Reply #16: Excellent post. I wish you ran the democratic party. [View All]

[snippy]

I like your suggestion of the place to start:

"Are the Republicans waving flags and Bibles in your face while they're picking your pocket?"

There are three totally objective economic criteria that clearly distinguish the democratic party from the republican party. These are job creation, federal deficits, and the performance of the stock market. If the democratic party would spend the time and money to make sure that every American over the age of 12 knew the difference between the parties on these criteria, the country would be much better off.

Job Creation

Republican presidents are always, always, always bad for job creation. Since the 1920's, the annual rate of job creation under republican presidents has always been lower than under democratic presidents.

Since the depression, not a single republican president has had a better rate of job creation than any democratic president. The highest rate of job growth under a republican was 2.2% per year during Nixon's time in office. The lowest rate of job growth under a democrat was 2.3% per year during Kennedy's time in office. Bush has had a -0.7% annual rate which is the first negative number since the depression.

Since WWII ended, a total of 57.51 million jobs were created during the terms of democratic presidents which is an average of 2.054 million jobs per year. During the terms of republican presidents a total of 31.11 million jobs were created which is an average of 1.003 million jobs per year.




All of these numbers are from July, 2003.

Federal Deficit

Since Kennedy was president, republican presidents have always run higher federal deficits in current dollars, in constant dollars and as a percentage of GDP, than democratic presidents, except for 1968. In the 42 years since Kennedy's first budget, the federal government has run accumulated deficits totaling roughly $3.5 trillion. $3.2 trillion of this debt piled up in 22 years under republican presidents. $300 billion piled up in the 20 years under democratic presidents.

Republican presidents - $3.2 trillion in deficits.
Democratic presidents - $300 billion in deficits.

Some conservative economists attribute this to the fact that fiscal conservatives in the republican party are not allowed to attempt to block spending by a republican White House.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2004/sheets/hist01z3.xls

The estimates in the table for 2003 and subsequent years are no longer applicable. The current estimates are much higher. Also, the numbers for the first year of a presidential term are from the budget of the preceeding term.

Stock Market

The stock market also performs better under democratic presidents.

The excess return in the stock market is higher under Democratic than
Republican presidencies:nine percent for the value-weighted and 16 percent
for the equal-weighted portfolio.The difference comes from higher real stock
returns and lower real interest rates,is statistically significant,and is robust
in subsamples.The difference in returns is not explained by business-cycle
variables related to expected returns,and is not concentrated around election
dates.There is no difference in the riskiness of the stock market across
presidencies that could justify a risk premium.The difference in returns
through the political cycle is therefore a puzzle.

http://www.personal.anderson.ucla.edu/rossen.valkanov/Politics.pdf

This analysis covers the years 1927-1998 and separately examines the years from 1927-1962 and 1963-1998. Results which included the years from 1999-2003 would show an even greater difference.

I think that if many of the poorer working class Americans who vote republican knew these facts they would begin to question what the republican party tells them.