Essay about Barack Obama and American Economy

Submitted By artmontiel
Words: 971
Pages: 4

Who Has the Correct Answer for the Economy? In this day and age many different issues are affecting our already wounded economy. What can be done to help the American economy and which political party has the answer? Larry Elder’s “The Four Lies About the Economy That Obama Needs Voters to Believe”, Steve Chapman’s “Myth of Unfair Paychecks”, and Malcolm Berko’s “Bush Tax Cuts and the Economy” provide three different issues that are upon the congressional floor in Washington that will effect our economy negatively one way or another. In Elder’s “The Four Lies About the Economy that Obama Needs Voters to believe”, President Obama runs for re-election in 2012 he needs to convince the American people that 1) Obama inherited a "Great Recession," 2) every "independent" economist supported the "stimulus," 3) "bipartisan" economists agree that Obama's stimulus worked, and 4) as actor Morgan Freeman puts it, racist Republicans say, "Screw the country ... we're going to do whatever we can to get this black man outta here" — nothing to do with deeply held policy differences (Elder). When Obama took office unemployment climbed to 10.2%, three years into former President Reagans term unemplyment was at 13.5%. Rather than describe this era as the "Great-Recession-turned-around-by-Reagan's-pro-growth-policies," many pundits and scribes dismiss this period of extraordinary growth as the "me decade" or the "decade of greed” (Elder).
History has shown that more government spending by President Hoover and Roosevelt did not get the American economy out of the Great Depression and more government spending did not solve Japan’s economic problem in the 1990’s. To improve the economy, policymakers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment, and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth (Elder). Democrats and Republicans have been arguing over the effects of the Bush Tax Cuts and the Obama Stimulus plan on which better helped the struggling economy. As to the alleged unanimous expert opinion on the effectiveness of Obama's stimulus, Stanford economist John Taylor debated this on NPR with Zandi. Taylor's analysis, shared by many other economists: "I just don't think there's any evidence. When you look at the numbers, when you see what happened, when people reacted to the stimulus, it did very little good." (Elder). One way to defeat bad, leftist Democrats' policies is to defeat bad, leftist Democrats, who seek to implement those bad, leftist policies (Elder). In Chapman’s “The Myth of Unfair Paychecks”- On the 5th of June 2012 the Paycheck Fairness Act failed on the Senate floor. "…there is a wage gap, but it has declined over the decades — and depending on how the data are viewed, in some cases it barely exists." (Chapman) . Women, on average work fewer hours and are more likely than men to take time off of work to take care of family issues. A 2009 report commishioned by the U.S. Labor Department concluded that such “factors account for a major portion and, possinly, almost all of the raw gender wage gap.” If the Pay Check Fairness Act was indeed passed it would tie up the already weak economy and stifle wage growth if the government made pay scales for the country. “Pay differences stemming from factors within the control of females are a "problem" only if you define them as one. By that logic, we need a Higher Education Fairness Act because men earn only 43 percent of all bachelor's degrees and 40 percent of master's degrees.” (Chapman). On January 2013 the Bush Tax Cuts of 2001 and 2003 will expire and Congress might let it expire, and traders, hedge funds, inverstment banksters and Wall Street pirates expect that the Dow Jones will nose dive in