An interesting clip from comments sent in to the Times Freakonomics column recently:

""For example, I think that Presidents have very little to do with the success or failure of the economy."

I guess then that it is just a coincidence that, over the past 50 years, deficits decline during Democratic administrations and rise precipitously under Republicans. Both Clinton and LBJ left office having turned deficits into surpluses (and LBJ had the Vietnam War to finance). Under Democratic administrations, joblessness falls, poverty falls, and crime falls. All three rise under Republican administrations.

Here are some comparisons of economic performance during Democratic and Republican administrations:

Growth of real disposable personal income (1953-2001)

D: 3.65% R: 3.08%

Employment gains per year (1953-2001)

D: 1.684 million/year R: 1.279 million/year

Unemployment (1947-2001)
D: 4.8% R: 6.3%

Average after-tax return on tangible capital (1952-2004)

D: 4.3% R: 3.2%

GDP Growth (1962-2001)

D: 3.9%

R: 2.9%

GDP Growth (1930-2000)

D: 5.4% R: 1.6%

Inflation (1962-2000)

D: 4.26% R: 4.96%

Percentage Growth in total federal spending (1962-2001)

D: 6.96% R: 7.57%

Percentage growth in non-defense federal spending (1962-2001)

D: 8.34% R:10.08%

Yearly budget deficit (1962 - 2001)

D: $36 billion R: $190 billion

Increase in national debt (1962-2001)

D: $0.72 trillion (20 years) $3.8 trillion (20 years)

Annual stock market returns (1927 - 2000) (DOW)

D: 13.4% R:8.1%

Annual stock market returns (1927-2000) (S&P 500)

D: 12.3% R: 8.0%

Sources include BLS, Forbes, WSJ, the Fed, CPI, U.S. Government 2003 Budget, etc.

Note that in EVERY METRIC, Democratic administrations show statistically significant improvement in performance over Republican administrations (and few of these figures include ANY data from Dubya's administration, which will drag down Republican averages in a number of critical catagories).

For those of you who do not believe the President and his advisors have much influence on the economy, that's a helluva lot of coincidences to explain.

— Posted by Blue Sun "