As a human being with an IQ over 60, I’m embarrassed to be writing this but it seems necessary to inform as many people as possible that the president doesn’t control the economy. There is no steering wheel marked “economy” in the White House. Stocks are not bought and sold based on whiffs of presidential musk. Every president can obviously have an effect on the economy, but most of the time that effect will be so small as to be virtually imperceptible. Warren Buffet has more impact on the economy than Donald Trump or Joe Biden. That’s a good thing.
Of course it’s natural to care about the economy and to worry about the impact that a presidential candidate will have. It’s useful though, to think of the economy as a giant shipping freighter barreling through the sea. The president can stick his little oar in the water, but it won’t make much impact, at least at first. Over time, that oar will start to turn the ship and the eventual resulting directional change can be enormous, but it’s extremely unlikely that the results will be realized by the same president who put the oar in the water. And most of the time, other economic forces turn the rudder and the whole boat goes whatever direction they all wanted regardless of whatever the president did.
If presidents could control the economy we certainly wouldn’t want to hand over the reigns to a Republican any time soon. The last recession was during Trumps term, although it seems pretty obvious that a recession was always going to be the result of a deadly pandemic. But if he can control the economy then why did he allow it to happen? The crash before that happened during George W. Bush’s term, as did the crash before that (2007 and 2001 respectively). The one before that was during George H.W. Bush’s term. Finally with the crash before that we can find a Democrat in charge, Jimmy Carter. But the one before that was Nixon. Seeing any kind of pattern here?
You shouldn’t, no. I’m not going to try some stupid have your cake and eat it too kind of argument that I see so many partisan hacks making online. Trump wasn’t at fault for 2019’s economy and Bush wasn’t at fault for 2007’s. Stagflation wasn’t Jimmy Carter’s fault either. It seems to be inevitable to blame the guy “in charge” when something like this happens, but it’s one of the dumbest ways imaginable for voters to decide an election.
What I’m truly worried about is that future presidents will respond to this expectation from voters by seizing more and more power to control the economy. After all, if they are going to be blamed for the things that go wrong, why not have the power to force them to go right? Trump has already threatened to remove the separation between the Federal Reserve and the executive branch, a move that would result in presidents choosing inflationary measures for short term economic growth, destabilizing our economy over time.
We live in a world where Joe Biden has done more than any other president to stop global warming and also presides over an economy that is pumping more oil than at any time in history. Trump got elected partly by claiming that he was going to bring back manufacturing jobs, but manufacturing jobs continued to decline his entire time in office. Time and time again presidents keep showing us that they have very little control over a $25 trillion dollar economy and yet you regularly hear the morons on twitter and cable and everywhere else claiming that anything bad that happens is the other guy’s fault. I lose brain cells every time I have to read one of these takes. Can we please try to Make America Economically Literate Again?