Brian catches this gem of socio-economic analysis from everyone's favorite conservative Deep Thinker, George Will:
How do you exclaim, as Hillary Clinton does, that today's economy is "like going back to the era of the robber barons" and insist that the nation urgently needs substantial tax increases, in the face of these facts:
In the 102 quarters since Ronald Reagan's tax cuts went into effect more than 25 years ago, there have been 96 quarters of growth. Since the Bush tax cuts and the current expansion began, the economy's growth has averaged 3 percent per quarter, and more than 8 million jobs have been created. The deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product is below the post-World War II average.
Yes, how do you exclaim that we're going back to the days of the robber barons when residents of Iowa still exhibit a healthy appetite for potatoes? Or, put another way, we've now got at least one Republican columnist auditioning for the honor of teaching Mitt Romney what a non sequitur is -- with examples!
Meanwhile, the Gilded Age wasn't defined by an absence of growth -- the robber barons, after all, brought us massive increases in efficiency through heightened energy production, railroad linkage, etc -- but by a lopsided distribution of wealth and income. And as the graph below decisively proves, the current era in no way resembles the Gilded Age's concentrations of cash. In no way. Not even a little bit. Just ignore the red line.
But hey! The deficit as a percentage of GDP is around its post-WWII average! Of course, that high average is mainly a function of Ronald Reagan, but shush now. Context does nothing but cause trouble...
