Did Bill Clinton Really Help the Economy in the 90s?

[RATM435]

Economist Dr. Richard Wolff takes on Bill Clinton's claim that he made the economy SING in the 90s.

Please Recognize Your Privilege If You Can Afford 8 Years of Hillary Clinton and the Status Quo.

Some people say Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are approximately the same on the issues. These people likely have a lifestyle and a level of income that is comfortable and that they’re not too worried about losing.

For middle class and working class people, many of whom struggle from paycheck to paycheck and carry debt, the policies proposed by the two candidates are nothing alike.

Given the power of an incumbent president, and the fact that most of our last presidents have been reelected, if we end up with Hillary Clinton in the White House, we’ll likely have her and her essentially status quo policies for eight years, not just four.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-brasunas/please-recognize-privilege-8-years-of-hillary-clinton_b_9591922.html

[stopbush]

1. The answer is, yes he did.

I'm so tired of the trolls tearing down Bill Clinton, Obama and every other D in history in a failed attempt to smear Hillary. Who's next? FDR and JFK?

"if we go back to 1990 when Bill Clinton was president." What's wrong with that statement?

[shenmue]

2. This guy's transparency page is up

[Wilms]

7. Dr. Richard Wolff is a DU member?

[bahrbearian]

19. Wow 10 hides ,Skinner must be proud.

[stopbush]

23. My transparency page is up, too.

But I've been on DU since 2001. Credit the BSers with their swarm alerting on innocent posts for my collection of hides.

[SCantiGOP]

34. OP is a crock

I would be ashamed to post something like that.

[AlbertCat]

35. Credit the BSers with their swarm alerting on innocent posts

Credit "amnesty" on DU for showing that most hides were deserved and that those "on vacations" were not put there unjustly.

[redstateblues]

6. It was so awful-8 years of peace and prosperity-hopefully we won't have to go through that again

[Ferd Berfel]

20. Looked like a tag team match to me

Clinton set up almost everything Bush needed to put the coup de grace to the eoconomy, democracy......

[stupidicus]

29. that's how I've long seen it too

he was almost immediately adopted into the Bush family as he became the Sr's bff, and became lost in the wilderness in the lead up to the Iraq War.

I've always contended that Bush wouldn't have sold his wmd lies to the extent that he did if not for those BC peddled before him.

[ReRe]

41. Right on, brother!

You nailed it with that graphic. No way anyone can deny that list. Of course at the time, the wool was being pulled over EVERYONES eyes. "The budget got balanced after all," might be the comeback. Well, we didn't know at the time that the DLC was sticking a knife in the back of the Democratic Party. We couldn't see the forest for the trees, so-to-speak, as we were in the middle of a bubble, which burst in the end.

[Ferd Berfel]

43. Our tent has been too damn big.

If you listen to Hartmann you will have heard his say over and over again that you need to get involved. That you need to join your local Democratic party to get inside to change the party because that's what the Tea Baggers did on the right to the republicans.

It should be obvious that this is exactly what the disenfranchised republicans have done to the Democratic Party. Beginning with the DLC sale of the Party to Koch Bros (and others) in '85 by the Clinton's (and others) - a few months before Hillary was appointed to the board of Wall Mart.

Our tent has been too damn big. A life long republican can switch and say "well I'm a democrat now', the party says great and moves on. But no one questions: Did this republican all of a sudden renounce their previous life long held belief that a woman does not have the right to choose, had an Epiphany, and magically is just fine with choice now? That republican has supported privatizing Social Security and ending Medicare all their life (or career), but they're magically now a democrat... who STILL is working towards killing both, and did they renounce the neo-liberal ideology of Cheney, Bush, Rove, or did they brin that along with them also...and so on and so on....

This is how the Democratic Party of the Working Class and Middle Class has become a caricature of it's former self and morphed into the democrat party or Neo-Dems

The neo-Dems are simply the republican party prior to its going insane and full blown (and open) racist.

Bill swung heavily to the right 'forcing' Newt even farther to the right - just to keep up. The Republican party finally had to go off the deep end just to keep up with Bill. Remember (in the90's when it was amusing that Clinton was beating the Republicans to the (RW) punch? We'd say he was out republicaning the republicans - and laugh about it.

Clinton and the neo-Dems have simply taken up station on the former republican turf.

I've been having the exact same arguments here, with Clinton Supporters that I have in my private life with my Republican friends and acquaintances. The same damned arguments - with people claiming to be democrats.

It's a step through the "looking glass".

[ReRe]

45. Again.. totally agree with everything you said!

Can you figure out why the NewDems cannot understand and agree on the truth? Why do we see the facts one way and they see them the opposite? These things DID occur. They lived through those times and have suffered the consequences that followed right along with us. Do they actually believe the rhetoric that there is no way the original Democratic Party could win another election? Or, were they youngsters during the 90s, or young adults starting out in the world/having children/shedding the baggage of their youth, and didn't get into politics until much later?

I don't understand it all, Ferd. I absolutely hate being at odds with them. It sorely vexes me, truly.

[OnyxCollie]

36. Eight years of receiving credit card offers in the mail.

Bubble economy.

[AlbertCat]

38. hopefully we won't have to go through that again

No... just 4 years of cackling at serious questions.

[stupidicus]

25. in other words, you can't dispute much less refute a damn thing he said

(other than his misspeaking about 1990) but find whining about all the criticisms your third way leaders you similarly can't successfully assault a good subject change?

Tacitly conceding the veracity of the criticisms this way (whining while dodging) seems to be the only strong suit the common thirdway supporter has these days.

[ReRe]

42. +1

Stupendously!

[Buzz Clik]

27. +1

Author of the OP becomes magic #80 on my ignore list.

Call it, Skinner

[redstateblues]

3. Richard Wolff-Everybody's favorite Marxist

Explain how Marxism was so successful in the USSR and currently in North Korea

[djean111]

4. Saying Bernie and Hillary are essentially alike is, IMO, just rat-fucking.

War, fracking, Social Security, regime change, the TPP - how the fuck can anyone say that their platforms are remotely similar?
Just a spoonful of nasty high fructose corn syrup to try and make the distasteful medicine go down, that's all it is.

[RATM435]

14. K&R.

Hillary Clinton Squirms At The Word “Liberal"

[Ferd Berfel]

21. yep!

[doc03]

5. There you go gotta be true it is right from Bernie supporter gold

pusher Thom Hartmann and Russian TV. Everything bad was caused by Bill Clinton.

[stopbush]

8. Hartmann is a loser. His show could go off the air

and he'd never know.

[doc03]

10. Hartmann advertises his book the Crash of 2016 and says to buy gold

because of our economy is going to crash from our massive debt. Then backs Sanders that wants to expand SS, Medicare, give free college and health care to everyone.

[stopbush]

11. He wrote a book averring that the mob killed JFK.

He lives in an evidence-free zone.

[stopbush]

12. Isn't "buy gold" a RW tinfoil hat mantra?

[Akamai]

39. I listen to Tom Hartman regularly, and I've never heard him advocating buying gold.

where did you come up with that accusation?

Tom Hartmann has the best economic mind that I know of, outside of Robert Reich, Paul Krugman, Richard Wolf, etc. He focuses on the demand side economic policy, such as that favored by Lord Maynard Keynes, the basic idea of which is we have to put money into the pockets of people who will spend it.

He for years has advocated (as Obama did in 2008) paying for Social Security by taking the cap off--right now,if people make a total after deduction income of about $120,000, they pay the top rate for Social Security. That is, they pay the same amount of money as do billionaires for Social Security. Tom Hartman and Bernie Sanders want to take cap off and have billionaires pay the same amount (in terms of percentage of income close practices that average people do).this will keep Social Security solvent for the foreseeable future and will not be inordinately painful for billionaires, millionaires, etc.

when you say "give free college and health care" to everyone, I think you are misrepresenting what Hartman and Sanders want--they think that as a community, we should provide these things for citizens and they think that society will support these things. There is no "free" about it--it is to be paid for by taxes. This is part of the commons, they believe, and I sure agree with him on this. On the other hand, right-wingers like the Koch Brothers are opposed to groups of people coming together to help themselves, this as the Koch brothers want to keep people unable to improve their lives in a communitarian effort.

go Bernie!

[doc03]

46. I listen on XM radio 12 to 3pm where he has his buy gold advertisement every day. He starts

something like this "In this bad economy with an exploding national debt I buy gold and so should you.". Then of course he is on Russian TV another source to believe in. I saw a chart a couple weeks ago that under the Sanders plan my taxes would roughly double. I am not a billionaire or millionaire I am retired and have an income under $60000. I can't afford all that free stuff.

[Wilms]

9. Yes. EVERYTHING is Clintons fault.

Wouldn't it be convenient if that was the claim. But it isn't. What has been claimed you can feel free to refute. But do you really need to put up strawmen, as if no one notices.

Puerile, if you ask me.

[RATM435]

13. Hillary Clinton’s Million Dollar Professional Internet Troll Army.

Hillary Clinton-aligned Super PAC, Correct the Record, is taking a page out of Vladimir Putin’s playbook by employing a $1 million dollar professional internet troll army to build a paid, positive consensus about the Clinton campaign. The effort, called “Breaking Barriers 2016,”



http://theantimedia.org/hillary-clintons-internet-troll-army/

[stopbush]

22. Sore loserman whining.

[rock]

15. Only the rich, the poor, and the middle-class benefifted

Oh yes, and the unemployed, and the Democrats and the Republicans, and the ....

[RATM435]

16. The Untold Story Of How Clinton's Budget Destroyed The American Economy.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-bill-clintons-balanced-budget-destroyed-the-economy-2012-9

[rock]

17. Codswallop

[RATM435]

30. Denial ain't just a river in egypt.

[rock]

44. That's correct

Sometimes it's just the truth.

[marmar]

18. It was bubble-fueled.

Looked good then, but we paid the price later.

[AlbertCat]

37. Looked good then, but we paid the price later.

Exactly.

It certainly didn't last a month or two after his tenure.

But we all got $300!!!!!

[jwirr]

40. And he used the social security trust fund to create it.

[Live and Learn]

24. Absolutely not. He is responsible for the economic injustice that has been foisted upon us.

Shame on the Clintons.

[stupidicus]

26. no, and this should be common knowledge by now

as a BC critic long before it was widely acceptable as it is today, it amazes me the way Clinton supporters cling to that myth with the very same tenacity and motives as the Bushbots do the "Iraq had wmds!!!" bs

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiTgJOV3LbMAhXFOyYKHUQ3CaUQFgg6MAM&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcepr.net%2Fblogs%2Fbeat-the-press%2Fthe-stock-bubble-created-the-budget-surplus-not-bill-clintons-tax-and-spending-policies&usg=AFQjCNE_xGLNQMwVIdjzIwC-xoaOmScUXQ

[MisterP]

28. neoliberalism's closest analogy is cutting down a forest--there's a lot of nutrients

from the decomposing trees, but then a year later it's all gone

[BeatleBoot]

31. Did the BEST during Clinton's Presidency

Can't wait for Hillary!

[Herman4747]

32. He can't wait either:

[Politicub]

33. I give a lot of credit to Gore and the telecommunications act

It's unfortunate that he was tarred with the thing he never said, that he invented the internet.

He did write the bill that set the Internet free. It's effects continue to transform nearly every sphere of life.