Democrats Are Better For The Economy

I have discussed on this blog several times that I believe the economy (stock market, GDP, jobs, deficit, etc.) does much better under Democratic presidents than under Republican presidents. The Republicans have long spread the propaganda that they are the fiscally-responsible party, and tried to paint Democrats as "tax and spenders", but that is just not true.

Now there is more evidence of this, and it comes from a very conservative source -- Forbes Magazine. In an October 10th article for that magazine, business writer Adam Hartung discusses a new book about the United States economy -- Bulls, Bears and the Ballot Box by Bob Deitrick and Lew Goldfarb. Here is some of what Hartung said in that article:

This book’s authors are to be commended for spending several years, and many thousands of student research assistant man-days, sorting out economic performance from the common viewpoint – and the broad theories upon which much policy has been based.  Their compendium of economic facts is the most illuminating document on economic performance during different administrations, and policies, than anything previously published.

The authors looked at a range of economic metrics including inflation, unemployment, corporate profit growth, stock market performance, household income growth, economy (GDP) growth, months in recession and others.  To their surprise (I had the opportunity to interview Mr. Goldfarb) they discovered that laissez faire policies had far less benefits than expected, and in fact produced almost universal negative economic outcomes for the nation!

From this book loaded with statistical fact tidbits and comparative charts, here are just a few that caused me to realize that my long-term love affair withMilton Friedman‘s writing and recommended policies in “Free to Choose” were grounded in a theory I long admired, but that simply have proven to be myths when applied!

• Personal disposable income has grown nearly 6 times more under Democratic presidents
• Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown 7 times more under Democratic presidents
• Corporate profits have grown over 16% more per year under Democratic presidents (they actually declined under Republicans by an average of 4.53%/year)
• Average annual compound return on the stock market has been 18 times greater under Democratic presidents (If you invested $100k for 40 years of Republican administrations you had $126k at the end, if you invested $100k for 40 years of Democrat administrations you had $3.9M at the end)
• Republican presidents added 2.5 times more to the national debt than Democratic presidents
• The two times the economy steered into the ditch (Great Depression and Great Recession) were during Republican, laissez faire administrations.