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The lie that won’t die is that Republicans are better for the economy than Democrats. By every measure possible, that is just not correct. Republicans break shit, Democrats fix it, and voters reward them by ushering Republicans back in power. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Now, the stock market is not “the economy,” and even boom times have seen economic decline for a significant percentage of people in the United States, particularly in its decaying rural regions. But the market is a proxy for strong economic performance, however inequitable it might be distributed.
At that very least, there’s no scenario in which we have economic development without a strong market. If companies are to create jobs, there has to be a strong market—or investors, in anticipation—pumping money into that job growth. Just take a look at Wall Street’s 10 worst crashes:
1) March 12, 2020
Republican Donald Trump was president, and the emergence of a deadly pandemic and ensuing shutdowns signaled a period of economic uncertainty. Rather than calm jittery markets, Trump suggested that people inject bleach (April 24, 2020) to cure COVID-19. The markets had every reason to panic. Too bad they didn’t remember those lessons in 2024.
2) Nov. 20, 2008
Republican George W. Bush was president when the subprime mortgage crisis took down the global economy. Years of Wall Street deregulation—cheered on by Republicans—created the conditions for this mess.
3) April 4, 2025
Trump is president again, and here we are in a completely self-created and enabled crisis because Wall Street didn’t learn from the lessons of 2020, and their greed overrode all evidence that Trump is a disaster to not just our democracy but to global order. Congratulations, assholes. You voted for this.
4) Nov. 6, 2008
Bush done f’d stuff up.
5) October 15, 2008
Same as #2 and #4, courtesy of Bush and his merry cabal of deregulators.
6) October 7, 2008
Same same.
7) March 9, 2020
Trump again.
8-10) October 9, 10, and 22, 2008
Bush really made a mess of things, which makes it particularly maddening that people walked away thinking that Republicans knew anything about running an economy. Eight years of manufactured scandals against Democratic President Barack Obama really did a number in the United States, ushering in the age of Trump.
It’s quite obvious that, once Trump’s tariffs have fully left their mark, 2025 will occupy far more than just one spot on this list.
Other notable crashes?
Black Friday in October 1929, with Republican Herbert Hoover as president.
Post-9/11 market crash, with Bush as president.
Black Monday on October 19, 1987, with Republican President Ronald Reagan.
It’s a Republican. Every. Single. Time.
It’s not just Republicans, it’s businessmen. Hoover, George W. Bush, and of course Trump were all businessmen. Reagan technically not but he kind of was an adopted businessman with all the corporate friends he had.
What happens is, people think a businessman would be great for the economy. But what makes someone a great businessman? Not strong knowledge of economics, that’s what makes you a good economics professor. A great businessman is one who is good at fundraising, which basically comes down to having lots of rich friends who you can convince that giving you money will pay off for them down the road. This is why guys like Adam Neumann still raise gobs of money after failing - if people see you as a guy who can raise money, they’re less worried you’ll go bankrupt.
So anyway, when these Adam Neumanns end up entering the white house, they find that they’ve made many promises to their wealthy friends but don’t know how to keep them. So they try their best, conducting sweeping changes to financial and regulatory systems, but lacking the economic knowledge to understand the often complex effects these decisions have. Inevitably, there’s major economic problems down the road.
I had a chat with someone recently who said “I’m right-leaning, but I’m starting to miss Biden…” and I asked:
“Why are you right-leaning?”
And it’s like they short-circuited right in front of me.
Normally, they hit me back with misguided claims that Republicans are good for the economy, or that they are fiscal conservatives, or something about Russia or China-- but we are both tax accountants and we understand very intimately how fucked the US economy really is, while coping with the reality that our retirement savings are pretty much gone and unlikely to recover.
Sometimes, they’ll say something about immigration. However, some of our best team members self-deported due to the threat of forceful deportation on their families, so things are really bad at our public accounting firm and getting worse as people burn out from the increased work loads.
Or on occasion, they’ll spout some platitudes about the US Constitution, Veterans, or All-American values, but obviously Republicans do not give a fuck about any of that.
So finally they splutter:
“… traditions are important to me.”
And I’m like, “What kind of traditions?”
And they say:
“… Easter and Christmas.”
In my opinion, people that consider themselves right-leaning simply like to complain and complain and complain about things they do not bother to educate themselves about, while fully expecting everyone else to look out for them when they are actively sabotaging every effort made to improve our nation.
That person is stupid. Like, profoundly. They cannot escape their self constructed cage of emotions.
I’m so tired of emotionally stunted, intellectually incurious, fools ruining the world for everyone.
Unfortunately it really isn’t that profound. It exists everywhere and thinking you’re immune to being ruled by it is usually the first step in it proliferating
The first sentence doesn’t seem to have to do with the second sentence. And imo the first one is wrong too.
The amount of stupid it takes to even get the needle leaning to the right just by .00001% is pretty profound. It does exist everywhere, but that doesn’t lessen the sheer amount of it. Conservatives kinda define themselves by their stupidity. It’s their brand. They don’t call it that, of course.
So strange that they think this war on Christmas (and I guess I’m Easter) is real. I honestly don’t know a single person that has a problem with someone wishing someone a Merry Christmas or celebrating it in any way.
Just like guns. I have MANY democratic friends and almost all of them own guns. When Obama left office five gun laws had been passed, all of them loosening restrictions. Can’t they just look something up for crying out loud?
Can’t they just look something up for crying out loud?
No. That would hurt their feelings. Better to consume propaganda that legitimizes their feelings.
Yeah, you’re right.
I always say, I’ve literally never seen anyone get upset over hearing merry christmas, but I’ve witnessed plenty of people lose their shit over hearing happy holidays.
Funny, I said that long before this was an issue and for me it meant Christmas and New Year’s. I wasn’t really thinking about Hanukkah or anything else but figured hey, the more it includes, the better.
As a Christian, I have a problem on at least one level with how people treat Christmas and Easter.
For something similar, imagine if instead of Christmas and Easter, the celebration was of your parent’s birthday and that time they flatlined but recovered in the hospital.
And people you didn’t know were celebrating it years later, trying to sell you festive decorations and fighting with each other over whether others were trying to ban the celebration, making it all about some mythical doctor and nurses who once threw a party when your parent survived, talking about becoming a doctor being the true purpose of celebrating your parent’s birthday.
That’s about how messed up this all is.
I feel like they just weren’t prepared to answer my question, so they just said whatever came to mind.
This person is not stupid-- rather, always a huge hypocrite.
It is a lack of empathy and personal responsibility. They aren’t happy with their life so they must either 1) blame it on someone else 2) hurt someone else so they feel they are doing better (everything is relative).
They literally cannot fathom that helping someone else doesn’t make you worse off, even if that person is now doing better.
This is resonating deeply with me. I’m having very similar experiences with my colleagues and friends.
I’m so sorry. I hate playing therapist at work.
This is actually hilarious, 4 days ago I asked chatgpt to make a Gantt chart correlating recessions and who was in power in the USA. The graph I got showed the same result. Republicans in power.
The question becomes: If Democrats are good for the economy, and voters like good economies, why do they hand the reins back to Republicans so damn always?
Because “the economy” is a phony construct based on bullshit measurements that only benefits capital. It doesn’t include anything that people actually want: more leisure, healthcare, shelter, clean air/water, etc. Even when “the economy” is doing “good” under democrats, the poor are still being crushed and exploited perhaps even more so.
This is the best answer. One that doesn’t give Republicans super powers or call American voters idiots but only sometimes.
Plus it aligns with the behavior we see from Democrats in the elections they lose, which is to point at economic statistics and tell everyone things are fine.
The problem is that we have reached late stage capitalism where the economy does not work for 99% of Americans regardless of which party is in charge.
The real question you should be asking is “Why do the rich and powerful keep supporting Republicans if they consistently crash the economies that the rich and powerful participate in?” There’s a pretty obvious answer that helps to explain what’s happening right now.
because republicans cry in bad faith about everything. because they have no personal standards.
it’s been said a thousand times but if this market drop had happened under biden they would have literally been calling for his head. and it’s easier to rile people up with rage than the status quo.
So American voters are stupid, but only during a good economy?
enough of them are stupid in the way that enables the republican misinformation to do it’s work. don’t forget there’s also gerrymandering and other bullshit they’ve been allowed to do that makes their shit more effective as well.
So Republicans are just better at the game because they control the rules and under estimate American intelligence?
im keeping my statements mostly to the facts. there’s plenty of people that will tell you the dems are just planned opposition to republicans.
the two parties are not held to the same standards remotely.
I would say Republicans don’t underestimate Murcan intelligence. They more accurately gauge just how gullible Murcans are when it comes to believing their lies about the economy, queerfolk, immigration, taxes, and services.
Economically, every single Republican POTUS has fucked the economy for the little guy, why would you believe this one would be different?
Queerfolk make up maybe 10% of the population, how are they possibly oppressing the other 90%?
Immigrants do all the jobs that most Murcans won’t touch like agricultural and construction. How can it help average Murcans to have more expensive food and housing?
For taxes and cuts to services, it’s long been proven that tax cuts for the wealthy do not create jobs or benefit society at large. The accompanying cuts to services do far more harm than good.
Republicans mislead the population in order to get you to vote with your emotions.
Democrats don’t seem to think that this works and refuse to stoop to their level, when it is at exactly this level they need to fight if they want to have any hope of winning an election. Call them names, make up shit that doesn’t exist, taunt them about how they’re old and tired, and literally deep throat a microphone. Whatever the current reality teevee POTUS is doing.
You can’t beat those fuckos with facts or reason.
They’re better at the game because they aren’t required to operate truthfully. “A lie will spread halfway across the world before the truth has its shoes on.” A robust propaganda network combined with a willingness to lie right straight to the faces of your constituents means that reality can be whatever you want it to be, and the evening news will back you up on it. That’s all that most people need in order to believe something - authority figure says X, the news agrees, that’s now a fact.
I don’t see an effective way to combat this especially with folks who are already immersed in the Fox News environment. They have been heavily conditioned to reject information that disagrees with their official story. How do you fight that?
American voters like someone to blame. In a good economy, that could be about all sorts of things. In a bad economy, it’s about the economy.
I think it’s more like when things are good, we are laissez-faire. When things go to shit we pay attention. So republicans lead to shit times which lead to Democrat votes, which lead to good times, which lead to voting for keeping things as they are (not exactly Republican regressivism to be sure, but republicans are the party of nostalgia and status quo while democrats are the party of idealism and change).
We swing back and forth pretty much every 2 or 4 years because we can’t look into the past more than a few months. When anything bad happens it’s pretty much the sitting Presidents fault. That and the right wing politicians and media have zero morals and will spin anything in their favor. Haitians eating dogs and cats? Completely unfounded but it either helped the GOP or had little affect on their likeability. Kids pretending to be cats and using litter boxes in schools? A wild stretch of the darker truth but there didn’t seem to be any backlash about that lie.
It’s an effective two-party system with unfair weighting utterly colonised by some of the most well-invested in propaganda efforts in the world.
People who report that they’re Republicans very frequently flit wildly on whether the country’s on a good economic trajectory based on whether Republicans are empowered, seemingly completely independent of any other metric.
The problem with the two-party system is that both parties are conservative, so there’s no one to vote for in the case of the 33% of Murcan voters. There’s only someone to vote against.
Well, Democrats are better for the economy than Republicans, but when you break it down they’re just another capitalist party, and the real issue with everything is…
Money.
It’s in the financial interests of billionaires for people to vote Republican. As such, they’re bankrolled and spend that money on campaign ads, attorneys’ fees getting laws overturned, attorneys’ fees keeping people buried in frivolous lawsuits, keeping people stupid by defunding education, and generally speaking people aren’t always smart, swimming in information or totally plugged in.
We should get rid of the republicans. We know who they are and where they live.
No good replacing them with yourself….
Definitely only Republicans fault and the democratic party is totally uncompromised. Which is why they passed laws to limit these reckless corporations.
how about with one year in advance?
Because these things happen in a vacuum?
