But ... but ... I thought Democrats were fascist-loving socialists terrorist-sympathizers who want to give government handouts in order to encourage single women to pump out multiple babies without having to work ... ?

Or that's what the likes of Al, ex-liberal, and the other wingnuts keep saying.

You mean they're **gasp** wrong?!?!

You mean the Democratic idea of raising up all boats in order to keep the big 'ol Economy Tanker floating actually works?

I'm stunned. Just. Stunned.

/snark

Of course, it's explained by the Stalinistic command economy of which the liberal fascists are so enamored. On the short time scales of a Presidential term, centrally planned economy will by definition always yield better results. But the long term effects will be the erosion of civil liberties in form of loss of habeas corpus, government wiretapping everybody's phones without any restraint, the President exercising near dictatorial powers without anyone noticing it, and other such goodies that are so easily available on the Road to Serfdom.

This shows that while the "trickle down" economy doesn't work (we've known that for years), the pyramid, or "bottom up" economy does work. And it's stable, as well. It really all comes down to selfishness versus community mindedness, and to no one's surprise, our parents were right: it's better to share.

If I had to guess about a "plausible mechanism", it would be based in very difficult to quantify "subjective" processes, namely how the economic zeitgeist itself is defined by different kinds of administrations.

To this day, the larger public perceives Republican administrations to be favoring the cause of self-interest and Democratic administrations to be representing the interests of the common man.

My guess is that those perceptions feed all the down to day-to-day decisions about who and who's interests are taken seriously in corporate and consumer settings.

I'd expect that what has driven the increasing gap between the rich and everyone else (worse by far under Republicans than Democrats) has no other basic explanation than this, for example. It is the zeitgeist most importantly that differs from, say, the 60s or 70s to today, and which explains our willingness to tolerate the enormous income gap. I see no reason to believe that such effects can't likewise explain differences of the sort Bartels sees.

And it's important to remember: just because something can't easily be quantified does not imply that it is not real.

Krugman's response illustrates what's wrong with economics, and why it isn't a scientific field: even economists as smart as Krugman think like the scholastics did. The theories are central, and if that data don't fit the theory, then the data must be explained away.

In a scientific field, if there is no plausible mechanism to support an observation, young scientists get excited, since the first to provide that plausible mechanism is going to get tenure, and the first to prove that plausible mechanism correct becomes a giant of the field.

Not in economics, though. Anything that isn't explained by neoclassical economics is called "irrational".

Oh, good lord!

Does no one among economists read the newspaper?

Economic policy hardly blends instantaneously from the minimum wage to the arcana of "business regulation".

Did no one notice the difference in medical cost inflation between Reagan-Bush, Clinton, and Bush II?

The ridiculous policy of the National Labor Relations Board of late?

The California Electricity crisis and the billions transfered from CA ratepayers to TX friends of Bush?

One could go on and on and on.

The government is one-fifth to one-third of the economy, depending on how you measure, makes all the rules, builds all the key infrastructure, and you are surprised that policy affects income growth by single digit percentages?

I don't know what troubles me more. The revelation that Krugman et alia, for all their passionate partisanship,
1. do not seem to think economic policy matters, or
2. that they labor under the delusion that Republicans really do not want something substantially different from what Democrats want.

The latter, of course, is the key conviction of dedicated neo-liberal technocrats -- Brad DeLong wants his disagreements with Greg Mankiw to come down to academic arete, differences in technical management skill. That's all such crap.

The plutocracy is dominated by greedy, narrow-minded fools and they pay the Tyler Cowens of the world to pollute the discourse with obfuscations. Robert Samuelson has three or four columns on how Presidents have no effect on the economy, which he recycles in a timely way to great partisan effect, to defend Republicans against criticism of their malfeasance or to make eunuchs of Democrats. It's all such crap.

Before the hurricane in New Orleans I was talking to my roofer who had been in business for nearly 40 years and he said that his business has always been better when a Democrat was in the White House. He musta known something.

re: "Republicans, who were generally more obsessed with keeping a check on budget deficits..."

Republicans have not actually made an effort to control budget deficits since at least the Nixon administration.

They may be happy to use deficits as an excuse to block Democratic programs, but they've made no effort whatsoever to really bring deficits down.

But the long term effects will be the erosion of civil liberties in form of loss of habeas corpus, government wiretapping everybody's phones without any restraint, the President exercising near dictatorial powers without anyone noticing it,

And you use Bush to prove your point, right?

Seems to me that one should look pretty carefully at the possibility that the causation goes the other way - perhaps economic conditions determine who gets elected president. (And then the business cycle tends to persist, or reverse, or whatever.)

Anyway, seems like everyone agrees that economic conditions are important in presidential elections, and that presidents don't have great power to shape the economy, and that the business cycle has a characteristic frequency, so those three things taken together suggest to me that the causation goes the other way.

Neuville,

I completely agree with the sentiment, but its interesting certain people's perspective.

I was talking to a cabbie taking me to the airport in Washington, and we started talking politics some. Now this is late 2002, which would be pretty much the bottom of the early Bush Administration recession.

He told me he was doing better at that moment than he had throughout the Clinton years. This is a cabdriver saying he's doing better at the bottom of a recession than throughout 10 years of endless prosperity.

The guy clearly believed this to be true, and clearly he was ideologically a Republican. But frankly, there is no way on this green earth that the average cab driver in Washington DC was making more in 2002-3 than he was in 1998.

Unless you would make the argument that Republicans, having just taken over Washington, are better tippers, which, in light of their me-first ideology, seems also to be highly unlikely. Most likely- he saw what his ideology expected him to see, and his own economic situation was viewed through that lens.

The moral of this whole story, I believe, is that America is getting closer to understanding that the fastest way to national economic growth is to have as wide of an economic base as possible, with as short of a pyramid as possible. The more middle class folks there are with expendable incomes, the more they purchase and the more the economy grows (assuming those purchases aren't financed by debt and that some of the goods are manufactured or assembled here).

Eventually, and I think it will be soon, America's Big Business is going to realize that, imagine!, national health care is actually GOOD for their bottom lines. In fact, I'm not sure why its taken so long. Why wouldn't businesses want to socialize a cost that is currently on their own balance sheets, particularly in light of the fact that the nations we compete against mostly have universal health care.

Anyway, sorry if this is disjointed, but it all needed to be said. Progressive economics is the best way to grow the economy. Democrats are better at growing the economy than Republicans.

Gregor: On the short time scales of a Presidential term, centrally planned economy will by definition always yield better results.

I guess explains the failure of the Soviet Union. They used a five-year plan instead of a four-year plan.

Drew Steen has a good point.

Another possibility is that this is just random chance. I mean, from 1948 until now we have not had too many presidents. In general, the economy grew much faster before the 1970s than it has since. We also had more Democratic presidents in that earlier period as well.

For example, does anyone seriously believe that if Dukakis had won in 1988 he would not have had low growth in that term, or that if Bush had won in 1992 he would not have had high growth? I do think Democrats have better economic policies in general, but its hard to believe they could be that much better, to account for the kind of differences you see in this chart.

...Democrats were certainly more oriented toward wage growth than Republicans, who were generally more obsessed with keeping a check on budget deficits and inflation.

Wrong.

"If you look at the 59-year record of debt since the end of WWII, starting with Truman’s term, the difference between the two parties’ contributions to our national debt level change considerably. Since 1946, Democratic presidents increased the national debt an average of only 3.2% per year. The Republican presidents stay at an average increase of 9.7% per year. Republican Presidents out borrowed and spent Democratic presidents by a three to one ratio. Putting that in very real terms; for every dollar a Democratic president has raised the national debt in the past 59 years Republican presidents have raised the debt by $2.99[5]."

Unless "obsessed with keeping a check on budget deficits" means "talks about deficits in campaign speeches to get elected and during the term to provide an excuse to cut social programs."

Actually, a few years ago I wrote a blog on economics and I mentioned this phenomenon. Meg McArdle (in her then blog Live from the WTC) linked to me and said it was stupid, and a commenter said "you should send this to CalPundit - he loves these kind of inconsistencies."

Now I feel validated.

I suspect this is because Democrats are more likely to get elected when economic times are bad (1992, 1976) and Republicans are more likely to win when times are good (2000, the 1950s). It's not perfect - the economy wasn't doing so well in 1980 and Reagan won - but even with so few data points it shows up. And it overcomes the reasonable objection of economists that Presidents have little impact on economic policy. Either that or it's a spurious correlation that GDP grew faster before 1973 than it (generally) has since.

Ah Kevin you may be wrong about low inflation for the last two decades.

Inflation has been understated for the last two decades (approximately) because of a change in the definition of the CPI. There's a very nice posting on this by Barry Ritholtz:

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/03/cpi-2008-vs-198.html

As Barry Says -- "Actions have consequences. Denying reality, falsifying data, gaming the numbers, cooking the books, making believe inflation is more modest than it really is -- has real world, unintended consequences."

Another possibility is that this is just random chance. I mean, from 1948 until now we have not had too many presidents. In general, the economy grew much faster before the 1970s than it has since. We also had more Democratic presidents in that earlier period as well.

Except you'd certainly expect an important averaging effect if the phenomena were not related to the terms of administrations. Why shouldn't the hills and valleys of growth be randomly distributed across terms, if they had no basis in the policies and/or economic zeitgeist of those administrations? Such random distributions should average out the effects, and that is not what one seems to be seeing here.

The party of the president has an additive influence but no independent affect when the party of congress in controlled for. For what it's worth, I'm currently researching the inequality question and the data so far demonstrate that Democratic control of Congress results in higher public social welfare spending along with increases in private welfare spending (501(c)3s). While Republican control decreases public social welfare expenditures and increases private social welfare spending through the use of tax expenditures, relative tax burdens and signals sent to the business community that increased benefit payments to employees will be compenstated. The effects are that more public social spending progressively redistributes income while more private social welfare spending increases regressive redistribution.

The Republicans are the party of stupid people, uninterested in education, facts, history, science or any other branch of learning.
The Democrats, while not exactly the party of intelligence, evidence and science, aren't pathologically opposed to these.

Why exactly is the fact that the Democrats run the economy better a mystery again?

I'm guessing gregor's comments are intended to be sarcastic and ironic. If not, well, f*ck him.

Look, unregulated capitalism inevitably descends into oligopoly, monopoly and piracy. It is human nature. The only sustainable economic system in the long-term is socialism. A recent survey rated the U.S. as 21st among industrialized nations, in terms of standard of living. Sweden was #1.

Socialism does not mean totalitarianism. People in Sweden are as free as we are - perhaps more so. They have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, etc. They don't have a 2nd Amendment, but is that such a bad thing to not have? They have less than .01% of the gun deaths we have in the U.S. Capitalism only benefits those at the top of the heap, over the long-run. 500 years from now, people will look at the failed state called America and wonder why we didn't adopt socialism.

OK, I have seen the analysis done different ways and accept the statistical conclusion. You used to also be able to get a really tight correlation between Washington Redskin football team performance and presidential election outcomes.

I don't really care whether Team Coke or Team Pepsi claims more credit for economic growth. The next politician with any real experience running a business and hiring people will be the first. However, I have three thoughts about the analysis:

This is simple. First, we're not ealing with a large sample set there have only been ten recessions since WWII (not counting the one we're in now, if we're in one). Therefore, a little monkeying around can skew the results. And there has been monkeying around. For the last 40 years, 32 of those years have had Republican-appointed Fed chiefs. Everybody knows Arthur Burns turned up the printing presses to get Nixon re-elected in 1972. A similar phenomenon occurred under Greenspan in 87-88, 91-92 and '02-04. On the other hand, Greenspan tightened in '94-96 and 2000. Volker, the only Democratic appointee and an honest Fed chief, tightened in 1979, bringing on the 1980 recession.

"Before the hurricane in New Orleans I was talking to my roofer who had been in business for nearly 40 years and he said that his business has always been better when a Democrat was in the White House. He musta known something.

Posted by: Neuville on April 7, 2008 at 1:03 PM"

So does that means it rains more when a Democrat is in the White House? Hmmmmm, I think I'll go out and buy me a truckload of umbrellas, while they're cheap now.

Here's a hypothesis: policy doesn't matter as much as enforcement. The savings and loan bust during the Reagan term happened because the Fed didn't think it had to keep too close an eye on the high-risk high-return loans banks made then. The mortgage crisis similarly originated because the Bush administration doesn't care to regulate finance (or much of anything else). Enron comes to mind too. Republican policies aid and abet economic crimes, which help concentrate wealth, but leave most people worse off.

T-Rock,

I agree with you. I think that is at least part of it. People seem to assume that everything will stay the same even if they change things. They think they can have "all this and a pony, too."

So when solutions fix problems they no longer see the need for the solutions. This is a classic blindspot of libertarians. They ignore all the benefits and reasons for financial rules and regulations and assume everything would be just as good plus a lot more freedom if we got rid of those unnecessary rules and regulations.

Perhaps Bush the third was elected because people thought we could keep all the economic gains while also getting a President who would keep his zipper up.

"So does that means it rains more when a Democrat is in the White House? Hmmmmm, I think I'll go out and buy me a truckload of umbrellas, while they're cheap now."

As I said ... Sensible Party vs Stupid Party.

Here's s hint dude --- repairing a roof is a somewhat flexible good that can be scheduled over a wide range of time, and that *is* scheduled when money is available.

coyote,

You show the classic false dilemma. You claim we must have either no regulations or too many.

The truth is that we do need a certain amount of regulation and recycling of the money from top back to bottom to keep the market going.

Please don't claim this is an all or nothing situation.

Democrats were certainly more oriented toward wage growth than Republicans, who were generally more obsessed with keeping a check on budget deficits and inflation.

I think that we can safely say that Republicans have gotten over their aversion to budget deficits.

Republicans have not actually made an effort to control budget deficits since at least the Nixon administration.

Between LBJ's surplus and Clinton's surpluses, the closet any president came to a balanced budget was Ford.

Maynard,
That was snark on my behalf.
Weenie

Weenie: ...it rains more when a Democrat is in the White House...
And you silly libruls blamed Bush for climate change?

Maynard Handley: repairing a roof is a somewhat flexible good that can be scheduled over a wide range of time
Um, maybe for some folks. For a lot of us, it's something that you put off until it starts raining in the house, and then you have to take out an equity loan.

and explain to the appraiser that the loan is to fix the roof .so don't worry about those water stains.

Thersites - I'd offer you my load of umbrellas, but my Mum always told me not to open one up in the house as that would bring bad luck.

"Republicans are more willing to break the back of inflation and risk an immediate recession. "

This makes no sense. If it is hard to figure out how presidents affect the economy so dramatically, it is *really* hard to figure out how they would affect inflation, since the Fed deals with that.

The commenter with the best handle on this is Bruce Wilder. The fundamental problem economists have is they want to pretend their discipline is a science like physics. Anything they have a hard time quantifying, or fitting into mathematical models that are based on certain assumptions, they necessarily wish away. Inherently, though, it’s a social science. Sometimes people in the profession say such things, and they are banished and black-balled to the minor leagues or some harmless sinecure where they won’t bother any of the serious professionals.

Any market-based economy is a house of cards – or maybe it’s better to think of an economy as inherently a balloon, or an incredibly complex aggregation of an infinite number of balloons, all puffed up individually and collectively by perceptions of value. Look at Enron, Arthur Andersen, Bear Stearns. One day they’re worth billions, the next day after some little kid shows they have no clothes, nothing. Maybe hundreds of billions of what looked like real wealth destroyed in a single day. We’re seeing it now when certain investments that were recently highly coveted suddenly become “toxic.”

When a society takes care of its real needs with 10% of its economic activity, and the other 90% is optional, the balloon-like quality of the whole thing is magnified. It’s funny, though, how nobody talks about how a change in the minimum wage not only results in actual wage increases for a certain number of workers, but also more confidence up and down the board. Sure, they recognize the confidence of investors, and that’s no small potatoes. But what about the confidence of those who have only their time and energy to invest? When ordinary people have more confidence, that should mean more confidence in making economic decisions like buying something, selling something or saving something – in other words, more economic velocity with the money turning over more quickly with more decisions from more confidence. What is that confidence? Like caring about the future and being less resentful of performing my low-paying job. Like if I’m already middle class, seeing my employer quietly edge my income up to maintain a competitive differential from the minimum wage people. Like not worrying quite so much about losing a decent paying job because at least a minimum wage job isn’t as bad now as it was – i.e. not quite so far to fall – so maybe I can take a chance on a job I’d like better.

Someone did mention the zeitgeist. When Democrats shift the tax burden, raise the minimum wage and allow workers to organize again, they are shifting the balance of power. More things happen than just changes in those numbers to plug into a model. The problem is, all that’s way too touchy-feely for “scientists,” especially the huge majority employed by the people whose power is constricted to a minor degree. (That includes the liberal academics with their lucrative consulting clients.) If I recall my economic history, it seems to me the originators of the profession, the ones who discovered the “invisible hand,” had a much better grasp of the social science aspect of economics. Treating it as a science, though, allows us to stay away from such stuff. Seems it’s more like a kept profession now, kind of like, well, establishment journalists.

They may be happy to use deficits as an excuse to block Democratic programs, but they've made no effort whatsoever to really bring deficits down.

Agree. This is about as close to a historical FACT as you're ever going to get.

My two cents:

Republicans are generally considered the pro-business party. You'd think that policies that favored business would be better for the economy. But it doesn't work that way in practice.

The business interests that get the attention of presidents are BIG business. The major corporations are much more interested in using government to maintain their dominant positions. They want to stifle (not increase) competetion and innovation.

Big business generally has more leverage with Republican presidents. They protect their own.

Big business is not, however, the engine that drives economic growth. Small and mid-size business is where most of the innovation occurs, and most growth is seen. Small/medium business does not need government to give them an advantage. They just need big business to be held in check so that the big boys can't wield their market dominance to kill new competition when it comes along.

I'd bet that happens more often with Dems in the White House than with Republicans.

Well... I'm next to completely inept when discussing the economy on anything more than very broad terms, but I think I can explain at least one part of this: Republicans wage more wars, and wage them more expensively.

I think you can generally say that defense spending is good for the economy when not actively fighting a war. Defense contracts re-circulate into the economy with I think a pretty high rate of return (since most non-war defense spending is spent on US citizens and US companies). Waging a modern war, unless it's accompanied by a huge increase in US manufacturing (as in WWII), sends a lot of money out of the country (for instance, massively increased fuel costs which enrich OPEC) and fails to bring a lot into the country. There is probably also some level of foreign investment in the US economy as our allies have to either pay for their own part in the war or for various reasons don't feel as comfortable investing in the US in wartime.

I doubt this accounts for the entire Dem/GOP disparity, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out it's a significant contributing factor. Unfortunately, this armchair conjecture is as good as I get on econ matters, and I'll admit there are holes in the theory. Obviously the weakest part of this argument are the Reagan years, where non-combat related defense spending was huge compared to, for instance, either Bush administration.

Hey coyote - wrong automotive analogy. Regulations are more akin to the shock absorber in your car than to a speed governor. The job of a shock absorber is to counteract the springs. It lets the suspension move with the springs, but then limits their reaction so it doesn't overshoot and bounce the car into the air. In a real sense the shock absorber doesn't let the spring fully do its job - but a car without shock absorbers is dangerous to drive. Similarly, without some regulation, the economy can soar -- but then it can crash too.
Actually, the concept of dampers is widespread thoughout many of the devices (mechanical and electrical) that you use every day, from shock absorbers, to thermostats, to power supplies, to the power grid. The engineering (and economic)question is how much top end to give up to avoid the destruction.

Congress was warned in 1991 about what would happen if they took down the firewalls between banks and brokerages and no one listened. The piracy of capitalism continues unabated….

The wealthy care more about inflation because it erodes the value of the bonds and debt they hold as investments. They are the money-changers in the Temple who Christ scourged. They make their money without working for it. Look at George W. Bush’s personal holdings - all fixed-interest debt instruments and no equity. The rich do no work and accept no risk. Inflation scares them to death, as it means they may actually be forced to do work. The poor live paycheck to paycheck, so unemployment scares them to death. Who cares about inflation, as long as you have some money coming in?

THAT is the difference between the rich and the poor.

This is a classic blindspot of libertarians. They ignore all the benefits and reasons for financial rules and regulations and assume everything would be just as good plus a lot more freedom if we got rid of those unnecessary rules and regulations.

Libertarians assume that if you remove all regulations, you get a perfect free market utopia that maximizes the benefit for some, most, or all participants, depending on the personality of the libertarian. No you don't. You get the Sopranos.

For real-world examples of, well, low-regulation areas, look at Somalia and Iraq for third-world countries and Russia for a sort-of first world country. Essentially, loose to moderately organized heirarchies of warlords using any means necessary to force wealth out of their territory, and the head government is simply the biggest gorilla on the block. Russia has the added benefit of a zombified central bureaucracy that can be used and abused for fun and profit by the big boys, as well.

None of these guys have the first clue what it takes to run a business day to day, nor how much of a business owner's time and effort is aimed not at service customers better, and not at being more productive, and not at making employees happier or better trainined, but at responding to the latest mass of government regulation, paperwork, liscensing, taxes, and other total crap.

First, there definitely needs to be a balance between smart regulations and letting the markets work. The issue is that the balance has rarely been achieved -- it's either not enough regulation (like in the case of Enron) or too much (the over-reaction that is SarbOx).

Secondly, your example only applies to small businesses. Wal-Mart, for example, has all the resources in the world to handle regulations, but still sucks ass at service. Why? Well ... I'm not exactly sure. Probably because it doesn't have to worry about it -- enough people will shop there no matter what. So why bother?

**shurgs**

The conservative Deflator,

Amen brother. Turbotax allows me to compare myself to others in my income group. It turns out that most of the people in my income group get their money from investments not from wages. I can imagine that becomes even more true the higher one's income becomes.

Economics aint' no science. Start with a political point of view and cherry pick your statistics.

One of the most interesting studies I have done was to analyze the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom. While they have created a formula that makes the US look quite good, if you look only at things like tax policies, government expenditures, and labor restrictions, you will find that the closest correlation to high per capita income comes from high taxes, high gov't expenditure and labor restrictions such as high minimum wage, guaranteed vacation time and extended unemployment benefits. It may sound counterintuitive, but money flows upwards quicker than downwards.

Democratic administrations tend to provide a better climate for the vast majority of the population (2/3's?). If that number of people are doing well, then the general economy will do well.
Especially if the economy is based on general consumption.

This one is easy to explain. The majority of Democrats have been presidents since 1947 during the post war boom era, from 1947-1973. After that, during the post war bust, from 1973-2008, Republicans have been the majority holding office. So yeah, of couse Dems do better than Repubs on econ.

Alex,

I was thinking along similar lines, but here's what Larry Bartel's says here:

http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2008/04/larry-bartels-r.html

"More importantly, the differences appear consistently in the pre-1974 (high growth) and post-1974 (low growth) eras; they persist even when any one or two administrations (or election years, or transition years) are omitted from the tabulations; and they persist even after taking account of a considerable variety of potential confounding factors."

"It may sound counterintuitive, but money flows upwards quicker than downwards."

This really shouldn't be counter-intuitive, and the fact that it is so is a rather impressive display of conservatives and their media's ability to frame the discussion, the paradigm.

In fact, its painfully obvious. Let's put it this way. Give a dollar to a man making $10,000 a year and one dollar to a man making $10,000,000 per year. Most likely, the poorer man will spend that dollar. From there it will work its way up to the shopkeep, and upwards layer by layer to the ultimate masters of capital. Or, in the supply-side case, you give it to the masters of capital and trust that they will invest it in a way that will eventually benefit those in the middle and bottom.

As was illustrated a few weeks ago by Kevin's post about corporations being awash in cash and hoarding it instead of investing it, the theory of "trickle down" is an utter fraud perpetuated by people who have to be smart enough to know better. The best way to grow the economy is to improve the lot of those in the middle and on the bottom.

But, as also discussed recently, when the bottom and middle do well, that can be seen as degrading the status at the top. And we wouldn't want the comfortable to be discomforted, even for the greater good.

"Something seems to be going on."

Yeah, less graft/corruption and more responsible governance...period.

Most of the differences that Bartels and others point out are due to the differences between the early period, up to the 70's, and the later period after 1980. The trend in income inequality was not reversed by the Clinton administration.

Looking at the data in ways other than Bartel's graphs gives a very different picture:

http://www.skeptometrics.org/IncomeGrowth.htm

The data should be looked at with more sophisticated statistical tools and with a more careful consideration of alternate hypotheses, specifically that the significant variable is time. At the moment these facile comparisons of presidential administrations are not convincing.

What the differences do demonstrate is that the Republican supply-side policies, which have been in force since 1980 (even during the Clinton administration to a large extent) have not performed as promised in any way (unless you believe that the promises were only for rich people). But there was already a mountain of evidence on this point.

To this naive non-economist, it seems this simple: Consumers are also producers. When people make enough to buy the things that people like them produce, the economy hums. (Henry Ford understood this...he paid his workers enough to buy the cars they made -- and priced them accordingly. Like the dealer in a poker game taking his rake, every time the money went round from Ford to worker to Ford to worker,etc.he took a cut. That he was an anti-Semitic, union-busting bastard is beside this point.)

I've lived through 11 presidents so far, and it seems that the Democrats (especially early in their terms, when not coincidentally they may be more likely to have a friendly Congress) actually do try to tilt policy to benefit the lower end of the scale -- lower, that is, than the top 1%. After all, that was the point of the New Deal.

I'm guessing that if you looked at things lie the Wagner Act (labor unions) and the GI Bill, you'd see a more direct line between Democratic policy and general prosperity.

...unless you believe that the promises were only for rich people...

Now we're getting somewhere...

Fiscal policies for the benefit of the wealthiest do not produce the same widespread improvements in income as fiscal policies for the benefit of the poorest and median incomes. The multiplier effect has to be much greater when fiscal policies transfer a bit of the economic wealth of a large economy to the bottom half rather than the wealthiest. I am pretty sure this is not a new idea.

Brojo, you're very very wrong.

When you cut taxes on investment income, wealthy people invest in factories and stuff like that to employ working people, and the rising tide lifts all boats. They certainly wouldn't put their money in incomprehensible, abstract investment vehicles that crash then and need to be bailed out with taxpayer money. Heavens no! What on earth are you thinking of?

(Al seems to be taking the day off. I'm doing the best I can to fill in, bear with me.)

Presidents tend to be at the peak of their power in their first year, and that's when they're most able to pass major economic reforms: think of Bush and Reagan's tax cuts

Wasn't Reagan's "signature" tax cut the '86 tax reform act? He may have also lowered them in his first term, but he also raised them, as well as conducting a significant change in social security which for the most part raised 'taxes'.

Kevin, what are you smoking? Republicans haven't cared about budget deficits since the days of Gerald Ford. Oh, certainly they blathered on about a balanced budget amendment, but deficits have exploded under their rule, and contracted under Democratic rule.