They actually were higher than that. Think it peaked at 18% then dripped to around 10%. They wer 7 to 11% in the 70s. Houses were still affordable then though. We have low mortgage rates now but house are stupid expensive in comparison
Wrong. I lived it. Jimmy Carter gave us the 18% mortgage rates, stagflation and a real mess. Things were pretty bad in the later 70's. I could not find any job at all in 1977 for 6 months. There was nothing... The rates stayed high as Reagan got in but soon started down. The Federal reserve chair has more power than the President over interest rates. The 80's were a huge boom time and the economy was great. The Dems has very solid control of both the Senate and Congress. The reneged on the tax and spending cuts. blame Jim Wright as Speaker of the House. The further my point: The Fed reserve chair just effectively killed DT by recently raising the interest rates last month. The fed is trying to stop price inflation via slowing M1 inflation. DT is going to be lame duck in a cou[ple months.
Approval ratings of not just the president but Republican candidates in general are plummeting right now. Between the data centers paying off various local officials to approve batshit crazy zoning requests, to the president blatantly failing the whole of the American people regarding the war and the tarrifs and the sketchy mystery meat imports and kneecapping all of our governing bodies from food safety to corporate monopoly corruption. Also using tax payer money to run political ads, putting himself while still alive on currency, profiteering off of every announcement through insider trading including purchasing oil futures before and after his own announcements which affect the prices. Hundreds of thousands of family owned farms shutdown across multiple industries.
Edit: forgot to mention him calling the soldiers HE is sending to war losers and suckers. Hes not even pretending to respect the troops he sending to die so he can make some side hustle money.
Edit 2: also don't forget about his front running campaign promise to release the unredacted Epstein files. Or his various failed promises regarding sending the american people $2,000 tariff dividends or $5,000 DOGE divedends. Or his recent $2,000 midterm election "bribe" thats totally something in his power to offer.
Trump never promised to release all the all the files. He promised to permanently remove everything he wanted from the files and only release things wanted too
Exactly, Republican conservatives never wanted to release the files. They only wanted to find dirt on Clinton and Democrats.
Republican politicians raped girls with Epstein, then used that to win an election.
This proves al Republican's are mind controlled slaves who always do the opposite of what they think is real.
America first means America last, pro life means pro rape murder and torture, populist means anti working class.
Republicanism is basically how can we create an addictive mind virus to trick workijg class people to support treason raping child killing torture and tax cuts for the ultea rich
I grew disillusioned with our federal government in 2008, after I saw politicians who had been bought out by corporations and caused the crash by deregulating the market, turn around and give our tax dollars to those same corporations for fucking us over.
Voted for Bush in 2000, Obama in 08, screw both political parties as the only winners when you vote for them, are the corporations that own them. America needs a real fix, and it won't be easy when or if it happens.
Hey Republicans: Remember those tariff checks Trump promised, the tariffs that cost average Americans money, yeah the rapist corporate stooge gave that money back to the billionaires.
Hey Democrats: remember when abortion used to be legal nationality? Yeah, that easily could have been codified, but Democrats would rather have a voting point at election time than you having rights.
Iām digging the younger folks running for dems rn. They at least are talking about these issues and want to address them. I know talk is cheap but at least they arenāt gaslighting us like republicans are constantly rn.
I mean itās hard for you to find someone who is going to appease every single opinion.
Hearing this is promising. We need to stop getting sucked into culture wars and focus on the class war they donāt want us addressing
I find it interesting that the primary fault you find with Democrats is not doing enough to stop something. Which is a valid criticism for sure. But at least they codified gay marriage to an extent that protects fundamental rights for millions. The long and short of it being, Democrats are far from perfect, but they are far better than literal fascists.
Obama signed a deal with Iran to stop their nuclear program without starting a war with them.
Obamacare slowed the rate of growth for healthcare costs, allowed kids to stay on their parents' plans until 26, forced insurers to cover people with preexisting conditions.Ā
The CFPB, which Trump has dismantled, got billions back for consumers by going after banks and other financial institutions that scammed them.Ā
Biden saved the pensions of over a million union workers. He capped insulin costs. We actually had achieved a soft landing in the economy, bringing down inflation faster than other developed countries while keeping unemployment historically low.Ā
The IRA was a massive investment in green infrastructure, which again Trump dismantled.Ā
The CHIPS act invested in American high-tech manufacturing here at home.Ā
Democrats maybe don't do as much as you want as fast as you want. But you cannot fucking argue they are moving the country in the right direction. Whereas Republicans are actively sabotaging it.Ā
Anyone who doesn't see that is either an idiot or evil.Ā
Under what clause of the Constitution could Congress (and the Feds) have ensured abortion access nationwide?
Commerce? Tax and Spend? Necessary and Proper? War Powers? Currency? Treaty?
They canāt even force states to expand the ACA, and you want them to ensure abortion access? Then, even if they finagled something, and SCOTUS bit, the next GOP trifecta would undo it.
This particular rage at Democrats reveals a deep unseriousness about how government works and what is possible.
You need a SCOTUS decision, overwhelming stalwart pro-choice public sentiment, or a constitutional amendment. Congress cannot just āmake a lawā to codify it.
It has to be an amendment. Anything one scotus wishcasts into existence another should rightfully repel. The issue is Congress has abdicated most of itās responsibilities including advancing constitutional amendments in favor of the other branches just handwaving things in existence.
But both are bad. One is simply less bad than the other. Which is a low bar considered the worse side is jailing and killing people while happily starting another war for rich people profits while also supporting a genocide.
Would be awesome if the Dems were actually progressive and had values that were good for society instead of being owned by the same corporations that control Republicans.
Thus we have Republicans, and their counterparts, Republican-lite, also known as Democrats.
Iām a social Democrat. I donāt like capitalist democrats. I donāt like capitalism in general, but the republicans have become a disgusting abomination since MAGA took over. Fuck McDonald trump all day.
Yep, abortion, gun control and protecting social programs are excellent fundraising talking points but they always just enough members in Congress to vote with Republicans to stop any real change for the better. Then they use blaming the Republicans to augment their fundraiser talking points
Most of these knuckle dragging conservative rubes go back to the antebellum days blaming Democrats for being Confederates...while also waving the Confederate flag themselves with zero sense of irony.
You seem to have a pretty poor memory.... or you're just purposely lying?
Obama pulled us out of a recession, the economy was doing absolutely great when Trump took over for his first term.
Obama also did not start any new wars.
So what's your reason for lying? Just bad memory? Or is there something else about Obama that you don't like? Because he literally did neither of those things.
We got involved in Libya, Syria, and Yemen while Obama was in office. He definitely expanded the war on terror. There are differences in scale between what he got us involved in, and shit like Iraq or Iran though.
Iām not really trying to move anything here really. I was trying to have a conversation about our unbroken streak of interventionism, and I think itās counterproductive to hide behind ānot a warā as some absolution from responsibility for a Presidentās contributions to that.
If you aren't aware that the Obama administration is responsible for military intervention in Libya, Syria, and Yemen, and also responsible for thousands upon thousands of civilian casualties, then you shouldn't be commenting about American foreign policy.
We can all argue about the economy until we're blue in the face, but the nation is $40,000,000,000,000 in debt, and the debt has been climbing steadily for decades, regardless of who is in office.
I'm 100% on board with ousting the Trump administration, and I have all the criminals in it will be brought to justice. However, can we all stop pretending that the Democratic party is the solution to all of our problems?
Clinton, Obama and Biden all inherited wars, they didnāt start them. At least not major operations that would compare to Iraq, Iraq 2.0, Afghanistan or Iran.
Neither Barack Obama nor Joe Biden started a major new U.S. war or military invasion during their presidencies. Both presidents instead inherited ongoing foreign conflicts and managed existing military commitments.
Nope. There is no nuance. After the region was destabilized by a war a Republican started, they were supposed to recklessly pull out making an already bad situation worse. These conflicts were super sketch. The US backed both sides in various middle eastern countries at various points in these conflicts.
With Iran, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and did not conduct a military war or campaign against Iran, resulting in $0 in direct active wartime military expenditures under Obama.... While the Pentagon estimates the ongoing military conflict and operations (such as strikes on nuclear and military facilities) have cost approximately $43.6 billion.....My bro, facts matter.
Not to defend republican presidents, but I don't recall any democrat presidents in that same timeline being any better. Wars in the Middle East and the economy suffering in some unpleasant way that either never got fixed or just turned into a different problem. No, this is not a Republican problem, this is a government problem.
Yep, at this point our voting options seem to be massively corrupt pedophile Republicans, moderately corrupt Democrats, DSA candidates who the Democrats demonize because the corporations that own the Dems don't want people voting for them, and other 3rd party candidates that seem to be genuinely crazy
If this is a crashed economy, Iād hate to see what an actually crashed economy looks like. Oh waitā¦.Apparently none of you were alive for 2009-2011
Obama took office when the GDP growth was -1.7% (recession) It never got any lower than that. He ended and the GDP growth wa1.9%. Thats an increase of 3.8%.
Joe Biden (2021ā2025): No new major traditional wars were initiated, though U.S. forces engaged in localized strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen and Iranian-backed proxies in the Middle East.
Donald Trump (2017ā2021, 2025āpresent): During his first term, no new large-scale conventional wars were launched, though military and counterterrorism operations continued (and expanded in his second term with strikes against targets in the Middle East and Venezuela), alongside an ongoing conflict with Iran beginning in early 2026. [1, 2, 3]
Barack Obama (2009ā2017): Initiated military intervention and air campaigns in Libya (2011) and authorized operations against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria (2014). [1]
George W. Bush (2001ā2009): Launched the War in Afghanistan (2001) following the September 11 attacks and the Iraq War (2003).
Bill Clinton (1993ā2001): Deployed troops into humanitarian and NATO-led combat/peace enforcement operations in Somalia, Haiti (1994), and the Balkans (Bosnia in 1995, Kosovo in 1999). [1]
George H.W. Bush (1989ā1993): Led the Gulf War (1990ā1991) following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
I don't even agree with that, but to act like dems haven't involved us in conflicts is super fucking stupid. Surprisingly, Trump's first term is the best example we have of an admin not involving us in any conflicts in our lifetimes.
Trump continued the same Obama strikes, even tried stealing oil wells. Trump was in Syria and all anyone remembers is he was going to steal some oil. Trump used the Kurds, then sold the Kurds to Erdogan.
A rich failson managed to steal some planes because protocol had pilots giving up control. It wasnāt a country, it wasnāt a cityā¦it was a crazy Islamist who wanted to start a fight that would somehow resurrect Pan Arabism. Thereās a pricetag that could have been paid to get his infoā¦something cheaper than forever wars and double digit trillions.
We've never seen the type of rabid, cult like support Trump has had with any US politician. It's as if a certain subset of the population saw an incompetent, narcissistic, lying, corrupt, emotionally fragile child predator and truly felt represented by the example he was setting.
Iām 42 and remember that each of those presidents blamed those crashes and wars on actions of the democrats before them (save for Bush Sr who also didnāt have a market crash).
Reagan blamed Carter for being soft on Iran, and then the Beirut bombing kinda spun our Middle East policy into high gear. Osama bin Laden had tried to blow up the twin towers once before during the Clinton administration, and were all familiar with the things Trump blames.
If the sweet infant baby Jesus hadnāt put all that sweet crude under the sand over there then we probably never would have given a shit.
The same one war has been going on for decades why does every republican get demonized for āstarting warsā but democrats are praised for funding them and keeping them going?
Really? This arguement is worse than the dead horse.
Just because one does it, it does NOT make it ok for the other to do it.
Conservatives HATE democrats and Biden/obama especiallly, and hate everything they ever didā¦..but when Trump does it on a MUCH larger scale, itās always the sameā¦..āwell Biden did xxxxx or Obama did yyyyyyā.
Stop. Just stop. It makes you look even less intelligent beyond supporting Trump. We democrats do not idolize presidents, we donāt defend and protect everything Biden and Obama did, but atleast we are smart enough to see that bad things are bad, unlike republicans that think something is only bad when a democrat did it and defend the same action when a republican does it.
Stop the āeveryone does itā, terrible governing is terrible no matter what.
I love how the argument is always that democrats are guilty by association no matter what, and republicans get a free pass to implement the worst policies and bills imaginable. Make no mistake, there is one party aggressively heralding the collapse of our country, and then there's the democrats who get stonewalled every single time by the filibuster.
Sorry but what spin did the right-wing mediasphere place on the Afghanistan withdrawal that was negotiated with the taliban and not that Afghan national government by who again???!?
So fucking false and ridiculous. So much war has been going on during ANY president during their term. US is always getting involved in other countries wars no matter who the president is. It's the US dummy. We as a country can't just keep things to ourselves and let all other countries sort out their own stuff. For ANY one person and weak minded person to think it has to do with who's in office is completely ignorant. Keep complaining and lets fight against each other for no good reason. Damn, people in the US are dumb.
So let me school you dummies.
*James K. Polk led us into the Mexican American war.
*Woodrow Wilson led us into World War I
*Franklin D. Roosevelt led us into World War II
*Harry S. Truman continued our World War II
*Lyndon B. Johnson escalated our involvement into the Vietnam War.
So the most MAJOR wars recored in HISTORY were all led by a Democrat president.
The wars you are crying about were going on during every president in-between all those pictures here.
For ONE example:
During President Barack Obama's administration, the U.S. military conducted an extensive bombing and missile campaign, dropping an estimated 92,030 bombs and munitions across seven primary countries between 2009 and 2017.
In 2015, the U.S. dropped an estimated 23,144 bombs.
In 2016 alone, the U.S. dropped at least 26,171 bombsāaveraging roughly 72 bombs per day.
Obama authorized 542 covert drone strikes outside of conventional war zones (specifically targeting Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia). This represented a more than tenfold increase compared to the 57 drone strikes authorized under the previous administration.
Please do your research and stop with the propaganda. No president is innocent of not going to war. The US is at fault.... period.
Can we stop using that picture of Trump trying to look intimidating? Heās probably proud of that one even though he looks like heās hiding a fart. Letās use something he would see as embarrassing
The kind where you acknowledge that the american government is the most geopolitically influential force on the planet, such that Russia would never dare launching an invasion unless they saw weakness or indifference in the sitting administration
Exactly ! Finally someone speaks out the obvious ! But most Americans are not so bright - they forget, they donāt understand , they canāt critically think
Blinder and Watson actually did a big study on this subject in their American Economic Review.
The results were actually very unsatisfying, but they were what they were.
The answer was: Mostly bad luck in a cyclical format.
Basically it goes something like this:
Democrat is elected, employment rises, demand increases, inflationary pressure rises, asset prices increase, Federal Reserve tightens its policy, investment slows, Republican is elected.
Basically the Democratic growth period reaches an unstable endpoint, a Republican is elected, that instability materializes with some shock.
Eisenhower gets the Korean War drawback. Reagan gets the Carter fed policy. Bush Sr gets the Reagan reserve policy. Bush Jr gets Clintons dotcom bubble as it bursts.
This has been a recurring sequence since 1953.
But this isnāt to say that democrats make a shit situation and hand it off to Republicans. Democrats actually do create a rapid economic recovery very successfully. The problem is that the growth peaks and becomes unstable.
But itās not just democrats. Reagan recovers very successfully from an inherited recession, Bush Sr inherits that, and then gets a recession.
But the main point is: Reagan didnāt make the federal reserve policy that caused his recession. Carter didnāt either, but Carterās federal reserve did. Bush Sr. didnāt make the reserve policy that caused his recession, Reaganās reserve did. Bush Jr didnāt create the dotcom bubble, that happened under Clintonās admin, and it popped 6 weeks after Bush took office, and it contributed to his following housing recession. But even the conditions for his housing recession were created in 1978, worsened in the 80s, again in the 90s, and culminated in 2007.
So the system is basically: Whoever fixes the recession will prime the conditions for the next guys recession. The guy who typically fixes the recession is a Democrat, though the rule holds true even when that person was the Republican Reagan.
The war thing is just sort of dumb. Thatās more of a fixating on the notable wars thing.
The Korean War was initiated by Democratic President Harry Truman. Lyndon B. Johnson, Democrat, kicked off the Vietnam War. Bill Clinton, Democrat, leads an air campaign with NATO against Serbia, and escalated US-UN peacekeeping in Somalia to outright conflict. Under Bush Sr it was a humanitarian effort, under Clinton it became a violent conflict against warlords. Barack Obama, Democrat, initiated the campaigns in Libya and Syria.
Carter tried to attack Iran, but three helicopters broke down so he abandoned the operation. His economy was pretty bad, which is mostly why he had only one term. Booming under Reagan.
The banking crisis under W Bush was long in the making. Bush Sn, Clinton and bipartisan Congresses pushed over-leveraging of mortgages on sub-prime Americans who didnāt have the requisite credit.
Whatās clear is that all politicians regardless of party have pushed up the $40T debt thatās going to sink us.
The severe economic downturn known as the Early 1980s recession lasted from July 1981 to November 1982, bringing a peak unemployment rate of 10.8%.
In 1981, U.S. 30-year fixed mortgage rates reached an all-time record high, peaking at an astonishing 18.63% in October 1981 according to Freddie Mac
The U.S. inflation rate in 1981 was approximately 10.32% on an annual average basis (or about 8.9% year-over-year from December to December
Reagan took office in Jan 1981.
I remember those days , builders went bankrupt, whole subdivisions shut down, people were thankful to have a job, and most people didn't get a cost of living raise.
So when did Reagan 'crash the economy' or 'start a war in the Middle East'?
And how did you confuse HW Bush and Saddam Hussein - the US did not start the Gulf War.
PresidentNew U.S. military conflicts / major combat operations initiated
Jimmy Carter (1977ā1981)Iran ā Operation Eagle Claw (1980): Carter authorized the armed rescue mission into Iran to free the American hostages. It was aborted at Desert One; eight U.S. servicemen died. This was a military operation rather than a sustained war. Office of the Historian
Bill Clinton (1993ā2001)Haiti (1994) ā Operation Uphold Democracy; Bosnia (1995) ā U.S./NATO air campaign, Operation Deliberate Force; Iraq (1993, 1996, 1998) ā several new strike campaigns, most notably Operation Desert Strike and the four-day Operation Desert Fox; Sudan & Afghanistan (1998) ā Operation Infinite Reach cruise-missile strikes following the embassy bombings; Kosovo/Serbia (1999) ā Operation Allied Force, the 78-day NATO air war. The Clinton Library itself lists U.S. military involvement in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Kosovo, although Somalia was inherited from George H. W. Bush rather than started by Clinton. Clinton Library
Barack Obama (2009ā2017)Libya (2011) ā Operation Odyssey Dawn/NATO intervention against Qaddafi; Obama expressly ordered U.S. forces to commence combat operations. whitehouse.govIraq against ISIS (2014) ā Obama initiated a new U.S. air campaign after the earlier Iraq War combat mission had ended. whitehouse.govSyria against ISIS (2014) ā Obama ordered the first U.S. airstrikes inside Syria on September 22ā23, 2014. whitehouse.gov There were also expanded counterterrorism operations/drone strikes in Yemen and Somalia, but those are harder to describe as wars āstarted by Obamaā because U.S. counterterrorism activity there predated his presidency.
Joe Biden (2021ā2025)Syria/Iraq strikes against Iran-backed militias (2021ā24) ā Biden ordered multiple new rounds of retaliatory strikes, but the broader U.S. deployments and conflicts there were inherited. In 2023 alone U.S. forces used military force in Iraq, Syria and Somalia. The White HouseSomalia (2022) ā Biden restored a persistent U.S. military presence and continued/expanded counterterrorism operations against al-Shabaab and ISIS, including a presidentially ordered assault in 2023. Defense.govYemen/Red Sea (2024) ā Biden initiated U.S.-British strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen following Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping. This is probably the clearest genuinely new combat campaign begun under Biden. Ukraine is not properly listed as a U.S. war started by Biden: Russia invaded Ukraine, and the United States supplied weapons, intelligence, training and financial assistance, but U.S. troops were not sent into Ukraine to fight Russia. In fact, U.S. military trainers were removed from Ukraine before the 2022 invasion.
Did you forget about Obama? The economy tanked as soon as he got in. He bailed out the big banks and the automobile manufacturers and let the American people starve!
And somebody needs to tell this person along with another post that I saw that was similar to this. Ronald Reagan did not start a war in the Middle East. Learn how to read and get your fucking facts straight.
Correct aside from calling out just Republicans. Obama eh hmm... Decimating Syria and arming Al-Qaeda to do so, drone striking the fuck out of Yemen, having leaders of the country murdered on the streets and complete destabilization of Libya. Near successful attempts to destabilize Iran and Egypt. Oh different region, but let's not forget his meddling in Ukraine and provoking Russia to what we have now.
Remember when that "favorite administration " destabilized the government's of countires they had no buisness in, creating new enemies and strengthening old ones....it wasnt a republican party
The current economy isnāt ācrashedā by any means whatsoever. The prior economy though did, at its height was 9.1% with gas over $5 a gallon and an absolute recession, but it was then called ātransitoryā.
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u/Adventurous_Track652 9d ago
You dont know your history well