Monday, January 29, 2018

Um, Thanks Obama? For What, Exactly?

Instead of fading off to a ranch somewhere with cowboy boots and ten-gallon hat, or taking a professorship in some ivy-covered university where he can prattle on to his fawning believers, Barack Obama is still around.

Now he is trying to take credit for the economic boom of 2017 and the first year of the Trump Administration.  His egotistical "Thanks, Obama" tagline is out there in his speeches, trying to take some credit for the fact that people are working now, and more people in the workforce are getting jobs, and that the economy is growing at a rate that was not happening during his eight years.

"Thanks, Obama", he himself says, patting himself on the back in a "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" kind of way, the Latin term for assuming that if A came after B, well, it must have been caused by B.  Sort of like "Hillary Clinton is not president because I went to IHOP for breakfast last September."

Well, you know what?  I'm open to anyone who wants to make that argument on behalf of the previous president.  If anyone from Obama on down (or on up) wants to try to explain the cause-and-effect relationship between anything specific that Obama did and any private-sector employment growth, or any increase in corporate valuation, or any legitimate metric of a sound and growing economy, well, I'll be happy to monitor the Comments section and listen to you.

Unfortunately, Obama and his sycophants and toadies would have to deal with the realities that are there.  For example, he points to the stock market, which rose gradually over the eight years of Obama's tenure.  "See, I was the cause of that", he tells you.  "If you give Trump credit, you have to give it to me."

Except, of course, that there was a lot of difference.  Obama came to office with a market already depressed far below its peak of around 14,000 from the summer of 2007.  It did not return to that level until 2013, the fifth year of his tenure; in other words, only by 2013 did the market actually return to a valuation that it had already established.

President Trump, on the other hand, took office with the market, at around a 19,000 Dow, at its highest level ever.  It jumped to about 20,000 by his inauguration, solely on the expectation of what was to come, and sits at about 26,500 as I write this, having gained 7,500 points -- 40% -- since his election.  Your 401(k) and mine are accordingly smiling.  All of that increase constitutes new value that, unlike the gains during most of Obama's tenure, entails levels never seen previously.

The significant difference, of course, is what happens when we go back to the post hoc, ergo propter hoc part of the discussion.

The 40% boom in the markets, the 3% growth in the GDP we are experiencing that never happened in any year under Obama, those things can legitimately be attributed to the Trump presidency.

From the first day of the administration -- before, actually -- he started working with companies to get them to move plants and factories from overseas to the USA, to add American jobs, to repatriate money, to commit to building and growth here.  He committed to reducing stifling and job-killing regulation that was a prime reason for slow hiring, lack of construction, and relocation of facilities and jobs overseas.

Business responded.  They committed to, and started, building here and hiring here.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment rate is still a terribly constructed metric, but it, too is at extremes of low unemployment.  The reduction of regulations has made it easier to hire than under Obama; the substantial drop in the corporate tax rate has led to wage increases, bonuses and more jobs.  And foreign companies, as we saw in the Davos summit, are committing to invest heavily in the USA.

All that is happening because of concrete, identifiable actions on the part of the Administration and the Republican-led Congress.  We can point to "The government did this, and that directly led to that."  Attribution is easy; the CEOs in Davos flat-out said that what they were doing was because of the actions of the Trump team.

Barack Obama and his toadies and sycophants, of course, will claim that the 2017-18 boom is the result of the policies of his team.  We are supposed to thank him for his marvelous economic leadership, and worship at the feet of the All-Knowing.

Well, I am actually willing.  All I ask first, though, is that you provide me a concrete, cause-and-effect relationship between a specific policy implementation of his, or a particular legislative outcome that he drove, and a specific positive economic outcome that can be logically tied to his presidency.  Shoot, I'll take any Obama proposal on the economy even if it didn't get passed!

I don't think you're going to find one.  His policies, specifically Obamacare, were so unpopular that he lost the House to the Republicans the first chance the nation had, and had lost the Senate by the time he left office.  The House never again voted in anything legislative that Obama wanted, and his administrative ram-throughs, in the form of executive orders and bureaucrat-built regulations, were all anti-business and anti-growth.

But I'm willing to listen to any rational argument on which we should be appreciative to Obama for the 2017 boom in the economy of the USA, and the follow-on already in 2018.  I just think you won't find any, and you'll end up having to say what we all will be saying for years.

"Thanks, Trump!"

Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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