Saturday, October 20, 2012

'Business experience' loses on POTUS scoreboard

This post is for the reality-based community, for that sliver of the American electorate still concerned with facts, not gut feelings, blind ideology and personal anecdotes.  I.e, the smarts.  All you stupids, take a FoxNews break.  Go check SporstCenter.

Here are the real stats (oh, wait, all you mind-numbed sports fans are supposed to be obsessed with stats, but anyway...):

The startling bottom line is that the nation’s GDP has grown more than 45 times faster under presidents with little or no business experience than it has under presidents with successful business careers. And on average, when there has been a successful businessman in the Oval Office (so, Truman is excluded), GDP growth has been negligible.

On average, under presidents with successful business experience, GDP has increased 0.12 percent. And under presidents with little or no business experience, GDP has grown 5.46 percent.

That's right, sports fans, it gets even worse for the Red Team:

The most startling figures emerge when we combine party and business experience. Historically, a Democrat without business experience has been extraordinarily better for the economy and the stock market than a Republican who had a career in business. In the past 84 years, GDP has grown 7 percent per year under Democrats without business experience (FDR, JFK, LBJ, Clinton and Obama) and fallen by 0.2 percent per year under Republicans with business experience (Hoover and the two Bushes). The Dow has risen an average of 16.8 percent per year under Democrats without business experience and has fallen by 3.7 percent per year under Republicans with business experience.

I would yell "Scooorebooooard!" except Republicans don't care about the scoreboard unless it's a black or Hispanic athlete doing the scoring in a meaningless socialistic sporting event that is subsidized by taxpayers.  Go figure.


By Robert S. McElvaine
October 20, 2012 | Washington Post

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