At 10:16 AM 5/5/2005 -0400, Bob Chassell wrote: >His hypothesis is > > ... the political party with the Presidency would probably be > somewhere just above sunspot activity ... > >Clearly, it is wrong.
I think it is clearly nothing of the sort. The very premise of the analysis is too badly flawed to be at all usefull. And again, I note that there is no theoretical model to support the proposed conclusions. >Put another way, Dan is right when he suggests that the economic >policy of an administration is meaningful. I don't think that I disagreed that the economic policy of a Presidency is meaningful. >Presumably, over an 80 year time period, economic cycles would get out >of sync with political cycles, which come every four years *exactly*. False. The Presidency does not change Party every four years. The political cycle is thus irregular. Moreover, since 1953 there have been nine recessions. Yours and Dan's analysis would ascribe 8 of those recessions to Republican Presidencies. Unless you and Dan have some brilliant economic theory as to why Republicans tend to cause recessions and Democrats tend to produce uninterrupted economic growth regardless of the business cycle, your analysis is deeply flawed. On the other hand, if you believe that recessions are inevitable in the long run, then some sort of corrective is needed for the analysis. >If so, what limits the economy? Economic growth is determined in part by population. I presume that you really mean per capita economic growth, which is primarily determined by the savings rate and productivity. For purposes of the current discussion, you can approximate long run per capita economic growth as the growth in productivity. In the long run, it is difficult to imagine how growth rates under Democratic Presidencies could outstrip productivity growth. JDG _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
