Hypocritical?

[CJD]

It depends on what policies are passed and what impact they are expected to have on the economy.

If you look at the timeline of the recessions in this country and who is president, it is uncanny how often a recession occurs under a Republican President. And, more times than not, a Democrat comes around to end a recession.

But can this be blamed on them? Or is this just the cycle of the market? It seems as though, with a few exceptions, there's a recession every ~5 to 10 years. Since our presidents tend to go Democrat ->Republican->Democrat->Republican (the only consecutive presidents in the same party since 1945 have been JFK->LBJ and Ronald Reagan->HW Bush [I'm not counting Ford's term because he was never actually elected and only finished out Nixon's term]), you could make an argument that it's just been unfortunate that nearly every recession has occurred with a Republican in the oval office. They fell on the wrong side of the coin, so to speak.

You could also theoretically make an argument that the effects of policy tend to lag behind the policy itself, perhaps even the full length of a presidency, so it is actually the Democrats who cause recessions, but the recession occurs once the Democrat has already safely left office and been replaced with a Republican. It's not a bad theory, but you'd have to actually discuss what policies you believe caused this and I have never heard a cogent and well reasoned argument for this stance regarding any policies supported by Democrats that would cause delayed recessions.

The point is, as with many things in politics, it's a lot more complicated than "the president has the ultimate effect on the economy" or "the president has no effect on the economy."

I'm not an economist, so I only have my opinion based on what I've seen and what I've read other people say but, as far as I can tell, tax cuts tend to have a negative impact on the economy in the long term, especially if they are unequally favored towards corporations and wealthy people (as putting more money into their pockets doesn't tend to go back into the economy the way giving poor and middle class people tax cuts does). Trickle Down Economics doesn't work and actively hinders the economy, essentially.

I also think deregulation has a negative impact on the economy over time, as corporations and banks (and some people, though their individual impact is negligible comparatively) find and exploit loopholes that have been opened to benefit personally at the expense of others (see: the 2008 recession).

Big tax cuts and deregulation have, generally, been the backbone of Republican presidential platforms so would it be fair to point towards those presidencies if their policies cause a recession? I personally think it would be fair.

If there are things that Democrats do that actively lead to recession, then I'm open to hearing them. But the fact is the economy does better under Democrats rather than Republicans. This may just be a small sample size issue, or it may be indicative of policy but either way, historical trends would suggest that we will likely not see the recession expand under Biden.

Especially given the circumstances we're in, with the vaccine coming out right when Biden takes office, he will almost definitely benefit from massive improvements in unemployment, GDP, job growth and other economic measurements. They won't be because of anything he really did, but it'll definitely look like he did something (20+ years from now, people are just going to look at the trend rather than the circumstances when discussing this exact topic, after all).