Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Poll: Which US presidential candidate do you like best?

Roger, I don't expect you to agree with the New York Times. Why should you? You are a conservative and they are liberal. Why on earth would you agree with them?

But - I expect you to tell me why and how you think the New York Times is wrong. I expect you to dissect their arguments and explain to me why you think that those arguments don't hold up under close scrutiny.

But of course they do that. Specialize in looking for statistics that make Republicans look bad, and ignoring statistics that make Republicans look good, I mean. I expect the New York Times to do that. They are liberal, after all, so I expect them to show me the statistics that support their view. I don't expect them to eagerly serve up the statistics that support the Republicans.

Are you telling me that Republicans don't do the same thing, Roger? Do you seriously think that conservative media always give "equal time" to liberals? Don't conservative media ever present the kind of statistics that make them look right, while at the same time ignoring statistics that support the liberals?

If you think that conservative media never do that, think again. And if you think that you never do that, think again. You and I have had a discussion about median income in America. You have said that median income is up in terms of dollars, and I have said that median income is down in terms of purchasing power. I don't doubt that you are right when you say that the median American family earns more dollars now than during the Clinton years, but I also believe that this same family can't buy as much for their income now as they could during the Clinton years. This is an example of when conservatives and liberals present a bit of statistics - in this case, statistics about median income - and paint radically different pictures of reality with the help of it. Yet both pictures are right. However, I will insist that in this case, the liberals are "more right" than the conservatives, because what really matters about median income is not how many dollars you get but how much you can buy for them.

I expect liberals to show me the statistics that support their point of view. I also expect conservatives to show me the statistics that support their point of view. And then, when both sides have presented their evidence to me, I want to try to decide which side has got the strongest case.

Let me return to something else you said:

It seems to me that you make two points here: one, that the economic boom that happened during the Clinton years happened because of the IT boom and was not Clinton's doing at all; and two, that the bust that followed was all Clinton's fault. So the boom was not his doing, but the bust was all his fault. I don't know, but this line of reasoning just seems unfair to me.

I agree, however, that the general economic boom in the mid and late nineties had a lot to do with the enormous IT boom. It is easy to forget, now, how totally revolutionary the new IT technology seemed to be. I remember that it seemed like we were entering a new era altogether. That is certainly how the new technology was described in most Swedish media. I knew a lot of guys who suddenly got very well-paid IT jobs during the nineties. Computers seemed like a cornucopia of job generators: more and more and more IT people were wanted everywhere.

I agree that Clinton had nothing to do with this fantastic boom. Was it his fault that the bubble eventually burst, then? I think there are really mitigating circumstances here. Because the IT technology seemed so revolutionary and so completely new, it was easy to think that old economic rules did not necessarily apply to it. Compare it with the present bubble, the housing bubble and the banking crisis. What is new or revolutionary about housing and banking? Why would anyone truly believe that house loans could suddenly generate enormous wealth? It seems obvious to me that there was no reason to believe that people's homes would suddenly turn start laying golden eggs. Bush had no good reason to believe that houses could generate unlimited growth all by themselves. Clinton had a so much better reason to believe that the new, amazing IT technology could just keep generating more and more and more jobs.

As to whether the Clinton tax hikes really hurt the American economy, I guess that the only way we could really know that is if we could turn back time and "play history" all over again, this time making it unfold without the Clinton tax hikes. Would the American economy have been stronger during the Clinton years if he had not raised taxes for the rich? Only such an actual experiment could really tell us.

I agree. Yes, the American economy was on its way down when Clinton left office. I clearly remember that. Gore would have had to try to deal with the economic problems, one way or another.

I also firmly believe that American history would have unfolded very differently if Gore had become President. For one thing, I'm absolutely convinced that Gore would never have attacked Iraq. The reason why I'm so sure of that is that I remember so clearly how flabbergasted everyone was when Bush announced that he planned to attack Iraq. My own right-wing local newspaper had, up till then, never breathed a syllable about Saddam being any sort of global threat. But once it was clear that Bush was definitely going to attack, my newspaper started rooting for Bush to remove this horrible international menace. My point is that the attack on Iraq was all Bush's own idea (and probably the idea of a few of his cronies, like Cheney), and if Gore had been President, he just wouldn't have thought of attacking Iraq in the first place. So the war wouldn't have happened, and the huge cost of fighting the war wouldn't have happened either.

Gore probably wouldn't have lowered taxes for the rich. If anything, he might have raised some "green" taxes. What overall and long-term effects this would have had on the American economy is something we can only speculate about. One thing is clear, however. The last time Swedish media were so full of economic worries as it is today was in the late eighties, after there had been a 16% Dow Jones plunge (or something like that), and the right-wing government in Sweden had given us Swedes our own housing and banking bubble. Do you still think that the present economic woes in America are all Clinton's (and Carter's) doing, Roger?

Ann