NY Times - Krugman - "Tax Cut Truthiness" - Destroys Bush Tax Cut Talking Points!

[TomCADem]

So much of journalism today resembles the hashing and re-hashing of the latest Frank Lutz talking points that it is refreshing to get some straight up analysis and fact:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/tax-cut-truthiness/

For my sins, I followed a link from Matthew Yglesias to Erick Erickson’s explanation of how great the Bush tax cuts really were. And there I learned some things I didn’t know:

* * *

Likewise, after the 2003 tax cuts, the unemployment rate fell to the lowest level since World War II. Let me repeat that: the Bush economic program created the lowest unemployment level ever.

More um:

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The bit about unemployment really surprised me — after all, the incredibly good job market of the late 90s isn’t that far behind us.

But I think we have part of the key to how Republicans can believe that returning to the Bush agenda is exactly what we need: they’ve invented themselves an alternate history in which wonderful things happened under Bush, and earlier booms have been sent down the memory hole.

[laughingliberal]

1. Paul is correct on this. The 'recovery' in the Bush years was a recovery at the top, just as this is

Bush's 'recovery' was the first 'recovery' since WWII where the workers did not reap more benefits than the corporations. Generally, recoveries see about 65% of the growth go to workers and 35% to corporate profits. Bush's recovery reversed that, completely. Add to that a net total of only 3 million jobs created in his 8 years and it amounts to no recovery below the top 2%.

The same will be true of this one if jobs and wages don't start going up soon.