Anyone here too young to remember the Clinton administrations 8 year economy?

[NNN0LHI]

This is how I remember those eight years and if I get something wrong don't be afraid to straighten me out.

Here goes. Clinton took office during a deep recession left over from old man Bush. That is one of the reasons why Clinton had just beaten Bush. The economy was in shambles. The first thing Clinton did was raise the tax rates on the wealthy to roughly the same place Obama wants to raise them to now. The Republicans in Congress were objecting and obstructing like all get out and saying (hoping) Clinton would destroy the economy. On the contrary those eight years turned out to be the longest sustained period of economic growth on record. Except for a few short minor downturns and the what is known as the dotcom bubble that crashed the NASDAQ everything was really good. It was good for the wealthy and it was good for the middle class and even the poor. Everyone I knew was pretty happy.

In a nutshell the dotcom bubble was a bunch of crooks who opened up little companies with just a website and maybe one or two employees. Then one of these companies would sell another one of these companies $50 million dollars worth of ad space. Then that company would sell back to that same company another $50 mil in ad space and in fact no one was giving anyone any money at all. All these big sales of ad space to one another on paper made these companies stock price go through the roof. It wasn't really worth anything. The US government didn't lose anything from that fiasco.

But anyway if Obama can get us back to something resembling that period of time I think the Dems and this country will be in fine shape for a long time.

It won't be easy though. The Rethugs are going to fight us every inch of the way from here on out. They want Obama to fail because they know their own ideas are what has nearly bankrupted this country.

Don

Edit: I am pretty sure the DJ went from about 3000 to around 11000 during this eight year period. Everyones 401k was smoking. You couldn't lose on them. The value of your home was skyrocketing. I remember wishing I had bought a bigger one back then.

[Recursion]

1. Remember the howling about FMLA his first year?

And notice how overturning that now isn't even on the conservatives' radar anymore? (I can already see the ad with the single working mom talking about how her son died and she couldn't get out of work to take care of him, etc.)

[ben_meyers]

2. You got it pretty much right

The 90's are very reminiscent of the Go-Go Roaring 20's. Ain't we got fun.

[laconicsax]

3. Most people don't care about which party is in control when times are good.

They only care about who to blame when times are bad.

[TheDebbieDee]

4. I have fond memories of the Clinton years! In fact, I even felt

hopeful enough about the future to apply for loans and return to college (I was 34 years old). And I knew that my two children had a great future ahead of them.

Obama has made great strides to getting us back to the Clinton era and he hasn't even take office yet. The simple fact that the world's leaders seem to anxious to make his acquaintance and rebuild the bridges that dimson has torn down makes a big difference.

[Attackthejugular]

5. I came to this country in '95

But I remember the high productivity in the printing business, which is gone now. I work as a printer.

[GoesTo11]

6. 1992 was a much different time.

Yes, we had a recession. But we hadn't had 8 years of squandering of everything in the country - yes, there were tax cuts for the rich and deficit spending, but nothing like today. We hadn't had an Iraq war, we hadn't given up so much of our manufacturing base, the S&L crisis was big but small by comparison, and there hadn't been nearly so long of a languishing middle class. It was a business cycle recession, serious, but not coming at the end of so much mismanagement, so much financial trickery. Clinton took over when the recession was probably past its worst, so he timed the tax increase right. That was good then. Obama's facing a much more challenging situation now. There's a lot of damage.

[Donnachaidh]

7. Yeah --and remember NAFTA?

Sure the economy was good then.

But a program called NAFTA which he helped implement allowed thousands of jobs to be outsourced.

This trip down memory lane would realistic if the OP wasn't looking at it with rose-coloured BLINKERS. :eyes:

[Captain Hilts]

15. China, India and Indonesia are in NAFTA?! Who knew?? nt

[MannyGoldstein]

17. NAFTA Was Tiny Compared To Almost-Free Trade With China

Clinton's ramming Almost-Free Trade Status for China through Congress is good for losing millions of jobs. Even Larry Summers, one of its architects, now admits it was bad.

It was a *surprise* that removing tariffs for nations where workers make $2 a day would result in tremendous loss of jobs? Bullshit. They knew; they didn't give a fuck.

[Captain Hilts]

18. It started under GHWB and the Republican Congress supported it enthusiastically.

[MannyGoldstein]

22. Are You Thinking That Clinton Didn't Strongly Back...

- and actually ram through Congress - the specific bill that virtually removed tariffs from Chinese goods?

[Luminous Animal]

8. It was a disaster for poor people...

The expansion of sentencing minimums, that hideous welfare reform and the "fortuitous" expansion of the prison industry. Just in time to have a place to warehouse all those poor folks for penny ante possession convictions.

[paulk]

13. not true

Higher incomes at all levels
After falling by nearly $2,000 between 1988 and 1992, the median family’s income rose by $6,338, after adjusting for inflation, since 1993. African American family income increased even more, rising by nearly $7,000 since 1993. After years of stagnant income growth among average and lower income families, all income brackets experienced double-digit growth since 1993. The bottom 20 percent saw the largest income growth at 16.3 percent.


Lowest poverty rate in 20 years
Since Congress passed President Clinton’s Economic Plan in 1993, the poverty rate declined from 15.1 percent to 11.8 percent last year — the largest six-year drop in poverty in nearly 30 years. There are now 7 million fewer people in poverty than in 1993. The child poverty rate declined more than 25 percent, the poverty rates for single mothers, African Americans and the elderly have dropped to their lowest levels on record, and Hispanic poverty dropped to its lowest level since 1979.

----------------


The michael moore whackjob left pushes this bullshit, along with the right wing, but the facts are that poor people benefited from the Clinton years....

[Luminous Animal]

23. I specifically mentioned welfare reform

which destroyed the social safety net for poor families. We are seeing the ramifications of that now. Economies always run in boom and bust cycles, Clinton's reform ensured that the safety net would be in tatters for those who would need it most.

[paulk]

28. welfare needed to be reformed

and the mistakes made with the bill Clinton signed (which came out of a Republican Congress), would have been corrected if Democrats had maintained control of the White House, imo. Now that we do have a Democratic President and Congress, hopefully the faults of the '96 legislation will be corrected.

[Luminous Animal]

30. Why?

Why did welfare need to be reformed from a system based on need to a punitive system? Poverty level was the same when he left office as it was in 1979. Child poverty rates had increased since 1979. He certainly ended welfare as we knew it but did nothing to end poverty as we knew it. In fact welfare reform abandoned the bottom 1/5th of the population leaving them worse off than they were under the old system.

Clinton made welfare reform a campaign issue, you can not dump it into the Republican's laps.

[paulk]

31. the system we had provided no incentive for recipients to

get off of welfare. Sometimes it takes punitive measures to get people back on their feet. And that, to me at least, and to most people who supported welfare reform - (which was a majority, btw), is what welfare is supposed to be - a means for people to get back on their feet. Welfare shouldn't be a lifestyle, which is what I saw, through personal experience...

That said - it's clear that the current system has it's shortcomings - more money needs to be put into job training, etc.

[Luminous Animal]

32. That's Reagan propaganda...

and a Grover Norquist solution to a non-existent problem. The fact that most people believed the propaganda of the Welfare Queen doesn't make it true. When Clinton destroyed AFDC two thirds of the recipients were children. The other third were adults taking care of children. As a result of the destruction of AFDC, millions more children ended up in poverty at the end of Clinton's term. About half of families stayed on welfare for less than a year, a quarter only for a few months... You may believe that you saw welfare as a lifestyle but what you were witnessing was poverty a systematic institution. We treat our poor people worse than any other western democracy.

[paulk]

33. no, and your harsh rhetoric is why the far left

ends up being ignored

it's all black and white for you folks

if someone doesn't agree with you it's Reagan/Norquist

of course the "welfare queen" thing was propaganda

but institutionalized welfare doesn't help people get out of poverty, either

[Luminous Animal]

35. Institutionalized welfare

works in France, Germany, Canada, Spain, England... and raising people out of poverty is exactly what it does do.

FYI, the idea of The Great Society was starting to take hold and policies were making inroads into alleviating poverty. Even Nixon understood that and proposed a guaranteed income... that is, if a family earned so many dollars less than the poverty level, that family would receive money. Unfortunately conservative pragmatists were drowned out my anti-government idealogues. Anti-government activists like Norquist and Buchanan were specific in their goals, that is turning "welfare" into a dirty concept. Norquist's strategy was to consistently promote propaganda by negatively linking welfare to already suspect underclasses... illegal immigrants. He was quite upfront about this strategy of taking one marginalized segment of society and linking it government programs in order to supplant positive associations with any government largesse. (Gingrich catapulted the propaganda as well with his successful campaign, "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control" to turn "liberal" into a dirty word.) It was Norquist's notion that whenever talking about welfare, an anti-government activist must also associate it with illegal immigrants until the word "welfare" took on similar negative associations and once welfare became successfully marginalized and demonized it could be dismantled.

[Luminous Animal]

36. One thing that has been bothering me...

You state that most people supported welfare reform (and that may be true) but further down you dismiss the power of the Republican agenda. FYI, it was very difficult at the time for anti-poverty activists to battle disinformation. The corporate media was more than happy to parrot government propaganda and totally dismiss actual facts.

Witness our own recent history. A full two years after 9/11, 70% of the population believed that Saddam was involved. I think that the left-wing internet had a lot to do with ultimately changing that mindset and with a consistent push of the facts forced even our government to admit that Saddam was not involved. Now we are down to 30% (Fox news viewers) believing that there was a link. I think that if, during Reagan's reign, the internet had been what it is today, the Republican's would have had little success with their fact free anti-welfare campaign and it never would have been a campaign issue for Bill Clinton.

[shadowknows69]

56. Just a question. Were you on welfare at any time during the "reform"?

It looked less rosy from my perspective.

[paulk]

59. no, not during the reform

but experiences I have had with social services previous to that had led me to believe that the system had problems and needed to be reformed. The Clinton era reforms probably went too far, since they were done at a time when the economy was expanding, and at a time when Republicans controlled Congress and had more input into the legislation.

Hopefully, the Obama administration will revisit this.

[kdmorris]

67. Hear hear!

Looked a lot less rosy to me, too! 1996 was the hell year.

[Luminous Animal]

44. Oh! I just remembered!

You make a snide remark about the "Michael Moore whackjob left" with no facts to back up you derision but I mention a specific ideological agenda that originates from the right and you accuse me of using harsh rhetoric.

Reality has a well known liberal bias.

[Greyhound]

50. Kool-Aid comes in many flavors.

Not one fact, but you're the one with the harsh rhetoric.

[Luminous Animal]

52. Not one fact, eh?

Here are some I mentioned...

When Clinton destroyed AFDC two thirds of the recipients were children. The other third were adults taking care of children. As a result of the destruction of AFDC, millions more children ended up in poverty at the end of Clinton's term. About half of families stayed on welfare for less than a year, a quarter only for a few months.

Prove me wrong.

[Greyhound]

55. I was talking about the person you replied to.

Once you got specific he left.
:kick:

[Luminous Animal]

60. Ooops!

Sorry about that!

[Greyhound]

62. I should have been more clear. n/t

[paulk]

58. I did post facts

from 1999-

Higher incomes at all levels
After falling by nearly $2,000 between 1988 and 1992, the median family’s income rose by $6,338, after adjusting for inflation, since 1993. African American family income increased even more, rising by nearly $7,000 since 1993. After years of stagnant income growth among average and lower income families, all income brackets experienced double-digit growth since 1993. The bottom 20 percent saw the largest income growth at 16.3 percent.


Lowest poverty rate in 20 years
Since Congress passed President Clinton’s Economic Plan in 1993, the poverty rate declined from 15.1 percent to 11.8 percent last year — the largest six-year drop in poverty in nearly 30 years. There are now 7 million fewer people in poverty than in 1993. The child poverty rate declined more than 25 percent, the poverty rates for single mothers, African Americans and the elderly have dropped to their lowest levels on record, and Hispanic poverty dropped to its lowest level since 1979.


"harsh rhetoric " refers to the tactic that political extremists always seem to use when arguing - that of assuming that, if the person they are arguing with doesn't agree with them 100%, then they are politically 180 degrees away from them.

[hfojvt]

65. sounds like a cut and paste from a Clinton press release

I'd like to know how that was measured. First it starts with median income, which is kind of a questionable stat. By which I mean that a $6,000 increase in median income does not necessarily benefit a lot of people, especially at the bottom.

Here's an example. In 1993, the quintile limits were 15,643; 29,772; 46,798; 72,744 (in 2001 dollars). If the median income goes up by $6,000, that does not necessarily benefit the people in the bottom two quintiles. It may just mean an income gain for the 45-55% group.

Secondly I may have found the source on the income bracket growth rate. In 1999, the income limits for the quintiles were - 18,266; 33,991; 53,663; 84,313 (also in 2001 dollars). Thus the growth rate for the quintiles was 16.76 for the bottom, 14.17 for the next, 14.66 for the 3rd and 15.9 for the fourth. But the bottom 20% did not see the largest growth. That was reserved, under Clinton, for the top 5% which grew from 126,233 to 150,857 - a 19.5% growth rate. Just as telling, on that score, is the share of aggregate income going to each quintile. In 1992, the bottom got 3.8% but in 1999 only 3.6%. In 1992 the second quintile got 9.4%, but in 1999 only 8.9%. In 1992 the top quintile got 46.9% but in 1999 they got 49.4%. In 1992 the top 5% got 18.6% while in 1999 they got 21.5%.

This is continuing a trend since in 1980 those numbers were 4.3, 10.3, 43.7 and 15.8, or
share of national income going to
the bottom 20% - next 20% - top 20% - top 5%
1980 - 4.3 - 10.3 - 43.7 - 15.8
1992 - 3.8 - 9.4 - 46.9 - 18.6
1999 - 3.6 - 8.9 - 49.4 - 21.5

The bottom 40% get a smaller share of the pie, while the top 20% and especially the top 5% get an ever larger share. The consequences of Reaganomics more than Rubinomics, but Clinton's tax cut of 1996 did not help in this matter and neither did the suzerainity of fiscal conservatism.

[kdmorris]

68. Completely true.

It's obvious you don't get it. NO one ever found out what happened to all those people who "got off of welfare". How many are living beneath an overpass? How many women went back to abusive husbands or married the first guy the could find because they were desperate.

Welfare reform was DEVASTATING for those of us who lived through it. I was just months from graduating from college and I was PUNISHED for not "adhering to the rules", which were basically... get a job at Burger King. Charles County, MD, actually farmed welfare recipients out to McDonalds and Burger King. Get a job at Burger King or lose your benefits. What a choice!

You've swallowed the bullshit hook, line and sinker. Clinton was a disaster for poor people. Everyone else made out, though.

[Luminous Animal]

69. And the corporations were given tax breaks

to hire welfare recipients. They'd be hired on as "seasonal" workers so they would never be able to accrue enough hours as a regular employee and thus be available for benefits. It was a revolving door for many women who were on and off "seasonal" work and welfare until their benefit eligibility plum ran out. Many women had to quit college in order to continue to qualify for benefits which left them with a lifetime of low paying jobs as their best option. AFDC was no picnic but TANF was downright mean-spirited.

[kdmorris]

70. They wanted me to quit college

The ONLY thing that kept that from happening was that I was only a couple of months from graduation. AND I had a support system of people willing to help me so that, when I got sanctioned, I was able to overcome that. (see tkmorris post below) So many people didn't have that and became trapped by the hoops they were forced to jump through. When the sanctions hit, I was going to school from 11:30 AM to 7:30 PM, volunteering at my daughters' school from 7:30 AM to 11:00 AM and damned exhausted. I never saw my 3 daughters (ages 4, 5 and 8 when the reform went through) and so many bad things happened that it was probably the hardest year I had.

Because of the amount of money they gave for child care, my daughters were in substandard child care, until my sister offered to babysit them in June. One babysitter called CPS on my because my 4 year old hadn't wiped herself after using the bathroom. One was supposed to feed them dinner and didn't for 4 weeks. I was too tired to notice and I felt like crap when I found out.

I wasn't lazy or "living high on the hog", but I got punished because so many people believed the Republican lie of the "welfare queen". And being one welfare was one of the most humiliating, awful experiences I've ever had. People who say it needed to be reformed just don't know what they are talking about.

[hfojvt]

40. hmm. There was a big increase in the prison population

I wonder if that matches the decrease in poverty. People are no longer counted as poor when they are in prison, are they?

[Luminous Animal]

45. Exactly...

prisoners are off the poverty and unemployment grid. And we have more prisoners per capita more than practically any other country.

So are members of our armed forces and, given that we have a standing military whose membership is more than the subsequent 48 countries combined, if we were to count both our prison population and our military personnel (as most western countries do) our unemployment rate is grossly under counted.

[mth44sc]

9. Enjoy...

http://clinton5.nara.gov/WH/Accomplishments/eightyears-01.html

[geckosfeet]

12. Oh. How soon we forget.

[Luminous Animal]

49. Indeed.

Let's use legacy propaganda as truth. And George Washington couldn't tell a lie, and Jefferson really really felt bad about his slaves.

[boomerbust]

10. What I remember most

about the mid to late 90's was the abundance of manufacturing jobs that were available. Not so much today.

[w4rma]

11. Clinton also destroyed blue collar workers by forcing NAFTA through.

Along with other 'free' trade agreements. Then, Bush did the same with white-collar workers, such as the jobs created by Computer technology and accounting.

[paulk]

14. I do think that a lot of people that trash Clinton on this site

ARE too young to put the Clinton years in the context of what came before (12 years of Reagan/Bush) and what came after (Bush the Younger). The rest are freepers or just plain fools.

[Captain Hilts]

16. Agreed. nt

[Luminous Animal]

25. I am 51 years old and I am not "trashing" Clinton.

I have specific criticism of some of his administration's policy decisions. I've been a poverty and labor activist nearly my entire adult life... through Carter, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton. No President is perfect and to think otherwise is mindlessly childish.

It has been adequately demonstrated many times over that NAFTA and welfare reform have not been wise economic policy for the poor and blue collar workers in the U.S and Mexico.

[paulk]

26. I don't recall saying Clinton was perfect

[Luminous Animal]

27. And I don't recall anyone on this thread "trashing" him. (n/t)

[paulk]

29. non sequitur

[Juche]

19. Yes

I am 29 now and was 13 when Clinton was elected in 1992. So I have no idea what life was like before or during the CLinton admin as I didn't really attain political consciousness until around 2005.

Suffice it to say what always stands out for me, as someone who wasn't really paying attention back then, was that exit polls from the 2000 presidential election showed 65% of voters though that america was on the right track. That number is now 7% after 8 years of Bush.


http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/results/index.epolls.html

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/14/poll-record-high-for-wrong-track-rating/


Even though I wasn't really politically aware during Reagan, Bush I, Clinton or the first half of Bush II that simple fact really stands out. Before Bush got into office, 65% of the public thought we were on the right track as a country. After 8 years it is 7%.

[tabbycat31]

20. I remember the Clinton economy

but I was not old enough to reap the benefits of it. I was 20 when he left office and still in college.

[buckettgirl]

34. I was almost too young

I graduated high school in 1999. At that time, I was working at McDonalds, making *almost* $6/hr, which was AWESOME. Gas was 99 cents a gallon, and I could put $5 bucks in the tank and still be able to drive down the road, and go to the movies for $5.
I remember that I blew all my paychecks, because there was stuff I *had* to have, and I could actually afford to buy it myself. Everything seemed cheap and/or reasonably priced, then.
Somedays I wish I were about 10 years older, then I too could have reaped the rewards of the economy at that time.

[wuushew]

21. Clinton simply benefited from cheap energy

look at how recessions correlate to spikes in oil prices.




Throw in several types of investment bubbles and you will come to the conclusion that President Clinton(who is educated in law, not economics) gets to much credit for the non-sustainable affluence of the 1990s.

That obstructionist Republican Congress curtailed domestic spending, which in turn paid down the debt more quickly and thus strengthened the dollar which in turn lowered the price of energy. All by design or happy accident? :shrug:

[doc03]

24. The economy wasn't in a "shambles" when Clinton

took office there was a very mild recession. Clinton benefited from low energy prices during his term which helped him. In contrast Jimmy Carter was faced with the oil embargo and his legacy was termed a failed Presidency by many when he had little control over those things. Bush 41 had failed to pass NAFTA, he couldn't get enough Democratic votes to pass it. Clinton passed NAFTA with the majority Republican support and some Democrats. A Republican President probably would have never got Welfare reform or NAFTA passed. In the late 90's the Asian and East European economies were in a slow down and Clinton let them export their unemployment to the USA by letting them dump steel at below production costs. During that period around 40 US steel companies went into liquidation and Clinton refused to open an unfair trade claim with the ITC. One of the biggest opponents to enforcing the trade laws was the Auto industry their attitude was "let us buy cheap steel and let the steel industry die." I believe that's about what Mit Romney recently said about the Auto industry. Indeed you are looking at the Clinton years through rose colored glasses, a lot of our problems we have today had their origins with Clinton. He did some good things but he is certainly not any kind of middle class hero around these parts.

on edit: Oh and by the way I am 60 years old and I remember all the Presidents back to Ike and as far as Republicans go (Clinton) was the best of the bunch.

[dysfunctional press]

37. two things helped the I.T. world to explode...employment opportunity-wise.

the conversion to computers/computer networks for more and more businesses of all sizes, and the y2k problem.
both of those things did A LOT to help the economy under clinton- in a lot of ways, he was in the right place at the right time.

[lib2DaBone]

38. I Know it's Trite and Old....But......it's more true today than ever before...

"If you sign that NAFTA TRADE BILL.. that giant SUCKING SOUND will be jobs leaving the United States".

[Luminous Animal]

42. No shit...

That is when the Democratic party totally abandoned blue collar workers.

[hfojvt]

39. well that is a nice little myth

Start with the "deep recession"

Clinton took office in January of 1993 correct? I don't have data from 1992, but here are the job creation numbers for the first six months of January.

307,000; 237,000; (46,000); 307,000; 273,000; 164,000

That looks like 4 months of pretty solid job creation, and Clinton's economic package likely hadn't even passed yet, much less taken effect.

"Everyone I knew was pretty happy."

You shoulda gotten out more. I was quite sick of hearing about how prosperous we all were in the 1990s. I spent the 1990s working sh*t jobs with low pay and almost no benefits and also spent seven years running a no-profit bookstore.

It's not like I was alone either. I remember Tommy Thompson going to Eau Claire to brag about the new factory that opened - with jobs paying a whole $6 an hour. As unemployment continued to hit record lows in the late 1990s I spent three years, from July 1998 until August of 2001 working as a temp, unable to find a job with decent pay and benefits. I was not unemployed, but I wasn't exactly prospering either.

Not everybody has a home or a 401K even now. Yes, the stock market soared. So the fu$% what? You know who owns 90% of the stocks? The top 10%, that's who. Their high-flying prosperity did not and does not translate to the rest of us. The "prosperity" of the 1990s was mostly for the top two quintiles.

The other thing I remember from the 1990s is Clinton "fighting" the Republican Congress by adopting most of their talking points and trying to out-Republican the Republicans.

[JNelson6563]

41. I dunno

From the looks of things I'd wager we have many posters who truly are too young to remember.

Julie

[Luminous Animal]

48. I dunno...

From the look of things, it looks like people are living what Clinton sowed.

[MadHound]

43. Yeah, I remember the Clinton years,

The passage of NAFTA, which started sucking jobs out of this country at an ever increasing rate. The '96 Telecom Act which allowed five corporations to control 90% of the media in this country. Welfare reform which shredded our social safety net. Deregulation of the financial sector, which set us up for this madness. The expansion of the the War on Drugs, putting a huge number of people behind bars. And the first time that the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us expanded to record breaking proportions. Yeah, I remember the Clinton years, the best Republican president we had since Lincoln.

[Radical Activist]

46. I'm still paying off student loans from the Clinton years because

He never lived up to his '92 campaign promises about financial aid and making college affordable. As I recall, the move to cut banks out of student loans, which saved students money on interest, didn't happen until after Clinton left office.

[HamdenRice]

47. "the dotcom bubble was a bunch of crooks"-- as you type that on the internet

which barely existed before the dot com boom, you went off the rails. Mostly the so called dot com boom was the construction of the digital infrastructure that made the web possible. The tail end involved excessive speculation in some web sites, but by and large the boom was the real construction of real computers, servers, fiber optic pathways across the country, software, and brick and mortar distribution systems for the goods that could now be bought online (like Amazon's actual warehouses).

It always astounds me when someone writes online -- which did not exist in 92 -- that there was no substance to the dot com boom.

[Neshanic]

61. Disconnect is amazing is it not?

[Luminous Animal]

51. Argh! This is so pissing me off!

Many of the Clinton policies result in why we are where we are today. Value on homes skyrocketing? That is called the real estate bubble and smart economists were warning that it was bound to burst. Voila! Welcome to 2008!

NAFTA? It's all but destroyed American labor!

Student loans? We've got millions living in indentured servitude!

401K smoking? Clinton's deregulation of the markets is why 401Ks are a bare ember.

Prisoners? We are fucking worse than China!


During the Clinton years we abandoned the work ethic of the ants and played our grasshopper violins.

[depakid]

53. "The US government didn't lose anything from that fiasco."

Apparently, aside from failing to recognize the economic repercussions of the dotcom fisaco, you seem also to have missed the accounting scandals, the crash of LTCM (a close call that ought to have woken the Dems up)... amd the consequences of financial and energy deregulation (remember the California energy "crisis?")

-all these and more were brought to you by the Clinton administration and the Republican wing of the Democratic party....

[tkmorris]

54. I'm sorry Don, but that whole OP is fantasy

Clinton's economic policies were merely a continuation of the deregulation that started under Reagan. The very same policies that have brought us to where we are today; suffering the world's biggest economic hangover. Your description of the dotcom bubble shows a profound lack of understanding. The boom in technology companies is in part WHY everyone's 401k went through the roof, and the bust that followed wasn't really such a bust after all. Everyone was giddy with the possibilities the internet provided, and some companies and startups got overhyped. They died, but the internet lived on and has been a very profitable venture for a great many people.

You think it was good for the poor but I cannot imagine you were poor during that time frame or you wouldn't be saying that. As was mentioned elsewhere prison populations skyrocketed during this period, and who do you think all those new inmates were? I cannot imagine that you knew anyone on welfare when that "reform" was passed or you wouldn't think that was such a hot idea either. I did. I married her. She was struggling mightily to get off of welfare but your hero's "reform" came THIS FUCKING CLOSE to making her a permanent resident of the poorest class. She was damned lucky she was almost done with school and had the support of some few of us who had little more than she did but helped her finish it out when they started yanking some of those entitlements and making her jump through impossible hoops to keep what was left.

There was no "deep recession" when Clinton took office. The prosperity which did occur had little to do with Clinton himself. The crash we are now enduring was enabled in part by his policies. Then you have NAFTA, don't ask don't tell, healthcare reform failure, further deregulation of financial institutions and the media, the exportation of manufacturing, and so on.

Clinton sat in the big chair while a technological boom occurred, one which required nothing from him except to not interfere. His reputation has reaped the reward of that, but aside from it he accomplished almost exactly nothing. FEMLA springs to mind, but that is hardly earth-shattering. What Leftist ideas did he succeed in implementing? He failed more often than he succeeded, and often gave ground to a Republican congress in making the attempt. He spent 8 years trying to compromise with people who don't know what the word means but were delighted to accept the concessions he offered. FWIW, I think that many of us who DO remember the Clinton years, albeit without the rose-colored glasses you seem to wearing, are precisely the ones troubled by Obama's seeming willingness to continue in the footsteps of Clinton. Clinton had a LOT of external events that helped to make him look good; Obama will not. I think you may be about to find out what Clinton would have looked like in a world where everything wasn't falling his way.

[charlie]

57. Man, oh man

You saved me a lot of trouble and typing, and I thank you.

Any mild interlude in Movement Conservatism's frenetic assfucking will feel like blue skies and sunshine. The real question is if you can remember anything before Reagan.

[Xithras]

63. A few minor errors.

Your misunderstanding of the dotcom bubble is massive. The bubble had little to do with ad's, and a lot to do with unsubstantiated beliefs in an economic revolution. People genuinely thought that the Internet was going to put old fashioned "brick and mortar" stores out of business, and that the day would come when EVERYTHING would come from the Internet. Need groceries? Hop online and someone will deliver them to your door. Need a car? Try Autobytel. Pick your model and color and they'll drop it off in your driveway. Amazon was going to put every bookstore in America out of business, and Ebay spelled the end of the yard salers.

Yes, people actually and truly believed this crap. So what was the bubble? Simple, every time some yahoo came up with an idea to sell something on the Internet, the Angel investors would toss them a couple hundred grand to assemble a team to build out the site. Once that was done, they'd go IPO as quickly as possible and sell their stocks to the masses. One great example was a store that sold PET FOOD online. Nothing but pet food. It went IPO and people tossed MILLIONS at it to get in on the whole "Internet Pet Food" idea. I remember asking a simple question about it on an Internet message board at the time, "Why would people want to invest in an online pet food store?" People responded to me like I was an uneducated idiot, and gave me a simple answer...because there would be NOWHERE ELSE to buy pet food once the brick and mortar stores were all out of business. Again, they REALLY BELIEVED it.

The bubble popped when people started realizing that the Internet wasn't undermining traditional retail models, and that the revenue from these companies was only a fraction of what had been projected. Nobody was going to order dog food from the Internet and wait five days for it to be shipped, when they could just pick up a bag at the corner grocery.

As for the rest. The 401k's were doing well because of the bubble, and nothing else. If you factor out the bubble rise, the markets overall climb during the Clinton administration largely mirrored inflation. Not bad, but not great. Outsourcing accelerated under Clinton, and technology outsourcing was directly supported by the administration. Across the board, the Clintons were largely anti-labor free trading neoliberals. I remember many, MANY fistpounding lectures from my liberal and very pro-labor dad over how evil Clinton was because he was selling out the American worker. Remember the massive WTO and anti-trade protests of the late 90's? Those were directed at Clinton's trade policies. The poor got screwed with welfare reform, but most of them were just as miserable as they'd been under any other president (as a general rule, politics don't factor heavily into the daily lives of those struggling to just get by). We WERE in a recession when he took office, but it wasn't a deep one. And housing? If you lived in the San Francisco Bay Area or some other tech hub, housing went through the roof. Everywhere else (including non-techie large cities like L.A.) were pretty flat. The housing cost runup started in 2001-2002.

[NNN0LHI]

64. For me it really was a deep recession that I was in before Clinton took office

I was laid off at the time so I probably remember the time from a different perspective than others. I had been laid off for more than a year. No medical insurance or nothing. It was scary times.

Got recalled to my job within the first few months of Clinton taking office. I was working twelve hours a day seven days a week when that happened. The company at the time was even getting a waiver from the state to allow us to work more than the consecutive 13 days in a row with no days off that was limited by state law. I even took some of my vacation money and didn't take the time off to get caught up on my bills after being laid off over a year.

That was a boom time for me economically. Never had it so good. I almost even invested some money in the NASDAQ towards the end of Clinton's administration. That would have been a huge mistake.

Don

[ACTION BASTARD]

66. I remember maxing out my state 401k(25%) and watching it explode up wards

month after month. It was a glorious time for me.