DO THE MATH by Scott Westerfeld

[Maureen Johnson]

Scott Westerfeld is the author of many adult and YA novels, including Peeps, So Yesterday, the Midnighters series, the New York Times bestselling Uglies series.

DO THE MATH by Scott Westerfeld

Those of you who've read my Midnighters series may remember a character called Dess who's rather fond of mathematics. She thinks the world would be a better place if, every once in a while, people would just do the frickin' math.

So when Maureen asked me to blog about why I'm voting for Obama, I thought I'd follow Dess's advice, and take a long, hard, number-y look at the two political parties.

What I found is rather shocking.

Since World War II the Democrats have been overwhelmingly better at running the economy. Hands down, case closed, beyond any statistical doubt. They've borrowed less money, created more wealth and opportunity, and left the next generation in better shape.

Now these are bold claims, and maybe you're shaking your head. But let's look at the numbers.

First I downloaded the last 60 years of economic history from this handy site. By "economic history" I mean the yearly growth rate of the US economy from 1948 to 2007, expressed as a percent. Then I averaged the data for each president, for Republican- and Democratic-controlled congresses, and for the parties as a whole.

Guess what? The Democrats totally own the Republicans.

Let's start with presidents:

1948-52 Truman (D) 4.8
1953-60 Eisenhower (R) 2.95
1961-68 Kennedy/Johnson (D) 4.85
1969-76 Nixon/Ford (R) 2.8
1976-80 Carter (D) 3.3
1981-88 Reagan (R) 3.4
1988-92 Bush I (R) 2.13
1993-2000 Clinton (D) 3.73
2000-2007 Bush II (R) 2.3

Okay, what does all this mean?

Well, that last number is the average growth rate of the economy during each president's time in office. And the R or D in parentheses show whether that prez is a Republican or a Democrat.

Do you notice something odd? Except for Reagan, the Republicans are all in the 2's, and the Democrats always get 3's and 4's.

In other words, the economy grows faster when Democrats are president. Much faster. This isn't a guess or a judgment call---it's just a fact.

The crazy thing is, it's not even close. The best Republican record (Reagan's) beats the worst Democratic record (Carter's) by only a tenth of a percent. Except for those two, you can compare any D with any R and the Democrat always wins.

So what are the overall averages? Going back to the raw data, I totaled up all years of D versus R control, and here are the results:

Democrats get 4.326 growth per year on average
Republicans get 2.8 growth per year on average

That's about 55% better for D's than R's. That's huge.

For many businesses, it's the difference between making money and closing up shop. For many families, it's the difference between buying a house and being stuck renting. And for a lot of people your age, it's the difference between going to college and living in your parents' basement until you're twenty-six.

Now I realize that folks will come along and complain that this is too simplistic. So let me address a few possible objections:

1) Doesn't it take time for economic policies to take effect?

Good point. So what happens if we shift the data by a year? In other words, every president gets credit for the year after they leave office, instead of the year they come in. Here are those numbers:

Democrats: 4.127 growth per year on average
Republicans: 2.841 growth per year on average

Okay, that helps a little. But the Democrats still do 45% better, which is still a clear lead. And in point 5 below, we'll see that the long-term effects of Republican control are far worse than just slow growth.


2) But Congress makes economic policy, don't they?

The executive branch tends to run circles around Congress, thanks to the power of the veto and the advantage of having one voice instead of 535.

But still, what are the numbers for congressional control?

Democrats in charge:
1948-52, 1955-80, 1987-2000, 2007
Total growth: 3.59

Republicans in charge:
1953-54, 1981-86 (control Senate, but not House), 2000-2006
Total growth: 2.83

Oops, the Democrats still win by 27%. And if you take out the 1981-86 numbers, when control was mixed, they win by 44%. (See, I was throwing the R's a bone there!) And sliding a year has almost no effect, because Congress switches control so infrequently.

So the Dems still look way better. And wait till we get to point 5!


3) What about all those crazy factors outside the government's control?

Indeed. The president and congress can't be blamed for everything; sometimes the economy is affected by random forces. But here's the problem:

If the economy is so random, then why don't we see random fluctuation in the data? Over sixty years, wouldn't the law of large numbers smooth things out for the two parties?

But instead, what we see is a very high signal-to-noise ratio: the D's are up by about 50% on average. And in the 14 possible head-to-head match-ups between any two presidential terms, the Republicans win only one---and barely.

Let me put it this way: If my basketball team has played your team sixty times, and my team averages 50% more points than yours (say, the usual score is about 120 to 80) then I think it's time to stop blaming the refs. You can't keep saying it's just bad luck, or the ball was inflated wrong, or your new uniforms were itchy.

It's time to face it: Your team sucks.


4) But you can't just spout data and declare victory, Scott. Don't you have to explain why the Republicans suck at running the economy?

My pleasure. To answer this question, I downloaded one more data set from the White House's website. It's the so-called Real Debt, which is the yearly federal debt expressed as a percentage of the entire economy.

And these numbers are deadly:

During R presidential terms, the average borrowing every year is 2.36% of the whole economy.

During D terms, the average is 0.21%.

In other words, Republican presidents borrow eleven times as much money as Democrats. I'll say that again: eleven times as much.

You know how Republicans always say they'll lower taxes? Well, they do. But they don't lower spending. So they have to borrow all that money, which sucks capital out of the economy.

And by the way, you know who has to pay that money back that the Republican's borrow, right? You do.

By you, I mean Americans who are teenagers now. You're the ones who'll have to cough up the roughly $300 billion dollars Bush borrowed every year. And until it's paid off, you'll be paying interest on it every time you get a paycheck.

You may be too young to vote, but you're not too young to get hosed.

Thanks to the national debt, you guys will leave home owing about $31,000 each. (Click here to find out exactly how much.) And all of that money was borrowed so that the R's could have their tax cuts, which, as the last sixty years show, didn't help things very much.


5) Hmm. So do the Republicans have anything to do with the current meltdown?

I'm glad you asked. Let's look at the data.

The Republicans have had control of the Presidency and at least one branch of Congress four times in the last century. Once was for only two years (1953-4) and they managed not to screw anything up. But the other three times, the R's had control for six years or more. And the results of these three experiments in Republican rule?

The Crash of '29 and Great Depression
The Savings and Loan Crisis
The Current Subprime Meltdown

Here's a handy chart:


Click for bigger.

Here's the general rule: When the R's control the Presidency and at least one house of Congress for six years or more, the economy self-destructs.

Why? Because they love deregulation. Which is R-speak for letting bankers gamble with your money, until they lose it all and have to be bailed out.

This last little experiment in deregulation? It will cost between $700 billion and $1.5 trillion, between $2,000 and $5,000 for every single American.

So add that to the total you owe.

_______

That's why I'm voting for Obama. Because he's on the team that doesn't suck at running the economy, doesn't borrow from your future, and doesn't try to distract you from a hopeless record with attacks on everyone else's patriotism, sexuality, and "elitism." He's on the team that doesn't cut taxes and deregulate without looking at the consequences, but actually does the math.

Obama in the White House, and Democrats at every level.

[Foo Burger]

I will only point out that the mathematics attempted here is trivially and fundamentally flawed.
Since the question under study is: "Which party, as President, produces better economic growth?", statistics can only be drawn based on "Number Of Presidents" not "years under Presidents".
Using '60 years' to claim an appeal to the 'law of large numbers' is statistically incorrect.
You could just as easily say "20,000 days" in an effort to make your margin of error tiny!

Both of these are wrong. Your appeal to 'large numbers' takes into account the number '15' at most (60 / 4), but probably even less, considering the number of two term Presidents.
In fact, your *actual* number of events is '9', which is hardly statistical at all.

[Richard Micheal]

Don't you think it's true that you can prove any hypothesis by carefully choosing an appropriate statistic?

I voted for Jimmy Carter. As penance I have voted for neither a Democrat nor a Republican in every election since then.

If you were economically aware in the Carter years, you would remember that gasoline prices more than doubled from the $0.50 per gallon range to over $1.00 a gallon and that mortgage interest rates in his last couple years were in the 18% to 20% range.

It was also in the Carter years that the Community Reinvestment Act (1977) (CRA) was passed by an unstoppable Democratic controlled Congress. And the current mortgage and credit crisis is the direct result of the CRA along with a little push from Congress at the end of the Clinton Administration.

Economic statistics don't change overnight because a different party is in power. It takes time for the effects of a political agenda to manifest itself in the economy.

Kennedy and Johnson, remember, brought us Vietnam. So, sure the economy was booming with all the money spent by the government on the war. Remember the 1968 Democratic Convention?

Nixon, for all his faults, ended Vietnam, so spending dropped off sharply. And then there was the Arab oil embargo, gasoline rationing, price controls on gasoline, and the 55 mph national speed limit, which wasn't lifted until late in the Reagan administration.

Carter drove the economy into the ground and it took years during the Reagan administration to put it back on its feet.

Bush (I) increased taxes despite his famous "read my lips" promise. He responded to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait with the first Gulf War, but it was over before Clinton took over.

The economy was bustling under Clinton. Remember that little fact about the Soviet Union collapsing, the Berlin Wall coming down, and the Cold War ending just a year or two before he took office? It bustled right up until the end with the dot com bubble bursting and the Enron, et. al., corporate scandals.

So Bush (II) got the effects of that. Then a little thing called 9/11 happened.

Since Bush (II) is taking the brunt of the financial collapse (and deservedly so), the next president, regardless of party, will benefit from the economy being so bad that the only way it can go is up.

But a new president could repeat the mistake of Bush (I) and increase taxes.

[EmilyT]

It's time to face it: Your team sucks. I love you, Scott Westerfeld.

[Diana Rodriguez Wallach]

Cecily, reading that post makes me love your work even more! The fact that you could make a commentary on politics sound like GG column is awesome. You have a very strong voice, and I love reading it.

[Keisha]

Whoa. I wish you were my math teacher in High School, I might've payed more attention.

[Sam]

I love the number thing. I'm forwarding it to any of my friends that actually care enough about politics to read it. And for the ones that only care about Gossip Girl?(which, granted, is awesome) Well, finally that have something that actually speaks to them, lol.

[Melissa Walker]

Wow to the both of you. I'm dazzled with numbers and then stunned with pretty talk from Gossip Girl. Amazing one-two punch.

[Peter Glassman]

Well done, Scott. You might also add that during the same period of time, under Republican administrations, those Americans whose wealth places them in the top 20% of all Americans saw their incomes rise dramatically, while the other 80% saw their incomes drop, while under Democratic administrations the same 80% saw their incomes rise substantially while the top 20% saw their incomes rise only slightly. That's right -- everyone won under the Democrats, but the most wealthy just didn't gain as much. So your choice is between a party who promotes everyone winning versus a party who chooses to help the wealthiest 20% at the expense of the other 80% of Americans. As Dess might say, numbers don't lie -- but as we all know, politicians do! So how do we stop all those people out there who've been brainwashed by the Republicans telling them how bad Democrats are at running the economy? Seems to me that Republicans have done the best job in history of convincing the American public that their flagrantly false statements are true. Any ideas on how we stop this?

[Max]

This article is exactly the kind of thing I've been looking for. I emailed it to all my family and friends. It's a perfect summary of everything that's going on, and thank you for taking the time to figure all this out and share it with us. I find it really funny that Republicans consider their strong point to be business and the economy, and that people actually buy it.

You should submit this to the newspaper; more people should read it. Everyone should read it. It would help clear up a lot of common misconceptions.

Thanks,
Max

[Georgia]

I think it's really unfortunate that Cecily von Ziegesar had to follow up Scott Westerfeld ahaha