syria.
Obama's lack of leadership encouraged our adversaries, emboldened our enemies, and left our allies with worries.
We do not have the respect that you claim we have throughout the world. We are a laughing stock. The Chinese have been pushing hard against our allies, because they know that there's no leadership, nor political will, to respond properly.
Our enemies are on the advance. They interpret our policies and actions, under Obama, as weakness. They are boldly trying to reach into the United States.
Under President Bush, we had real leadership both within the U.S. and throughout the world. We had a real strategy. We led the world. Don't mistake people's emotional rants and feelings as respect or lack of it. We were respected and feared under President Bush.
Now? We're neither respected nor feared. If earning respect around the world required taking the wrong courses of action, I could care less for that respect.
If anything, we have started to decline as a superpower. This is one of the things that you could thank President Obama for.
Richard Brunt: Obama brought soldiers home from Iraq
It was President Bush's White House, and Iraqi leadership, that hammered out the conditions that would ultimately lead to troop withdrawal from Iraq. It was predicated on conditions happening on the ground.
The deal, made during President Bush's term, called for combat troops to leave by the summer of 2010. It called for the remainder of the US military to leave by December 31, 2011.
That agreement left chances for talks for a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) open. It also left the door open for the US military to remain behind after December 31, 2011, to provide further training to the Iraqi military.
Although the Iraqis proved "difficult" in the initial stages of this negotiation, they ultimately warmed to our terms. President Barack Obama deliberately made it impossible, by moving the goal posts, to come up with that agreement.
Had he been cooperative, and made it easier for the US military to get that agreement, the Iraqi military would've repelled ISIS at the Iraqi/Syrian border.
Bottom line, the agreement to pull U.S. forces out was already made before President Obama became president. The decision was made before him, and it was based on the fact that our plans were going ahead full speed in Iraq.
We won the Iraq war with a straight cut victory.
It was up to President Obama and his team to leverage the conditions on the ground to preserve our victory in Iraq. He dropped the ball on that.
Richard Brunt: and killed Osama bin Laden.
No, President Obama did not kill Osama bin Laden. The Navy SEALS did. Had Hillary been president, or McCain, both would've ordered that raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Richard Brunt: So, Americans vote for the party that got you into the mess that Obama just dug you out of?
Wrong, the Republicans did not get us into the mess that you talk about. President Obama, as Senator Obama, contributed to the problem.
The financial crisis of late 2008 was a result of decades of the government interfering with the free market. Mainly, the government's move to force banks to approve loans for people that normally would not be good candidates to receive a loan.
The government forced the free market economy's decision for decades.
In the early 2000s, President Bush warned about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their potential impact on the economy. His White House warned about the financial consequences of not reigning those two government-sponsored organizations in.
Later that decade, Republican senators tried to push for change. Guess who fought tooth and nail on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? You guessed it, the party that President Obama belongs to.
It was the Democrats that refused to do anything that would've prevented the financial crisis of 2008. That was President Obama's party, he was a senator before he was a president. Together with his party, he did not do anything to prevent this crisis. Their refusal to take action against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac contributed to the financial crisis.
However, any claims stating that President Bush, and his Republicans, "caused" the financial crisis is based on ignorance and on susceptibility to propaganda. Both tried to do something about it, the Democrats refused to cooperate.
Richard Brunt: This defies reason.
Your own reasoning defies reasoning. You comment on the decision of the American Electorate during the midterms of 2014. You did so without first understanding American history, American philosophy, the American mindset, the concepts of a free market economy, microeconomics, macroeconomics, American civics, etc.
Richard Brunt:When you are done with Obama, could you send him our way?
You guys can have him, in fact, can you take him sooner?
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