I've always wondered why democrats, who are more statist, out perform republicans in this particular economic metric.
One reason might be that income grows faster under the Dems because of increased GDP measures from increased spending. Another might be that minimum wages cause people do go unemployed and so their income is not even measured, much less factored into the income growth rate. Of course, the influence of congress over the president and the specific economic policies of presidents also might affect the data in a misleading way.
However, another chart also shows that Rep. administrations also have higher unemployment and lower minimum wages than Dem ones do, and yet another shows that the same results are experienced in other countries (I can't find the graph now but I'll post it when I find it).
So the next question is "how to square higher unemployment with lower minimum wages?".
I have solutions to this question but I think they are too far-fetched.
Any other ideas?
The other data:
Economic Performance under the Clinton and Bush Administrations Annual Averages Clinton Bush Real GDP Growth Rate 3.7% 2.6% Real GDP Growth Per Capita 2.5% 1.6% Unemployment Rate 5.2% 5.4% Change in Unemployment Rate -0.4% +0.1%
Postwar Economic Performance before the Clinton and Bush Administrations Annual Averages Democrats Republicans Real GDP Growth Rate 4.5% 2.9% Real GDP Growth Per Capita 3.1% 1.7% Unemployment Rate 5.2% 6.1% Change in Unemployment Rate -0.3% +0.3%
So you can tell how strange it is that unemployment seems to go along with the party which also supposedly offers lower minimum wages. But where is the graph showing minimum wages? I'm still tracking that one down, but I think I just misremembered minimum wage data with employment data since the two go hand in hand. Either way it is strange that the party that should favor high minimum wages would still show greater employment numbers.
1. You have to remember that our sample size is quite small. There have only been some 12 administrations in the sample size examined by the data.
2. Presidents ultimately have only partial control of the actions of the federal government.
3. Republicans don't really have that great a track record for small government. I recently wrote a pretty scathing critique of Reagan a paper on his administration. Government growth in real terms only decreased slightly, spending on "real" economic services by government (consumption for military purposes vs. transfer payments) increased and most anything that was gained through his tax breaks were lost through increase in state taxes and running deficits.
4. Since the end of the economic golden age of the 50's and 60's we have seen only 2 democratic presidents if we don't count Obama. Of these Clinton oversaw a period of fairly significant growth, and to my knowledge no one has ever had the audacity to claim that his policies were that radically different from the preceding Republican administrations.
Who cares about nominal Income growth among individual presidential tenures? The only part that matters, the real part, is hardly rising and maybe even falling.
I have only anectotal evidence but lets look at it anyway. Take some highly paid manufacturing workers: Auto Workers. In 1915 Ford paid the workers $5 per day or $25 per week. And the dollar was set to $25 per ounce of gold so they were paid 1 ounce per week. Supposedly the wages and benefits of an auto worker is about $70 so that would be 70 x 40 = 2800 with gold at 1600 that is 28/16 = 1.75 ournces per week. So after 100 years the auto workers on a per worker basis are only 1.75 times as valueable to their companies as they were in 1915. That is an increase of 0.56% per year. Whoopee!!!!!!! Do these workers today output 1.75 more cars per worker than in 1915? Do you think that the cars are better now than they were then and are more valuable? But this does not include taxes for anti-Social in-Security and income. Furthermore these great benefits that are at least 20% of the salary are never going to be realized as the pension and healthcare funds will be completely broke by then or paid out at a rate of 50cents on the dollar from the Feds and that dollar is not going to be $1600 per ounce but something larger.
And outside of professionals and executives these folks fare the best. How about people on social security? Are their incomes going up? How about some other highly paid professions like airline pilots, are they doing better now than in the 1920s or the 1950s?
Arguing about Democrats vs Republicans being beneficial to working people outside of government employees and corporate welfare interests is like arguing about how many races Jeff Gordan will win with a green car versus a blue one.