Talk:U.S. economic performance by presidential party

On 2 December 2023, it was proposed that this article be moved. The result of the discussion was Moved to U.S. economic performance by presidential party.

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Delete Article

Not needed2600:8805:C980:9400:11B:E10B:B081:770E (talk) 05:35, 31 August 2021 (UTC) Says who? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.188.147.125 (talk) 19:12, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Commentary section

The commentary section should be removed and the information in it moved to other sections or removed. The section doesn't add anything. Amthisguy (talk) 21:16, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Inflation

It would be interesting to get an expanded inflation section. DemocratGreen (talk) 02:42, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

inflation

DemocratGreen, in your reversion you ask Would it not be more accurate to refer to real gdp in a section regarding inflation?

but the source refers explicitly to nominal GDP, not real GDP:

weaker GDP growth and lower employment growth under Republicans could be responsible for the differential inflation performance[1]

does that address your objection? soibangla (talk) 21:46, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, funnily enough I recently saw on twitter that the administration displayed that they had the largest increase in social security since 1981, yet later they deleted the tweet, since the increase is automatically adjusted with CPI. Meaning they really just told everyone that they had the most inflation since 1981. As much as nominal GDP is a useful figure, if it is a section on inflation it would only make sense to refer to real GDP, otherwise it is best to not refer to GDP at all. I would have suggested adding it to the GDP section but, I think it might be confusing there as well. I do appreciate you replying to me since I am new at Wikipedia and you are a Wikipedia media legend. DemocratGreen (talk) 01:29, 3 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"a Wikipedia media legend" hold on, I won't be able to stop laughing long enough to respond further until at least tomorrow. soibangla (talk) 01:49, 3 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Misleading info

Other studys especially by Forbes shows this to be a lie. Do more research and redo the info don't mislead your readers, i know this site is ran by democrats. 129.222.252.236 (talk) 12:37, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. We are always in a recession when Dems are in office. This page is opposite of truth what a shame 2603:9001:5D00:2608:DD5E:CC7E:777F:4400 (talk) 12:51, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

History Shows Stocks, GDP Outperform Under Democrats[2] soibangla (talk) 13:01, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 2 December 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved to U.S. economic performance by presidential party. (closed by non-admin page mover) SilverLocust 💬 05:32, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

U.S. economic performance under Democratic and Republican presidents → ? – The title seems to be a bit long for an article. I was hoping that someone can suggest a shorter article title that would work well. Interstellarity (talk) 02:07, 2 December 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. BilledMammal (talk) 02:50, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisting comment: Relist; while typically relisting and participating is frowned upon, I think the total lack of participation and the fact that I am only participating because of that total lack of participation makes it acceptable in this case BilledMammal (talk) 02:50, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment How about "U.S. economic performance by presidential party"? BilledMammal (talk) 02:51, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That was my first thought when I saw the current title; I certainly prefer it to the current one, which is overly long. Karmyx (talk) 22:57, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support per suggestion. Woko Sapien (talk) 18:23, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support U.S. economic performance by presidential party. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 08:52, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Tables with negative numbers don’t sort right

If you sort on a column with negative numbers, they go in order like this: -0.1, -1, -10, 1, 2, 3. The sorting should be -10, -1, 1, 2, 3. Can anybody fix this? If you want to see “worst” and “best” you need to mentally reverse all the negatives. 73.74.143.160 (talk) 14:09, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Article Issues

This article has multiple issues. The first sentence is an unsourced conclusion summarizing the data in the article. It then says that the reasons are debated while the commentary section further down states that the performance under different parties is not "completely attributable to policy choices". The "Reasons for over-performances by Democratic presidents" section is also pretty muddled and doesn't identify a reason why the political party in power has anything to do with economic performance. Based on this it seems misleading to draw the conclusion in the header. There are way too many factors that go into economic performance and external events can affect the data far more than who is President. If we can stick to just presenting the data without the purpose of the article seeming to push an opinion, we may be able to save it, but I think because it's not clear that the political party of the President has any effect on the economy, this article seems unnecessary and misleading (concurrence above) and it doesn't seem encyclopedic so I'm nominating it for deletion. MonsterMash51 (talk) 00:49, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see a contradiction here

It then says that the reasons are debated while the commentary section further down states that the performance under different parties is not "completely attributable to policy choices".

the article shows that any reasons for the disparity are not clear, but shows that it is a discernible pattern nonetheless. it exists. soibangla (talk) 01:27, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that it's a Spurious_relationship and Correlation does not imply causation, and while the article admits that in a small commentary section, I wonder if it's misleading for Wikipedia to present statistics like this at all. We know this is a contentious topic, and if we present data as "the economy was better under Democrat Presidents" will the takeaway be "therefore Democrats are better at managing the economy" if someone misses the reference that the performance is not "completely attributable to policy choices"? MonsterMash51 (talk) 10:40, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

please cite specific phrases that might lead a reader to conclude the article suggests causation of some kind

what are the weasel words that are claimed? soibangla (talk) 19:12, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

weasel and bias tags

Completely Random Guy et al., do you plan to open a discussion of these perceived issues? it's generally not good form to tag an article that way and then walk away. some call it "drive-by" tagging. soibangla (talk) 21:07, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

perception vs. reality

many are no doubt aware that for decades the Republican Party has been very successful in promoting the narrative that they are better stewards of the economy than are Democrats. for many, this narrative has become so pervasive that it is accepted practically as gospel. if people want better economic growth, job creation and stock market returns, they obviously should vote Republican, the narrative goes.

alas, decades of data do not support this narrative, across the board for nearly all major indicators, as shown with many reliable sources in this article. now, I understand this realization might cause cognitive dissonance for some, leading them to reflexively reject the data and conclude this article must be biased, POV, weaselly and unbalanced, so they tag it as such. what they've been led to believe with superior messaging for decades simply cannot be wrong, they think. but it is. as the lead plainly states, it's not clear why it is true, only that it is.

I recommend editors identify specific phrasing and sources they find biased, POV, weaselly and unbalanced so we can resolve them and remove the tags. soibangla (talk) 23:29, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Based on the comments it seems like both sides are biased here. The 2016 paper (on which much of the data is based), clearly states that a large part of the delta can be explained by oil shocks and war. This is not mentioned in the article's introduction. Instead the introduction is phrased in a way that implies democratic policy was likely the driver. 2A02:8108:483F:D734:19B2:59CC:B5BF:D217 (talk) 23:05, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Based on the comments it seems like both sides are biased here. The 2016 paper (on which much of the data is based), clearly states that a large part of the delta can be explained by oil shocks and war. This is not mentioned in the article's introduction. Instead the introduction is phrased in a way that implies democratic policy was likely the driver. 2A02:8108:483F:D734:19B2:59CC:B5BF:D217 (talk) 23:06, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I will remove the tags if articulable arguments other than WP:IDONTLIKEIT are not soon presented. soibangla (talk) 03:58, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"the narrative that they are better stewards of the economy" Is this a belated April Fools' Day joke? I live in Greece and my overall impression is that the Republican terms in office are always associated with a financial crisis. See for example the List of recessions in the United States:

Has anyone cross-referenced the data points presented.

I tried recreating the same data per the bls website on unemployment rates start and ending per president and was not able to get the same data points as presented. Not sure if there are multiple tables presenting unemployment rates on bls website but the only one I could find did not match the data reported in this entry. I did not try to cross-reference the other tables to the source but it makes all suspect to my mind. 2601:601:D27F:11B0:A519:F0D5:1F7A:62EE (talk) 07:32, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just checked each president from Eisenhower through Trump and they are all correct, assuming each president starts in January (except for LBJ and Ford) though the starting point is arguably February because BLS surveys are complete before January 20, even though the results are published on the first Friday of February, so the January number actually belongs to the outgoing president. but most people don't know this, so if we don't start with the inauguration month they'll think something is wrong.

can you give me some examples of values that didn't match for you? also, there are multiple unemployment rates, you need to be sure you're using the U-3 series that everyone talks about.

btw, FRED is better to use. same BLS data, much nicer interface.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE soibangla (talk) 08:16, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your detailed response. I do not think I was on the U-3 table! 2601:601:D27F:11B0:A519:F0D5:1F7A:62EE (talk) 14:53, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to broaden topic

The article topic (which is strangely selected, with no corresponding articles describing other aspects of economic performance by political party) introduces WP:UNDUE into the article, as only the presidential party is considered in the article. As there is no corresponding article about U.S. economic performance by congressional party, nor a more general one about U.S. economic performance by political party in general, this article should be broadened to concern "U.S. economic performance by political party" rather than just presidential party. Anotherperson123 (talk) 05:19, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]