Was The Clinton Economy Good?.....Or Just An Extension Of Reagan-Nomics?

[thomhartmann]

[Maedhros]

1. Here is a chart from a blog post by Paul Krugman.

From here: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/introducing-this-blog/?_r=0

In fact, let me start this blog off with a chart that’s central to how I think about the big picture, the underlying story of what’s really going on in this country. The chart shows the share of the richest 10 percent of the American population in total income – an indicator that closely tracks many other measures of economic inequality – over the past 90 years, as estimated by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. I’ve added labels indicating four key periods.

Note that the increase in wealth concentration in the top 10% only increased moderately during the Reagan years, and did not show a drastic uptick until Bush I took office. What Krugman calls "The Great Divergence" occurred during the Clinton years:

The great divergence: Since the late 1970s the America I knew has unraveled. We’re no longer a middle-class society, in which the benefits of economic growth are widely shared: between 1979 and 2005 the real income of the median household rose only 13 percent, but the income of the richest 0.1% of Americans rose 296 percent.

Most people assume that this rise in inequality was the result of impersonal forces, like technological change and globalization. But the great reduction of inequality that created middle-class America between 1935 and 1945 was driven by political change; I believe that politics has also played an important role in rising inequality since the 1970s. It’s important to know that no other advanced economy has seen a comparable surge in inequality – even the rising inequality of Thatcherite Britain was a faint echo of trends here.

Evidence suggests that Clinton's policies did nothing to slow, and very likely exacerbated, the increase in wealth inequality.

[antigop]

2. "He (Bill Clinton) is part of the problem." THANK YOU! nt

[JDPriestly]

3. Anybody who votes for Hillary Clinton deserves what he or she will

get.

I remember walking into courtrooms in 1997. In the back, the lawyers were all exchanging stock tips -- not focusing on their cases, their clients and their reality.

I had read a lot of books about the Crash of 1929 and figured then that we were in a bubble that would burst. I thought it would burst earlier, but Bush I and Greenspan goosed the housing market (I remember a State of the Union speech in which Bush I talked about everybody buying a house; remember the slogan about the "ownership society"; didn't happen.) and delayed the big crash until 2008.

Vote for Hillary Clinton and you will get what you deserve: more debt and more war.

[Paka]

4. K&R

I love Richard Wolff. He is so clear and concise.

[Festivito]

5. Beat the hell out of the Reagan-Republicanomics. And, ...

like Obama, Clinton only had a short window where he could pass something to bring us out of the Bush recession, Bush 1 recession.
like Obama, that small window came with just enough reluctant Democrats to fight and curb the bill passed.

And, now we are going to call Clinton's action and action of Reagan?

This opinion appears stretched by agenda.