Peter Baker on the Bush economy

In a source-greasing passage from his New York Times Magazine article yesterday on "The Final Days of the Presidency of George W. Bush", Peter Baker states that "[f]or years" Bush "got no credit for a long-running economic recovery":

[T]here are no valedictory days for Bush. For years, he got no credit for a long-running economic recovery, in part because of popular anger over Iraq. Now, it seems, he gets no credit for the improvements in Iraq because of deep discontent over the tattered economy. Housing and energy crises have only deepened public disaffection.

Presumably Baker isn't actually familiar with the data on the recovery or he would know that the reason that Bush "got no credit for a long-running economic recovery" is that it did not improve the living standards of most Americans. Here's what the Times itself wrote a few days ago in an article on a new Census report

Mr. Bernstein, from the Economic Policy Institute, agreed and said that while comparisons to 2006 showed some improvement, in order to understand the difficulties facing middle- and low-income families, it was important to consider these results in the context of the economic expansion since 2000.

For the first time on record, real household income is no higher at the end of an economic expansion than it was when the cycle began, Mr. Bernstein said.

The median income of working-age households — with household heads under age 65 — rose insignificantly in 2007, when adjusted for inflation, and was $2,010 below its 2000 level.

When the median income of working-age households declines during a recovery, you don't get much credit. Shouldn't Baker know this?

Comments

[Rob]

The statistics about family income deserve more attention than the New York Times gave them in its article, or than Brendan does in so uncritically adopting the Times's negative spin. For example, it's worth noting that the figures are for pre-tax income (see p. 3) and therefore don't reflect the benefit of the Bush tax cuts on families' disposable income. The figures are also for cash income and don't reflect non-cash benefits (Census report, p. 3), which btw are disproportionately received by the lower income quintiles.

But even putting aside the questions about the Times's reporting of the Census statistics on real household income, the fact remains that Peter Baker is correct that the U.S. under Bush experienced economic recovery. Are there other measures of economic well-being that are less positive? Of course. That's the nature of economic statistics. One can pick and choose which things to emphasize in order to achieve the spin one wishes. That's what we saw at the Democratic convention last week, and it's what we see in this comment by Brendan. It's the art of spin.

The disappointment is that the spinmeister is Brendan.

[Howard Craft]

Rob - taking the benefits of tax cuts and adding them to household income to calculate a measure of "economic growth" doesn't make much sense when the tax cuts were financed by additional deficit borrowing.

That would be akin to saying my income increased because I'm including my new outstanding charge-card debt in my income total.

Tax rates rise and fall, as does Federal spending. You may like the spin of counting the same money twice but taxes are disregarded for exactly those reasons.