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The 1990s. Not only was this new thing called the “Internet” changing everyone’s lives, by the turn of the Millennium the USA was blessed with effective full employment, low inflation, low interest rates, years of consistent strong GDP growth, falling crime rates, a booming stock market, and federal budget surpluses. After Y2K it was going to be onwards and upwards forever…
Life was so much simpler when our biggest presidential concern was a president utilizing some sketchy moves to win the presidency then deregulate and defund government programs leaving us vulnerable to a massive recession. Now we have to worry about the very structure of government collapsing.
The Supreme Court, led by a majority W’s father shaped as VP and POTUS, halted a vote count, in a state where his brother was governor, because voting machines owned by mysteriously invalidated votes that would’ve lost him the election. We entered two major wars shortly after and global economy nearly collapsed. Twice. I think the coup was a little more serious than you’re describing.
We were in a much worse situation during the Bush years than anything before or after since WW2. They said the structure of government would collapse under Carter, Reagan, H.W., Clinton, W, Obama, etc yet here we are.
Fear mongering is more of a campaign strategy than a reality.
How about believing people when they tell you who they are. I won’t go further because rule 3 but we all know we’ve seen our institutions pushed further than anyone since the Civil War, at least those of us who are paying attention.
If you believe anything coming from there that’s a personal problem. It’s been the same story since 80s with that.
As far as a civil war, again none of this is new. Our institutions were being pushed a lot further in 60s. We survived. What we are seeing now is Lee Atwater’s playbook being used against its own people. Can’t say that I’m mad about it either.
How does a VP shape the SC? I’d like to know. Also Bush Sr appointed one of the most flaming liberal justices to ever serve on the SC who voted with the minority in Bush v Gore.
Bush had substantial powers within the Reagan administration. To pretend he didn’t is either ignorant or a lie. Souter was an outlier. Bush also appointed Clarence Thomas to take Thurgood Marshall’s seat and we still have to deal with that to this day.
It depends on whether you mean economic growth or the actual standard of living.
I mean, if somebody tried living a 1950s standard of living today, their home would be knocked down under slum clearance laws. I know that a lot of midwits act seriously like the 1950s had a higher standard of living than today, but I’d hope that this sub is more historically knowledge and realizes that isn’t true at all.
But the 1950s US was the richest society the world had ever seen at that point. It was a decade of tremendous economic growth.
I think part of it is also that there was a housing explosion. Even if the houses suck and life sucked, there were plenty of houses going up. And plenty of cars.
I think that's the real stickler because the two main cost complaints of more recent generations is the housing market and our car dependency. To people who grew up then, they were building whole suburbs in 5 years and every one of them had a family with a car. Obviously life must have been good then!
(Said cars were 1 per family and were terribly inefficient, running on leaded gas and with no safety features)
There are plenty of 1950s homes standing today with a higher quality of construction than subsequent decades. I grew up in a 1970s tract home and currently own a 1950s ranch home; the quality of the 50s home build is considerably better.
There is shoddy construction in every era, but the 50s saw immense progress in construction technology and architectural innovation.
Electrical and plumbing codes have improved, but the idea that such homes would be condemned as hovels today is absurd.
https://preview.redd.it/520c84gxmd8d1.jpeg?width=320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0cafed13ddecf211bb0c50007588cca63883955b
Well let’s get out the old stock ticker and take a look! Here’s where I stopped checking it last time, September 1929.
1892 was a year of American Prosperity where banks were stable,everyone had jobs,and no economic downturn occurred ever since,especially not in the following year
Haha a news commentator was talking the other day about great stock gains, gains so great they hadn’t been seen since 1928. Everyone on the panel was laughing and glad handing like that wasn’t a bad omen.
1836 was a year of economic prosperity as well! Everyone's doing well, no economic downturns in sight! Anyway I gotta go to the bank, it's a state bank now, I don't know what happened to the national bank, but President Jackson didn't like it. I'm sure that will have no negative repercussions on the economy!
I like Ike, but the post WW2 US economy does need an asterisk mark. It's easy to have a good economy when you are the only country in the world that isn't a pile of rubble.
Yup. This is pretty much it. Which is also funny because they’re the last two presidents with balanced budgets as well. I don’t think those two are specifically related but just a bit of interesting history.
I’m not sure that’s going to be true. Yes the expense of GWOT has been massive but if you look at the tax scheme under both there was a reversal of the modern day “race to the bottom” we’ve seen with taxes on wealthy and corporations.
I was only being half serious about GWOT.
I think that other variables were in play, outside of tax rates. Namely, the US coming out of WWII untouched, while Europe and Asia were in ruins, and the explosion of productivity - thanks to the Internet - and the peacetime dividend after the cold war ended.
My dad grew up in a home without running water until about 1958. He tells me stories of how his family would fill up a tub of water from a well near the house. Heating at his little shotgun shack (which is still around today, and I've seen it many times!) came from a wood burning stove. His dad made $36 a week at a factory. So even as late as the 50s, many poorer families didn't even enjoy things like running water. Amazing how far we've come.
I truly think that in 100 years, the downfall of the United States will be the effects of 9/11. Had budget surpluses as far as the eye could see and a reasonable chance of eliminating the national debt.
9/11 was Followed by twenty years of never ending expensive war financed with debt and eventually $37 trillion in debt and rising everyday. The debt will never be repaid.
Poverty rate was 22% by the time Ike left office, nearly double what it is today. And being poor was a lot rougher back in the days before the Great Society.
[https://www.newgeography.com/content/004852-50-years-us-poverty-1960-2010](https://www.newgeography.com/content/004852-50-years-us-poverty-1960-2010)
Yeah, but then again there's always Carter to point fingers at. The late-stage LBJ era also saw a lot of inflation, if that's your worry.
Big ups to the Obama and Clinton economies though.
…now? The median American is better off now than almost any other time in history. The central question of economics is how to satisfy unlimited desires with finite resources, and so if you consider the “strength” of an economy to be based on how well the economy is able to produce things people want with given resources, than it’s objectively now. Better technology, better medicine, better everything. Some things like housing are more expensive adjusted for inflation, but modern houses are also larger and better quality than ones from, say, the 50s. Like, genuinely ask yourself, would you rather be alive in the 1950s, or today, with all of the modern world’s conveniences, comforts, technology, and medicine? You’d either have to be insanely nostalgia-brained or just actually insane to pick the former.
If you mean in terms of economic growth, then probably either the Market Revolution, the first Industrial Revolution, the second Industrial Revolution, or the 1990s (third Industrial Revolution with computers, ig).
Average salary can’t afford an average home (or maybe it’s the median). Housing costs are a higher percentage of earnings than in the Great Depression, and it’s to the point that much of Gen Z is convinced that they’ll never own a home. That problem hasn’t existed since Carter.
For people who can afford everything they need today without living in their parent’s basement, etc., I will agree that there are more available resources recently than at any point in time. That trend will continue to occur unless we have another Great Depression, so I see it as irrelevant to gauging whether the economy is strong or weak.
1999, 2019, 1950s, 1920s, mid-to-late 1980s. While many people felt good in 2007 before the big crash, it’s important to note that there were several economic health indicators that were present that led to the crash in 2008 — notably, debt delinquency.
That problem exists today too, which is why I leave it off too in spite of fairly strong GDP numbers. Also worth noting that Nixon had very strong GDP numbers, but they were artificially high and directly led to the stagflation of the 1970s.
Definitely 1950s when taxes on the wealthy were high, but government reinvestment into infrastructure, and the middle-class was also at its highest. Investing in infrastructure and the middle class is what makes countries strong. Until the wealthy class gets elected into positions of power, then they start grifting. Happens all over the world.
The US became the dominant global economic power by far after WW2 and its dominance began to decline in the 2000s with globalization, the Great Recession, and the rise of China. The period between the 1950s-1990s is probably the most dominant economy the world has ever seen and any debate would be on which decade here was the best but that is your answer.
The USA was incredibly fortunate that they had a) enormous industrial capacity thanks to ramping-up military production during the war, b) practically no damage from WW2 to factories & infrastructure, and c) a heap of returning servicemen just primed to start families & create a broad demographic base.
All considered, it probably would've taken utter incompetence - if not willful self-sabotage - from Government to NOT make the 1950s prosperous.
The US, if I am remembering correctly, actually already had the largest single nation economy in the world at the time and was producing the most coal and steel in the world at the time. Add on top of that the factors you mentioned and it literally just happened without any government intervention, Europe and Japan had to completely reconstruct their economies then catch up to the US which was already in the lead.
Today. By far. I think presidents play a part in the economy but their biggest impact of shaping policy certainly doesn’t show up until almost a decade after legislation has been in place.
Yes I get the income inequality argument and that real wages have stagnated. I still think we have not peaked for the average American economically and think change is very possible, albeit gradual.
Definitely the mid to late 1990's. The decade started with a recession when HW Bush was president and didnt really start to recover until well after Clinton had taken office in Jan 1993. By the following year things had started booming and it was a great time of prosperity. Clinton had raised taxes on high earners and with the economy booming that meant even more $$$ in the treasury which meant when combined with spending cuts in things like the military, etc. the country ran its first surplus since late in the LBJ administration. Things were really looking up, and then the 2000 election happened and the decline began. By 2008 the great recession (at the time the worst recession since the great depression) was in full swing.
Okay, since I cannot even mention the name of the last president without my post being deleted by a bot…
My deleted post said YOUR post suggested that the economy was doing well under the previous administration, and thus, your post would not be acceptable to Reddit.
Little did I know that even including “the T word” would get my post auto-deleted from Reddit.
Right after Word War 2. All of the other industrial nations of the world were either in debt from the war,
bombed out, in an internal power struggle, or behind the Iron Curtain. So the U.S. had little competition.
One interesting thing to think about in this discussion: Jackson was the only president to get rid of the national debt. Not the end all be all of economies, but worth mentioning
This so heavily depends on what you mean by strongest. In the 1950s, some things were much more available to people than they are now (house ownership in particular), but many amenities we have today didn't exist. And many more people were excluded from this prosperity due to bigotry than they are today. In real terms, measuring the amenities available to the most people most of the time, I doubt the economy has ever been much stronger than today.
Remember that all mentions of and allusions to Trump and Biden are not allowed on our subreddit in any context. If you'd still like to discuss them, feel free to [join our Discord server](https://discord.gg/k6tVFwCEEm)! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Presidents) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The 1990s. Not only was this new thing called the “Internet” changing everyone’s lives, by the turn of the Millennium the USA was blessed with effective full employment, low inflation, low interest rates, years of consistent strong GDP growth, falling crime rates, a booming stock market, and federal budget surpluses. After Y2K it was going to be onwards and upwards forever…
And then 9/11 happened
2000 election was the turning point.
And then the dot com bubble burst…
And then George Bush stole the election and ruined the nation
No one ever talks about this anymore
Life was so much simpler when our biggest presidential concern was a president utilizing some sketchy moves to win the presidency then deregulate and defund government programs leaving us vulnerable to a massive recession. Now we have to worry about the very structure of government collapsing.
The Supreme Court, led by a majority W’s father shaped as VP and POTUS, halted a vote count, in a state where his brother was governor, because voting machines owned by mysteriously invalidated votes that would’ve lost him the election. We entered two major wars shortly after and global economy nearly collapsed. Twice. I think the coup was a little more serious than you’re describing.
I’m not downplaying 2000 I’m sarcastically stating the dire situation we are in.
We were in a much worse situation during the Bush years than anything before or after since WW2. They said the structure of government would collapse under Carter, Reagan, H.W., Clinton, W, Obama, etc yet here we are. Fear mongering is more of a campaign strategy than a reality.
How about believing people when they tell you who they are. I won’t go further because rule 3 but we all know we’ve seen our institutions pushed further than anyone since the Civil War, at least those of us who are paying attention.
If you believe anything coming from there that’s a personal problem. It’s been the same story since 80s with that. As far as a civil war, again none of this is new. Our institutions were being pushed a lot further in 60s. We survived. What we are seeing now is Lee Atwater’s playbook being used against its own people. Can’t say that I’m mad about it either.
How does a VP shape the SC? I’d like to know. Also Bush Sr appointed one of the most flaming liberal justices to ever serve on the SC who voted with the minority in Bush v Gore.
Bush had substantial powers within the Reagan administration. To pretend he didn’t is either ignorant or a lie. Souter was an outlier. Bush also appointed Clarence Thomas to take Thurgood Marshall’s seat and we still have to deal with that to this day.
We still get to benefit from that to this day! 😊
Cause it’s not true.
Sure thing.
Didn’t the Florida state secretary stop the count when he was ahead?
Thanks to Paul Volker
Yes, the Federal Reserve has kept the American economy in a good place since the era of Volcker
It depends on whether you mean economic growth or the actual standard of living. I mean, if somebody tried living a 1950s standard of living today, their home would be knocked down under slum clearance laws. I know that a lot of midwits act seriously like the 1950s had a higher standard of living than today, but I’d hope that this sub is more historically knowledge and realizes that isn’t true at all. But the 1950s US was the richest society the world had ever seen at that point. It was a decade of tremendous economic growth.
I think part of it is also that there was a housing explosion. Even if the houses suck and life sucked, there were plenty of houses going up. And plenty of cars. I think that's the real stickler because the two main cost complaints of more recent generations is the housing market and our car dependency. To people who grew up then, they were building whole suburbs in 5 years and every one of them had a family with a car. Obviously life must have been good then! (Said cars were 1 per family and were terribly inefficient, running on leaded gas and with no safety features)
Yeah, but they look cool.
If only they built brownstones and row homes instead of single family tinderboxes
There are plenty of 1950s homes standing today with a higher quality of construction than subsequent decades. I grew up in a 1970s tract home and currently own a 1950s ranch home; the quality of the 50s home build is considerably better. There is shoddy construction in every era, but the 50s saw immense progress in construction technology and architectural innovation. Electrical and plumbing codes have improved, but the idea that such homes would be condemned as hovels today is absurd.
I remember the economy going swimmingly in 2007. I’m sure things will keep on trucking for sure!
I also remember the economy going well in 1928, I wonder what happened next?
https://preview.redd.it/520c84gxmd8d1.jpeg?width=320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0cafed13ddecf211bb0c50007588cca63883955b Well let’s get out the old stock ticker and take a look! Here’s where I stopped checking it last time, September 1929.
Wow. It’s at an all-time high right now and it keeps going up. I just know the coming months will be full of prosperity
1892 was a year of American Prosperity where banks were stable,everyone had jobs,and no economic downturn occurred ever since,especially not in the following year
Yeah I know silver ain’t gonna cause anyone to suffer 😀👍
*Sad Benjamin Harrison noises*
Haha a news commentator was talking the other day about great stock gains, gains so great they hadn’t been seen since 1928. Everyone on the panel was laughing and glad handing like that wasn’t a bad omen.
1836 was a year of economic prosperity as well! Everyone's doing well, no economic downturns in sight! Anyway I gotta go to the bank, it's a state bank now, I don't know what happened to the national bank, but President Jackson didn't like it. I'm sure that will have no negative repercussions on the economy!
Ehhhh it wasn't going so well in the rust belt. Faults were becoming visible by then
I like Ike, but the post WW2 US economy does need an asterisk mark. It's easy to have a good economy when you are the only country in the world that isn't a pile of rubble.
And you govern/occupy your two biggest future competitors (until China) economically (Japan and Germany).
The 1920s, the 1950s and the 1990s had the greatest economies in American history
So every 30-40 years? That means any year now we’ll be right back there
Clinton and Eisenhower
Warren G Harding
Yup. This is pretty much it. Which is also funny because they’re the last two presidents with balanced budgets as well. I don’t think those two are specifically related but just a bit of interesting history.
Actually, the end of the LBJ administration was the last budget surplus before Clinton
End of the Cold War and the end of WWII/ Korea. Once the GWOT ends, it’s fiesta time.
I’m not sure that’s going to be true. Yes the expense of GWOT has been massive but if you look at the tax scheme under both there was a reversal of the modern day “race to the bottom” we’ve seen with taxes on wealthy and corporations.
I was only being half serious about GWOT. I think that other variables were in play, outside of tax rates. Namely, the US coming out of WWII untouched, while Europe and Asia were in ruins, and the explosion of productivity - thanks to the Internet - and the peacetime dividend after the cold war ended.
People will say right after WWII, even though we had recessions in 45, 48, and 53.
Economy was the best right post WW2, but in terms of quality of life we are currently living in it
wait i never thought about it like that what the flip. idk how i would cope without like plumbing
well they had plumming in the 1950s, and its existed since the 1850s (though on the rich had it at the time) so plumbing isnt an issue there
lmao i didnt make it clear enough i was just referring to like general developments over time
that makes more sense, sorry for making an assumption
My dad grew up in a home without running water until about 1958. He tells me stories of how his family would fill up a tub of water from a well near the house. Heating at his little shotgun shack (which is still around today, and I've seen it many times!) came from a wood burning stove. His dad made $36 a week at a factory. So even as late as the 50s, many poorer families didn't even enjoy things like running water. Amazing how far we've come.
that does make sense, i kind of forgot not everyone is in or near a city.
Why he looking at me like that
Bill Clinton’s economy hands down. The greatest peacetime economic growth period in modern US history.
As my friend says about the Clinton years, “what didn’t you like, the peace or the prosperity?”
BJ Clinton
I truly think that in 100 years, the downfall of the United States will be the effects of 9/11. Had budget surpluses as far as the eye could see and a reasonable chance of eliminating the national debt. 9/11 was Followed by twenty years of never ending expensive war financed with debt and eventually $37 trillion in debt and rising everyday. The debt will never be repaid.
Bill Clinton easily.
Poverty rate was 22% by the time Ike left office, nearly double what it is today. And being poor was a lot rougher back in the days before the Great Society. [https://www.newgeography.com/content/004852-50-years-us-poverty-1960-2010](https://www.newgeography.com/content/004852-50-years-us-poverty-1960-2010)
Going back to 1935, the economy does better on average under democratic presidents.
Yeah, but then again there's always Carter to point fingers at. The late-stage LBJ era also saw a lot of inflation, if that's your worry. Big ups to the Obama and Clinton economies though.
That’s what average means.
Under Clinton
…now? The median American is better off now than almost any other time in history. The central question of economics is how to satisfy unlimited desires with finite resources, and so if you consider the “strength” of an economy to be based on how well the economy is able to produce things people want with given resources, than it’s objectively now. Better technology, better medicine, better everything. Some things like housing are more expensive adjusted for inflation, but modern houses are also larger and better quality than ones from, say, the 50s. Like, genuinely ask yourself, would you rather be alive in the 1950s, or today, with all of the modern world’s conveniences, comforts, technology, and medicine? You’d either have to be insanely nostalgia-brained or just actually insane to pick the former. If you mean in terms of economic growth, then probably either the Market Revolution, the first Industrial Revolution, the second Industrial Revolution, or the 1990s (third Industrial Revolution with computers, ig).
Average salary can’t afford an average home (or maybe it’s the median). Housing costs are a higher percentage of earnings than in the Great Depression, and it’s to the point that much of Gen Z is convinced that they’ll never own a home. That problem hasn’t existed since Carter. For people who can afford everything they need today without living in their parent’s basement, etc., I will agree that there are more available resources recently than at any point in time. That trend will continue to occur unless we have another Great Depression, so I see it as irrelevant to gauging whether the economy is strong or weak.
1940-1960’s and then again in the mid to late 1990’s.
Now. If you're just describing the size of the economic pie. How that pie is distributed...opinions vary.
That's a really nice suit.
I like Ike.
1999, 2019, 1950s, 1920s, mid-to-late 1980s. While many people felt good in 2007 before the big crash, it’s important to note that there were several economic health indicators that were present that led to the crash in 2008 — notably, debt delinquency. That problem exists today too, which is why I leave it off too in spite of fairly strong GDP numbers. Also worth noting that Nixon had very strong GDP numbers, but they were artificially high and directly led to the stagflation of the 1970s.
Definitely 1950s when taxes on the wealthy were high, but government reinvestment into infrastructure, and the middle-class was also at its highest. Investing in infrastructure and the middle class is what makes countries strong. Until the wealthy class gets elected into positions of power, then they start grifting. Happens all over the world.
Clearly when Jim Norton was in office 👇
Not a financial or policy expert but the 1990’s were pretty good for most.
The US became the dominant global economic power by far after WW2 and its dominance began to decline in the 2000s with globalization, the Great Recession, and the rise of China. The period between the 1950s-1990s is probably the most dominant economy the world has ever seen and any debate would be on which decade here was the best but that is your answer.
The USA was incredibly fortunate that they had a) enormous industrial capacity thanks to ramping-up military production during the war, b) practically no damage from WW2 to factories & infrastructure, and c) a heap of returning servicemen just primed to start families & create a broad demographic base. All considered, it probably would've taken utter incompetence - if not willful self-sabotage - from Government to NOT make the 1950s prosperous.
The US, if I am remembering correctly, actually already had the largest single nation economy in the world at the time and was producing the most coal and steel in the world at the time. Add on top of that the factors you mentioned and it literally just happened without any government intervention, Europe and Japan had to completely reconstruct their economies then catch up to the US which was already in the lead.
Today. By far. I think presidents play a part in the economy but their biggest impact of shaping policy certainly doesn’t show up until almost a decade after legislation has been in place. Yes I get the income inequality argument and that real wages have stagnated. I still think we have not peaked for the average American economically and think change is very possible, albeit gradual.
cursed eisenhower
FDR
Definitely the mid to late 1990's. The decade started with a recession when HW Bush was president and didnt really start to recover until well after Clinton had taken office in Jan 1993. By the following year things had started booming and it was a great time of prosperity. Clinton had raised taxes on high earners and with the economy booming that meant even more $$$ in the treasury which meant when combined with spending cuts in things like the military, etc. the country ran its first surplus since late in the LBJ administration. Things were really looking up, and then the 2000 election happened and the decline began. By 2008 the great recession (at the time the worst recession since the great depression) was in full swing.
1950s IMO
Right before Covid it was the strongest since 1952
Oh, that answer will not fly on Reddit.
? Y not that’s a good thing no?
Okay, since I cannot even mention the name of the last president without my post being deleted by a bot… My deleted post said YOUR post suggested that the economy was doing well under the previous administration, and thus, your post would not be acceptable to Reddit. Little did I know that even including “the T word” would get my post auto-deleted from Reddit.
Prior to 2016 (Ik,economy is not nearly the best in the recent years but wanted to put this out to prevent any rule 3 discussions)
Right after Word War 2. All of the other industrial nations of the world were either in debt from the war, bombed out, in an internal power struggle, or behind the Iron Curtain. So the U.S. had little competition.
The 1960s was the most egalitarian prosperity.
One interesting thing to think about in this discussion: Jackson was the only president to get rid of the national debt. Not the end all be all of economies, but worth mentioning
This so heavily depends on what you mean by strongest. In the 1950s, some things were much more available to people than they are now (house ownership in particular), but many amenities we have today didn't exist. And many more people were excluded from this prosperity due to bigotry than they are today. In real terms, measuring the amenities available to the most people most of the time, I doubt the economy has ever been much stronger than today.