Do is "they" specifically?
Because as I remember it the Republicans wanted to sink a Democratic president, and so hampered/slowed the recovery. And let's forget the right-wing idea of "expansionary austerity":
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansionary_fiscal_contractio...
And the deficit hawks who said that the US had to cut debt or Bad Things would happen (which suddenly wasn't a problem went Trump got into office and tax cuts were desired):
There are plenty of us that rage against _both_ parties' negligence when it comes to balancing the budget. Socially liberal and fiscally conservative as us libertarian-ish types say. Lots of us hated Trump for cutting taxes and bullying the fed to lower rates while the economy was already booming.
At least Keynesian theory had a notion of slowing an economy that needed slowing, and boosting an economy that needed boosting, through a complementary mechanism.
The poisonous application on the other hand is to boost an economy at capacity, and use the inevitable crash to funnel wealth to… who knows where?
https://rollcall.com/2017/09/06/trump-sides-with-dems-as-deb...
It would be nice if we could get away from these big boom and big bust cycles. A bit of fiscal discipline could go a long way.
Instead, we are locked into a 2 party system filled with literal fossils. it's obvious to me when there is a tech related congressional hearing that both mainstream political parties are holding us back.
I guess that was good to have people from the cold war Era involved when Russia started pushing Ukraine around. Like a clock that's frozen in time is right twice a day...
Electoral reform is doable one state at a time, some states already use Rankes Choice voting.
It does tend to reduce polarization of the platforms and drive them to more moderate positions though.
If you want more parties you need a proportional representation system.
Obviously doesn’t work for the President, you need tanked choice, runoff, etc
but it does for Congress and senate.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinve...
Edit: Want to add also, the rich got richer as monetary policy flowed into capital markets, while inflation increased hurting the poor the most in the last couple years.
This is especially true when the headline seems to confirm one’s beliefs about something. In fact, most of the USA’s problems if not the worlds are in a big part due to people having that level of engagement.
Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.
What does this even mean? The planet is not destroyed. US Carbon emissions actually went down over that decade. The environment generally is better in many ways than previous decades.
Acid rain is gone:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/acid-rain-environment-earth-day...
Ozone hole is shrinking:
https://www.nasa.gov/esnt/2022/ozone-hole-continues-shrinkin...
In 1981 in LA there were 4 good air quality days for the whole year, 56 moderate days, and 159 stage 5 alert, Very Unhealthy or Hazardous Air Days.
In 2021 there were 41 Good days, 228 Moderate days, and only 1 Very Unhealthy or Hazardous Air Days.
Cool and normal! Nothing to see here, folks.
But of course, the planet is fine! The people are f'ed! The planet's not going anywhere, we are! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmo8sh77G6Y
The US per capita emissions are still only preceded by micronations and petrostates as far as I'm aware. In fact they're still double of those in the EU despite few countries like Poland relying heavily on fossil fuels. Chinese people have managed to surpass the europeans but even they emit about half as much as Americans and are slowing down.
>The environment generally is better in many ways than previous decades.
It feels a bit like replying to a fictitious argument about declining life expectancy by saying "but car & gun deaths are down!".
I care a bit less for more localized short term bound air quality but it's absolutely great that the ozone hole is shrinking and such. Humanity managed to get togheter and make changes that had great impact. I however feel like we managed to do this because the changes needed were comparatively small.
Now please do not under any circumstances use these victories as argumentation to push back against fixing different issues.
The decline in insect biomass in many places is horrifying and as far as I know still accelerating.
Our fossil fuel extraction is still growing. We'll see it decline when it starts getting harder to extract in a few years yes but I don't see that as reason to pat ourselves on the back. It's not a problem that fixes itself relatively quickly necessarily in the same way that stopping the use of CFK's was. Natural sequestration will remain very very slow. Taking it out of the carbon cycle in a good way is many times more difficult than releasing it. We could have given ourselves so so much more leeway by tackling the easier parts of this dependence but didn't and we still often don't.
Also Canada/Australia (I'm guessing similar car-centric transportation is to blame) and Estonia (because of an oil-based power grid).
Yes and it is dropping dramatically - getting better not worse. I.e., the decade being berated for being bad for the planet was good for the planet.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1049662/fossil-us-carbon...
The one where fossil fuel extraction increased year over year.
You're free to advocate for those roles, but don't conflate the circumstances with dysfunction. An active legislature and the Fed's existence are diametrically opposed to the federal government's principal design.
> To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
regulate the value thereof literally describes a central bank.
However, the combination of gerrymandering, the electoral college, lobbyists, etc. mean that congress no longer reflects the will of the people in a meaningful way.
But don't the fed and congress serve the same master? Congress is 'broken' for a reason.
> The board of the fed saw congress's failure and figured "if this country can't execute fiscal policy well at least we can step in with expansionary monetary policy".
No. The idea of using monetary policy over fiscal policy has been in use for decades. It's simpler, quicker and politically easier.
> Came to kick them in the ass when covid rolled around
That's when we had the expansionary fiscal policy. Where's the praise for congress?
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FGEXPND
> but it was also arguably responsible for one the best decades of economic growth in human history.
It was responsible for the biggest asset price increases ( stocks, housing prices, etc ) along with extreme wealth disparity, stagnant wages, low socio-economic advancement and the political chaos of obama-trump-biden.
Crazy to see someone praise a bunch of unaccountable international bankers for their monetary policy especially when the monetary policy causes the economic problems in the first place. And then put down elected politicians for their lack of fiscal policy and ignore their expansionary fiscal policy during covid. Comment reads like FED PR.