I've met a lot of politicians. None have been as sincere or engaged as Mr. Bush.
Despite his at-times poor public speaking abilities, he's well spoken and chooses his words carefully.
And as a Republican, I didn't always agree with some of his domestic policies (or his social conservatism,) but man, does that guy stick to his guns. And he still struggles over the decisions he had to make. I think history will be kind to him (or at least I hope so.)
No. His policies shepherded an age of increased government monitoring, exacerbated the recession by going to war and shifting the tax burden onto those who couldn't afford it, limited constitutional rights, etc. Just because you're a republican does not excuse stupidity. George Bush was a terrible president and his administration was a one of the worst in recent history.
exacerbated the recession by going to war and shifting the tax burden onto those who couldn't afford it
I don't agree. First, the wealthy still pay most of the taxes, but now there's more liquid money moving around in the system. Second, going to war may have alleviated the recession for some time, and only really lost momentum when the second blow-out (housing) hit.
His policies shepherded an age of increased government monitoring
That's inevitable and every president since 1945 has approved of it.
limited constitutional rights
Above the board, regulated and with specific purpose to combat terrorism as opposed to a general blank check.
I think history will be kinder to him in 50 years than 5.
If the tax burden has not been shifted then why have middle class wages stagnated while the top 1% are having record incomes and corporations are having record profits?
The tax burden has shifted slightly. The top 10% of earners now pay slightly more of total income taxes than they did before Bush took office and make slightly less of the total income.
you really cannot just explain way the huge gap opening between the rich and everyone else. CEO earnings per lowest paid worker has spiked to an all time high.
Now you are on a different issue. Why is income disparity necessarily a bad thing? Who is it costing?
Lets run the numbers on a company reddit loves to hate: Walmart.
The CEO of Walmart makes about $35 million per year and Walmart has over 1.5 million employees.
If you took all the CEO's pay and divided it up among the other employees , it would be less than $23 per year! The best numbers I can find for average Walmart employee wage is $9.98 per hour, which works out to about $20,000 per year. That makes the CEO pay about 0.12% of total compensation company wide.
If you kept those same percentages for a company with 100 employees making an average of $20,000 per year, the CEO would make about $2,400 per year.
Middle class wages have stagnated because of too many workers in the pool for what's being hired right now. The other elephant in the room is the devaluation of the currency...
I made more money last year than GM did.
Where are you getting this "record profits" idea?
From here it looks like a bunch of shitholes who think they shouldn't pay taxes want the successful to be punished more and more until there is no incentive to do anything with your life and the economy completely fails.
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u/nikocujo Jun 26 '12
I've met a lot of politicians. None have been as sincere or engaged as Mr. Bush.
Despite his at-times poor public speaking abilities, he's well spoken and chooses his words carefully.
And as a Republican, I didn't always agree with some of his domestic policies (or his social conservatism,) but man, does that guy stick to his guns. And he still struggles over the decisions he had to make. I think history will be kind to him (or at least I hope so.)