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Nobody blames Bush, so allow me
October 15, 2008 – 12:01 pm
In a Washington Post opinion poll today, referencing the economy, someone said “I’m pleasantly surprised that nobody is blaming President Bush over this situation. It would be nice to see him end his term on a high note.” So I would like to pioneer this apparently uncharted land and blame Bush for our current economic situation.
Middle finger
You need to have a basic middle school education to understand this. But for those of you still waiting to graduate 8th grade, I’ll try to go slow.
When George W. Bush took office, business was booming, the power of the dollar allowed us to buy gasoline at $2 a gallon. The government had its largest surplus in history — 5 trillion dollar surplus projected. Back then, the national deficit was lowering, which strengthened the dollar every day.
A lower deficit means a stronger dollar. As an illustration, if you go out and borrow a lot of money, your credit score lowers; in the future your money isn’t worth as much. You can’t just say, “I promise I’ll pay you back,” because people see that you’re not good for your money. But if you have no debt, then your credit score is higher, and you can buy anything you want. The same thing goes for the national debt. If the country has no debt, then the dollar is extremely strong.
However, since America’s national debt is so astronomical (ie, there are less stars in our galaxy than our national debt), value of the dollar drops. This means that foreign-bought commodities costs a lot more even if their value doesn’t change. This means that if we increase our deficit, then the price of food, water, gasoline, cars, electricity goes up; everything costs more even though the value doesn’t change.
So back to Bush. When he entered office, America was blessed with having the largest budget surplus in history. Then Bush gave away the surplus in tax cuts. Every American received a check for a few hundred dollars.
Meanwhile, Bush increased spending. The armed forces had extraordinary spending increases, and huge government restructuring took place. That isn’t inherently bad, but the surplus that would have paid for it was already given away.
Because there was no longer any excess money, other programs began to suffer. Public education was one of the hardest hit. Public college tuition nearly doubled. (My tuition at a public university) went from $2000 a semester to $4000 a semester). Already, the effects of my $300 the surplus check were null.
States also ran out of federal funding, which made them turn to other means of income. Local taxes were immediately raised: Food taxes, cigarette taxes, property taxes and gasoline taxes were raised. Even luxury taxes were raised. But with Bush spending out of control, there were still huge gaps in money for state spending, like police enforcement. The result is that the police increased their ticket giving as a last-ditch effort to stay afloat. 1,2, 3, 4 (That $100 ticket and $500 insurance premium increase you got…thank your $300 surplus check for it)
With the cost of living going up dramatically, Bush did the absolute worst thing imaginable.
When the Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda attacked America on September 11th, 2001, Bush fabricated an enemy and convinced America to attack Iraq instead. This war increased deficit spending on a magnitude that America’s never conceived. Bush continually broke his own records as he spent more and more money.
Value of the dollar droppingIn 2004 he broke records with a $445 billion deficit. (By 2008, he had broken his own record with a deficit of $455 billion)
Because of this, over the past 8 years, the value of the dollar has dropped at a free fall. Just by looking at the value of the Dollar vs Euro over the past 8 years we can see how weak the U.S. currency has gotten. The Euro has doubled it’s strength against the dollar. (See chart) Even the Yen has made significant gains against the dollar.
What happens next may take at least a highschool education to grasp, so I understand if it’s too much for the Bush supporters to understand. (Note: a Bush supporter is different than a true conservative, for whom I have a lot of respect). With the value of the dollar dropping so rapidly, and government spending going up, America has entered a state of hyperinflation. (1, 2, 3).
High inflation means that worker’s pay cannot keep up with rising commodity costs. Couple that with the fact that the lower value of the dollar is already making commodities rise, a huge majority of people can no longer pay for the high cost of living. This leads to a number of things: people can no longer afford their mortgages, people can no longer afford luxuries like cars or new computers or…you name it, people can’t afford it. When people don’t buy a company’s products, that company loses income, which leads to job cuts. When people lose their jobs, the cycle repeats itself: people spend less, more companies cut more jobs, companies raise prices, and more people can no longer afford their mortgages. Millions of homes then foreclose, which leaves banks stuck with the debt. But the banks don’t have this money, because they were expecting people to pay off their mortgages. So then the banks cannot produce liquid money, which is what lead to the recent stock market crash.
This is why I blame Bush for our current economic problems.
Remember, we had a 1.1 trillion dollar projected surplus when Bush took office.
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