It appears that you assume that politics and ideology play a disproportionately large role when it comes to explaining macroeconomic performance. Hence, you appear to assume my points are also rooted in politics and ideology.
Political factors are just one element in shaping the nation’s economic performance. If political factors were the leading explanation, the nation could experience continual robust recession-free growth, as the public being self-interested would continually choose the policy makers who knew how to manage the economy. Any other choice would be irrational. Moreover, when it came to economic policy, there would be interparty consensus. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
Politics plays some role in the whole scheme of things, but pundits greatly overstate that role. Upon President Reagan’s taking office, numerous Democrats argued that the economy was doomed (and claimed that their narrative had credibility during the 1981-82 downturn). When President Obama took office, numerous Republicans held similarly gloomy views. Both political narratives proved incorrect.
Quite frankly, I could care less who is in the White House when discussing the economy. I’m interested in discussing the state of the economy as it really is and its direction. If one wants to credit/blame the President, that’s a separate matter.
With respect to the Q1 economic performance and what ultimately proved to be a temporary contraction—and economists nailed the temporary nature of that contraction—was, in part, due to weather-related disruptions. It was not solely due to bad weather.
One saw references to weather in preceding economic reports and also the Fed’s own discussion of economic conditions. The weather-related explanation was not something that was suddenly introduced when the GDP data was revised to show a significant quarterly contraction.
There were some additional factors, too. For example, China underwent a growth pause of sorts where its growth fell below the levels it had been sustaining in recent years. Since then, China has experienced a pickup in its growth rate.
Moreover, I’m not ignoring “millions of struggling Americans.” For example, I’ve also posted data concerning longer-term unemployment, broader measures of unemployment, and information about people not in the labor force and compared them to the pre-recession figures. Although June saw some nice improvements, those figures remain generally well above pre-recession figures.
http://www.debatepolitics.com/break...my-adds-288-000-jobs-june.html#post1063481874
Finally, I do care what works/does not. I read through the empirical data and the many reports that are regularly published. The factors impacting the economy are numerous and their interactions highly complex. Not all of those interactions are well understood or well-modeled, leaving large areas of uncertainty. Not surprisingly, economic forecasts beyond the shortest-term ones are often subject to large error.
