In 08 I was a little too young to be politically active but I always understood that Obama convinced a ton of people that things were gonna change, and was able to put a friendly face on the American Empire.

Nowadays theres definitely a lot of people just happy that the orange man is off the television, but sleepy joe has negative charisma and hes already doing really bad with the stimulus bill and is openly refusing to reverse trump policies like closing the camps.

Am I accurate in this or am i just trapped in my commie safe space?

  • CanYouFeelItMrKrabs [any, he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    There are big differences in attitudes towards spending. The stimulus back then was 900B because they were cautious about inflation

    The current Covid bill is 1.9T and there is supposed to be an infrastructure bill also being passed with budget reconciliation this year, also in the trillions.

    The change to child tax credits mean that parents universally get it, there are no work requirements attached to it. That's another change in attitude. Earlier you had to make money to have taxes to deduct so the tax credits were useless to many

    • congressbaseballfan [she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      This take misses the mark a bit, that talking point was towards stimulus spending that would help normal Americans, not the bailouts, which Obama went all in on without helping homeowners who had been fucked over by predatory lending

      Not saying you’re wrong overall

      • CanYouFeelItMrKrabs [any, he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        that talking point was towards stimulus spending that would help normal Americans, not the bailouts,

        What do you mean?

        • congressbaseballfan [she/her]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Economists on both sides (like god damn larry summers in the Obama White House) were going and saying direct assistance to people was inflationary and not necessary but bailing out corporations was necessary

          • CanYouFeelItMrKrabs [any, he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            ah yeah for sure. That's what I'm getting at, the consensus with economists today is that the 2009 stimulus was too small in hindsight since there was such low inflation. So the approach Biden is taking is he would rather go too big than too small

            Larry Summers is still against a big stimulus though be thankfully he is not in the White House

    • SerLava [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Yeah on the 1.9T thing, there's actually a recent clip of Biden like, super vaguely criticizing Obama for the 900B, which is the reason Democrats got so absolutely fucked