danivon wrote:The US economy is one of the fastest to have recovered from the 2008 crash. The depth and causes of that crash mean it will be relatively slow to recover anyway, but it does appear that part of the recovery is down to changes in healthcare recently.

Today, , "It has typically taken countries up to ten years to recover from financial crises of this magnitude." In truth, however, has been as follows: the deeper the recession, the stronger the recovery.

For example, having inherited the Great Depression when he took office in 1933, FDR presided over what was probably the greatest year of peacetime economic growth in American history in 1936. According to the Obama administration's own Bureau of Economic Analysis (see ""), real (inflation-adjusted) growth in the gross domestic product was a whopping 13.1 percent in 1936. So far in 2012 (according to that same source), it has been 1.9 percent under Obama. In 2011, it was 1.7 percent.

It's true that, in 1938, America plunged into the second deep trough of the Great Depression. But at least under Roosevelt, we experienced a blend of peaks and troughs. Four years under Obama has been like one continuous, uninterrupted walk along the floor of a canyon.

In his speech, Obama also asserted, "Our economy started growing again six months after I took office. And it has continued to grow for the last three years."

Well, according to the federal government's own numbers (published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics), in July 2009, six months after Obama took office, was 59.3 percent. Since then, the employment rate has actually fallen to 58.6 percent — a tally that, except under Obama, we haven't seen in .

In fact, 58.6 percent employment barely exceeds from when President Eisenhower was running for reelection in 1956 — back before millions upon millions of American women entered the workforce.

Rather that asking trick questions about the views of a journalist, perhaps you could provide actual evidence to contradict the facts as presented via that op-ed?

On the incomes side, the law’s expanded coverage boosted Medicaid benefits by an estimated $19.2 billion, according to Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. The ACA also offered several refundable tax credits, including health insurance premium subsidies, which added up to $14.7 billion.

Taken together, the Obamacare provisions are responsible for about three-quarters of January’s overall rise in Americans’ incomes.

danivon wrote:It is also down to the causes of the crash.

You do agree that the US has recovered faster than many other countries?

Drawing on their exhaustive study of financial crises and their after-effects, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff explored just that question in a new paper, presented last weekend at the American Economic Association annual meeting and due to be formally published in May. (Reinhart-Rogoff were authors of a much-criticized paper linking slow growth to high public debt levels, but whatever one thinks of that, their work parsing the details of long-forgotten crises is essential for anybody who cares about economic history)

The short version of their conclusion: We're doing pretty well! Or at least, pretty well by the standards of countries emerging from banking crises.

Of 100 systemic banking crises in the United States and around the world, Reinhart and Rogoff found that it takes an average of eight years for per-capita GDP to fully recover. Of the 12 countries directly hit by the global financial crisis that began in 2007, the United States and Germany have both returned to their pre-crisis levels of per-capita GDP.

That doesn't mean everything is terrific. We haven't caught up to the pre-crisis growth trajectory, only to the 2007 level of per-capita GDP. It has still been a lost six years for growth. Moreover, in a longer-term pattern, growth in output isn't translating into higher incomes for middle and lower-income Americans the way it has historically, meaning that people aren't imagining it when they say they're worse off than they were in 2007.

But compared to the historical data set of 100 severe banking crises that Reinhart-Rogoff analyze, this one really wasn't so bad. In 43 percent of of them, there was a double-dip recession; the United States has escaped one. The typical post-World War II business cycles with which Americans have typically compared this recovery is thus an unfair comparison, they argue.

danivon wrote:I do love how it's important for you to do your country down to make a point.

Maybe the U.S. economic recovery isn’t that disappointing, after all

Drawing on their exhaustive study of financial crises and their after-effects, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff explored just that question in a new paper, presented last weekend at the American Economic Association annual meeting and due to be formally published in May. (Reinhart-Rogoff were authors of a much-criticized paper linking slow growth to high public debt levels, but whatever one thinks of that, their work parsing the details of long-forgotten crises is essential for anybody who cares about economic history)

The short version of their conclusion: We're doing pretty well! Or at least, pretty well by the standards of countries emerging from banking crises.

Of 100 systemic banking crises in the United States and around the world, Reinhart and Rogoff found that it takes an average of eight years for per-capita GDP to fully recover. Of the 12 countries directly hit by the global financial crisis that began in 2007, the United States and Germany have both returned to their pre-crisis levels of per-capita GDP.

That doesn't mean everything is terrific. We haven't caught up to the pre-crisis growth trajectory, only to the 2007 level of per-capita GDP. It has still been a lost six years for growth. Moreover, in a longer-term pattern, growth in output isn't translating into higher incomes for middle and lower-income Americans the way it has historically, meaning that people aren't imagining it when they say they're worse off than they were in 2007.

But compared to the historical data set of 100 severe banking crises that Reinhart-Rogoff analyze, this one really wasn't so bad. In 43 percent of of them, there was a double-dip recession; the United States has escaped one. The typical post-World War II business cycles with which Americans have typically compared this recovery is thus an unfair comparison, they argue.

No-one is saying that growth has been stellar, but the US economy has recovered to pre-crash levels of GDP faster than any other impacted country, apart from Germany.

With just three weeks left to sign up under President Barack Obama's health care law, a major survey tracking the rollout finds that the uninsured rate keeps going down.
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, released Monday, found that 15.9 percent of U.S. adults are uninsured thus far in 2014, down from 17.1 percent for the last three months — or calendar quarter— of 2013.
That translates roughly to 3 million to 4 million people getting coverage.
Gallup said the share of Americans who lack coverage is on track to drop to the lowest quarterly level it measured since 2008, before Obama took office

rickyp wrote:http://www.healthways.com/newsroom/default.aspx?id=193&linkidentifier=id&itemid=193

With just three weeks left to sign up under President Barack Obama's health care law, a major survey tracking the rollout finds that the uninsured rate keeps going down.
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, released Monday, found that 15.9 percent of U.S. adults are uninsured thus far in 2014, down from 17.1 percent for the last three months — or calendar quarter— of 2013.
That translates roughly to 3 million to 4 million people getting coverage.
Gallup said the share of Americans who lack coverage is on track to drop to the lowest quarterly level it measured since 2008, before Obama took office

Good for the economy?
Probably. Since people who are insured don't hedge savings against the possibility of medical calamities and spend instead...
And spending is good for the economy. So taken with the earlier data this is a good trend.

rickyp wrote:The DCCC today is launching web ads and other paid media in the districts of 44 vulnerable House Republicans, highlighting what repealing Obamacare would do to ordinary people. There is also a new Website, FacesOfRepeal, that, like the ads, features those people describing what returning to the old health care system would mean to them in concrete, real life terms.
Even if more problems could arise during 2014, the best answer for Dems is to frame this as not a referendum on the law, but as a choice between sticking with a flawed effort to solve the health system’s problems and going back to the way things used to be — the Republican position, which remains unpopular.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plu ... obamacare/

danivon wrote:Turns out I was a bit wrong. Three economies have recovered to above their pre-recession peak. But the USA is some way ahead of Germany (and Canada was not that badly affected).

Doctor Fate wrote:I'm just rejecting your measuring rod. How about versus previous recessions in the US?

I maintain it is Obama's policies that are preventing economic expansion. Of course, you reject that, but I see restrictive energy policies (EPA), Obamacare uncertainty (changes on a weekly basis), and high corporate taxes.

danivon wrote:

Doctor Fate wrote:I'm just rejecting your measuring rod. How about versus previous recessions in the US?

They don't necessarily compare to this one, as there are different causes and different severities. GDP is the 'measuring rod' for the size of an economy, for growth and for recession. It's not 'my' measuring rod, it's the standard one.

But the report in the article I linked to earlier suggests that it takes about 8 years for per-capita GDP to recover on average from recessions. This one has taken 6 years in the USA.

So how come you are growing faster than everyone else who was hit by the recession?

And your economy is expanding, so of course I reject that your government's policies are preventing it. You can argue about why the rate of growth is what it is, but unless you accept that your economy is actually growing, based on the facts, what is the point in engaging?