The horroble economy..

[dude1394]

Is the US economy in the dumps? Engram thinks not. I'm inclinded to agree with him.

One graph that he showed intrigued me because Mavie usually brings it up. It's the budget deficit.

What about net national debt? Reporters are always harping on this, and being the uninformed dolts that they are, they always present a meaningless absolute figure that runs into the trillions of dollars. Here is the real story:

The Bush years look a lot like the Clinton years, and the U.S. is in much better shape than the rest of the G6. That's mostly because of Japan, but if you take that country out of the equation, the U.S. stills beats the G5 (though it's a closer contest). No reporter realizes this, yet they write stories on the topic anyway. It's a bizarre phenomenon.

Look at my charts and let them guide your thinking about the state of the U.S. economy under George Bush. The second chart above (per capita GDP) is the most important summary chart. It's the one that most clearly shows how wrong you have been about the state of our economy during the Bush years.

My last chart shows the one statistic where the U.S. economy seems badly out of kilter. This chart shows the trade deficit: