You seem cynical now but I am optimistic. I see the precursors for a nice, long, slow, gradual expansion. Free trade is prevailing over protectionism with some stupid exceptions. Lots of money is sloshing around so anyone with a remotely good idea should be able to find some. We got past the tenth anniversary of the WTC bombing without another similarly terrible incident and people have recovered somewhat from that, psychologically. Obama is a moderate Democrat and not a fire breather. The health care plan is undoubtedly inflationary but I can't see much inflation kicking in for two or three years given the excess reserves in the banking system. Also, if the next few decades have slightly slower growth, that would not be surprising because of the aging of the population and issues related to that. The birth rate has stabilized so that effect should be temporary. It could be that real GDP will grow more slowly in the future because of things like universal health care coverage, but that's okay. We can all still relatively prosper under these conditions. Improved health care coverage will lead to a more productive workforce and better economic growth but that could take a generation or so. In fact, I would take a generational or 25-30 year approach to economic planning instead of this idea of planning to get re-elected. I would vote for the party with a very long range plan as opposed to Band-Aids.
It's a legitimate criticism that I never show cause and effect, but I addressed this earlier: I don't care. I would care if we had five data points but we have way more than that and at the end of the day we need to deal with effect no matter what the cause. Also I should have used the present perfect and not the simple present tense. The GDP and unemployment results [B]have been[/B] superior under the Democrats. Call me crazy but with so much history I think they will be better under the Dems going forward as well.
Keynes is associated with Democrats cuz he was an adviser to FDR, and because he advocated expansionary fiscal policy to combat recessions, which Republicans just refuse to do. And although there are slight and ephemeral differences between Republicans and Libertarians, the Libertarian position is also for extreme fiscal contraction even though that was exactly what Hoover did in 1930.
But I do have to say, I don't care if tax rates go up down or sideways, I wanna know what the fuck they will be, preferably very soon. Regarding the corporate tax rate, whether it is 0% or 100% the net result is the same. Never lose sight of the fact that with flexible exchange rates you can run a deficit for a long time if your securities are preferred over others. England did this for about 200 years by issuing "consols."
