Quote:
Originally Posted by wiphan
We have a fundamental difference of opinion. You believe the government should create jobs. I believe in less government. I do not believe we need the government to create jobs. If the banking world wasn't so scared of the current government oversight and actually took on a slight bit of risk the economy would be just fine by itself, however that is not the case currently. People did not wake up because of the spending by Bush and the republicans people woke up when they realized that their home was no longer their piggy bank. People actually decided to save $ instead of spending more than they brought in. A lesson that washington needs to now learn. It can't change over night but we have to start somewhere...
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Why do you think there was not massive economic growth over the Bush administration? Let's just look at the first six years or so.
There were massive tax cuts, massive business incentives, wars (face it, wars provide economic incentives). There is no denying that the government was extremely "business friendly".
What was keeping business contracting and losing hundreds of thousands of jobs in that environment?
Our income, before the Presidential election of 2008 even happened, dropped to only 15% or so of our GDP, when it always had been 18-20%.
In the late 1950's, government-sponsored education and the concept of the mortgage allowed thousands of former GI's to get education and buy a first house in the suburbs. In the late 1960's, in order to keep up, they sent the wife to work and get a second income. In the 1990's, they second-mortgaged and took money out of the house for disposable goods. You are right, a lot of the slow recession is because the middle class and lower classes are plumb out of cash to spend at this point in time. And there's hardly a middle class left. But that didn't cause our recession, although it's contributing to the slow recovery. The middle and lower class are not currently sitting on millions in savings, preventing recovery.