Democratic Congress
 

I received this E-mail today, I neither disagree or agree, I just want to know what your opinions are.

It's not to do with Democrats. Do they think one of the largest bursts ever just happened over 2 years? Bullshit. They're ignorant and have, most likely, no economics courses under their belt even. Housing prices have grown in a way that greatly outpaced income growth, it had to stop somewhere.

Sounds like a bunch of propaganda, to me. I'm sure some of it is true, but I don't know if it's true that you can blame those things on a democratic congress. I don't have time to research all of these things, but I chose to look up historical gas prices since I figured it would be easy enough to find the data. Unfortunately, the source I found doesn't go past 6 years ago, but I don't have much time to bother with this and it will suffice. See attachment.

As you'll see on the attachment, there's a pretty steady trend in the rise of gas prices over the past 6 years. It isn't just some crazy new rise in gas prices because of a democratic congress.

That e-mail claims that "just over a year ago" gas prices were at $2.19. I can only assume that they mean early 2007, around February, because that's the last time gas prices were that low. What they fail to mention, however, is that just a few months earlier, in about August of 2006 (before the "new" congress had even been elected), gas prices were up to around $3. Not only that, but gas prices had been as high as about $3 in the middle of 2005.


So basically, what it looks like to me is that someone made that e-mail using data that, while true, does not mean what they portray it to mean. I would have to investigate some more of their claims to verify that, but that would be my guess right now.

Something that's probably worth noting is that generally, when you've got a congress that is majority one party and a president that is another party, you get very little progress. If you look at just about any "democratic" bill that has actually made it to Bush since the democratic party took control of congress, you'll see that he's vetoed a large majority of them, which might explain why things aren't getting any better.

Also, claiming that a congress that was elected not even 2 years ago has caused any sort of drastic change is a bit of a stretch. Even if we DIDN'T have a president that vetoes everything, changes don't really happen very fast in our government, unfortunately, and when they do, it takes time to see the effects of those changes. A lot more than a couple months shy of two years.

That e-mail is lame. Inflation takes time to catch up. I'd say the war is the biggest at fault with our failing economy. $10 billion a month is a very painful tab to pick up.

Which seems odd, because I remember always learning in school that war stimulates economies, which is why the Great Depression is said to have been ended by WWII. I guess this one is different since we're warring with the middle east, which supplies a lot of our oil.

It probably doesn't help that our president wants to spend $362468234620839476239084762934629374 dollars either.

That's a common misconception. It increases GDP because of the war fiscal policy of governments, but the actual spending power of the people didn't go up much per person during WW2. Real gdp per capita or some shit.

Exactly