The old cliches are still in use, and just as tired: “Republicans are the party of business, and know how to run the economy. Put Democrats in office, and you’ll have both socialism and a recession at the same time. Or maybe even a depression. Trust us – we GOPers are better for the economy.”
Unfortunately, like any number of cliches, especially Republican ones, this one is just not true.
We could trot out charts and graphs galore, such as the one showing Republican administrations adding billions to the national debt, while Democratic ones actually lower both the debt and the deficit. Or the one showing job growth under Democrats to be two-and-a-half times greater than that of Republicans. (!!)
But, in case you ever need to discuss/debate this with your Repub uncle who can’t believe it’s true, here are some statistics courtesy of Heather Cox Richardson. Cut them out, laminate them on a card, and pull them out when needed:
The economy has boomed under President Joe Biden, putting the lie to the old trope that Democrats don’t manage the economy as well as Republicans.
This should not come as a surprise to anyone. The economy has performed better under Democrats than Republicans since at least World War II. CNN Business reports that since 1945, the Standard & Poor’s 500 — a market index of 500 leading U.S. publicly traded companies — has averaged an annual gain of 11.2% during years when Democrats controlled the White House, and a 6.9% average gain under Republicans. In the same time period, gross domestic product grew by an average of 4.1% under Democrats, 2.5% under Republicans. Job growth, too, is significantly stronger under Democrats than Republicans.
“[T]here has been a stark pattern in the United States for nearly a century,” wrote David Leonhardt of the New York Times last year, “The economy has grown significantly faster under Democratic presidents than Republican ones.”
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