I am a high school senior and often get into debates with my friends and classmates who have all been under the notion that Bill Clinton is some God of the Economic World who single handidly brought about tremendous economic prosperity during his presidency. I have been trying to research information that refutes this claim, but have not found much (even though I am 100% sure that the growth was not of Bill Clinton's doing).
Thus, I would be very grateful if I could be given a detailed account of what really happend in the nineties.
I don't know the exact details, but Clinton was just in the right place at the right time. He just happened to be in office while we had the tech boom. I doubt it was his policies that had anything to do with it.
ViennaSausage:He just happened to be in office while we had the tech boom. I doubt it was his policies that had anything to do with it.
Pretty much, although I give him some credit for at least staying mostly out of the tech industry's way. NAFTA and welfare reform seem to have had some minor, though temporary boosting effect. He wasn't nearly as dangerous as his rhetoric led everyone, me included, to believe he would be, at least not economically. His real legacy of damage is moral, and I don't mean specifically getting Lewinskied while on the phone with Arafat. He did a lot to undermine American values of independence and individuality, respect for objective truth, etc., etc. Not that he pushed the country anywhere it wasn't already going, but he really put his shoulder into it and gave a big shove.
The state won't go away once enough people want the state to go away, the state will effectively disappear once enough people no longer care that much whether it stays or goes. We don't need a revolution, we need millions of them.
Well, he did start paying down government debt, which would have helped reduce inflation. I wonder what the Fed's policies were. I doubt they were pumping nearly as much money into the economy as well.
At most, 5% of the population would need to stop complying to bring down the government.
I think it is important to note that on welfare reform, and on government debt (which effects interest rates) these issues were pushed on him by the Republican dominated congress. He did eventually give in on these areas but he vetoed several times on the welfare reform agenda though I am not sure about the details on the balanced budget congressional-executive fights.
As far as the inflationary expansion that caused the momentary booms I think alot of that had to do with Alan Greenspan who makes his decisions on the overall interest rate independent of the president due to his position.
I would take Bill Clinton with a Republican Congress over Obama or McCain any day. There is something about a Democrat president that turns Republicans into fiscal conservatives.
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