How Smart is Klein ?
This is another post linking to Ezra Klein. I can’t help linking to his post noting that self identified Republicans and Democrats agreed about how the economy was going when Clinton was President, but then disagreed when Bush was President, with most Republicans saying it was excellent or good in 2006.
Klein offers two explanations and I propose a third. To recap he notes that people might agree about the economy when it is excellent or terrible. But he worries that there is a trend towards a partisan divide in perception of everything as people use the internet and select cable channels to find information which confirms their prejudices. This is testable as people are sometimes asked their main source of news.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the real growing perception gap is between Fox News viewers and everyone else. David Frum once said something like “We thought that Fox worked for us, but now we work for Fox.” OK Fox news and talk radio, but media not a party.
I’m posting because there is another possibility. It is possible that Democrats have a generally more negative view of the US economy and that there is a constant partisan bias so people of the same party as the President have a more positive view. This makes sense. A large part of the Republican ideology is that the USA is better in every way than Europe.
The evidence comes from the tiny bit of data on opinions under Bush the elder. The economy was in recession so even most Republicans said it was not good. However slightly more than 20% said it was good or excellent in 1992. That was crazy.
The ratio of fraction of Republicans who say it was good or excellent to fraction of Democrats who said it was good or excellent was about 2 under both Bushes. I think my little story fits the data and that I have to find more data to distinguish it from Klein’s using new technology to create partisan cocoons hypothesis.
maybe we should just go back to the time everyone believed walter cronkite when he would sign off every night with “that’s the way it is…”?
Personally, I don’t think it’s possible, with the rancor that is prevalent today on the right. There doesn’t seem to be any restraint to how far the noise travels. The hypocrisy reminds me of the bully in the sand box. Until either another bully comes along and thumps the first one, or its mother whumps him for misbehaving, then we seem to be “stuck in Lodi”. Partisan politics have become the linchpin in the countries woes, especially with the S.C.O.T.U.S. dealing the cards.
well, all that’s true, but you may have overlooked
that for “most” people the economy is fine. “I got mine.”
of course this attitude tends not to survive the experience of experience as what’s wrong with the economy claims more and more victims and we find out why we are our brother’s keeper whether we want to be or not…but by then it’s too late.
Robert –
How does your theory fit the Clinton years?
On the topic of partisan bias and polarization, there is also this.
http://jazzbumpa.blogspot.com/2009/04/another-correlation.html
There’s also the fact that the Right has a pretty poor connection to reality.
http://www.asymptosis.com/fiscalists-and-monetarists.html
WASF,
JzB
It is the republican propaganda machine that under Bush constantly described mediocre economic performance as fantastic or great.
The democrats do not have a propaganda machine that is constantly spreading the party line so democrats view is more objective.
For example, I have no doubt that if the current president were a republican there would be a constant barrage of information on how real GDP growth, employment, hours worked, real incomes, etc., etc., are all stronger now than they were five quarters into the 2001 economic recovery. All these points are true, but nobody ever hears that. All they hear is how weak the economy is and how policy is ineffective.
Ditto Spencer. There’s an entire parallel history that in no way correlates with available data, and some parts of that history have been repeated so often they’re now believed by just about everyone. I suspect most Americans believe that Ronald Reagan produced the fastest economic growth of any President in the last century. Conversely, most Americans believe that the worst economic performance came under big government types like FDR and LBJ. Data? Imagine if we built bridges with as little regard for numbers.
If anyone is ignoring reality in this stat it is the Democrats and Independents. The Economy did in fact recover right after the Bush tax cuts. In fact it was the first or second logest period since WWII. There is a post about the misreporting of the tax cuts effect on the economy at another site. http://www.freemarketsfreepeople.net
yes, the Bush economy did recover, but it was still the weakest economic expansion on record.
This is a perfect example of the point I was making. This guy believes the economy was great under Bush and no amount of data will ever convince him otherwise.
Note he does not deal with my point that at this point, five quarters from the bottom, the economy is experiencing stronger growth than it did under Bush.
The Bush recovery was deregulation, and helicopter Ben tossing money inflating bubbles.
Take the red pill.
I followed the link from Tergent’s comment.
It talked about real GDP growth.
The trend rate of real GDP growth for the US economy is 3.5%. Bush had only one year out of eight years
where growth was above trend. Average real GDP growth was the weakest under bush of any president but Hoover.
Next the link looked at unemployment.
Here is the data on payroll employment
CHANGE CHANGE AVERAGE “(000) “(%) (%) Eisenhower 3,217 6.4 0.8 Kennedy Johnson 16,142 30.1 3.8 Nixon-Ford 11,289 16.2 2.0 Carter 10,111 12.5 3.1 Reagan 16,293 17.9 2.2 Bush (Sr.) 2,576 2.4 0.6 Clinton 22,563 20.5 2.6 Bush(Jr.) 293 0.2 0.0
In eight years employment rose 293,000 under Bush as compared to 10,111,000 in four years under Clinton. The Clinton average growth rate was 3.1% compared to 0.0% under Bush.
That means for every job created under Bush there were 34 jobs created under Clinton, the President the republicans like to cause a failure. Moreover, Clinton only had four years.
OK, Tergent you still want to claim we are misinformed?
What about independents? Judging from the election results, the independents don’t like the economy, either.
Well, here is another hypothesis: increasing income inequality. Rich Dems may have been more pessimistic than rich Reps, but perhaps that is because the Dems care more about the average American. Yes, the economy has officially recovered from the recession, but persistent high unemployment and continuing household debt burdens make the economy worse for the average Americans than the GDP indicates. Do we live in a two tier economy? Since most of the national income goes to the rich, it can grow, on average, when the income of the average American does not. The different economic tiers can have different fates, in which case it really does not make a whole lot of sense to talk about **the** economy.
During the Clinton years, however, relative incomes stayed pretty much the same, IIRC, and both tiers of the economy rose in tandem. That would explain why both Reps and Dems agreed about the economy, even if they focus on different tiers. 🙂
The problem as I see it, is that Democrats generally make arguments based on facts and reasson. Republicans make arguments based on fairy dust, fear and batshit crazy rhetoric. The “Village People” tout the batshit crazy people as plausable, rational actors, and the factual, reasoned Democrats as extreme left wing zealots. I think the Dems need to start acting like the oppositon. Forget the facts, go with the batshit crazy rhetoric.
There’s also the fact that the Right has a pretty poor connecton to reality. The larger problem is that it is considered reasonable discourse. See my comment below.
Comparing Clinton to Bush in this way is supporting disinformation. It does not compare top-to-top or bottom-to-bottom. Part of the anemic Bush growth is probably bad policy, but some of it was still coming off an unsustainable bubble – even with an unsustainable housing boom. Some of the Clinton growth was probably good policy, but some of it was unsustainable bubble growth.
Ok. Let’s look at poverty.
http://jazzbumpa.blogspot.com/2010/09/poverty.html
Wealth disparity.
http://jazzbumpa.blogspot.com/2010/07/paul-krugman-hits-me-upside-head-with-2.html
Productivity
http://jazzbumpa.blogspot.com/2010/07/productivity-its-wunnaful.html
GDP growth
http://jazzbumpa.blogspot.com/2010/10/us-economy-is-dying.html
Good luck trying to find any measure by which the W regime does not look flat-asses pathetic.
Cheers!
JzB
I understand it is difficult to find good data on the distribution of incomes within the political parties. I suspect it would also be difficult to find out the partisan divide on who is part of the unemployed, but it might be a factor in this.
While it’s true that the liar and/or demigogue has a tactical advantage in the realm of propaganda over someone who is constraigned by facts, data, and reality, I believe that those if us who are realty-based have an imperative to respect that reality.
Which pretty much sucks.
WASF,
JzB
I’ll second that. Wealthier people tend to vote Republican, and they have been doing better than most. Poorer people tend to vote Democratic, and they have been doing worse than most. When polling first started in the 1930s, they almost always broke this kind of thing out by income group as well as party I’m sure the raw polling data is there, but the press usually goes for the up front press release and couldn’t interpret the actual numbers even if they bothered to look at them.
>The Economy did in fact recover right after the Bush tax cuts
bzzt. “The Economy” recovered thanks to a $6T debt bubble that was blown 2002-2007.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CMDEBT
You’re right. Maybe the answer is to come up with some batshit crazy rhetoric based on reality?