How about … neither?
Former student MC sent me a link to this piece entitled “Two Charts Show Trump’s Job Gains Are Just a Continuation from Obama’s Presidency”. It’s by Chuck Jones, and appeared in Forbes.
I am not sure how much I’m supposed to read in to the word “continuation” in the title. To me, it’s not clear if the author means that Obama is responsible for Trump’s good numbers, or just that the economy is doing its thing, and Obama and Trump just rode the same wave.
Either way, it makes a point that I made in principles classes just this morning: the labor market data doesn’t show that Trump is doing anything special.
The big point here is that the differences are overblown (so I’m of the opinion that they are both lucky to be riding a good wave). If you’re a Trump-lover, he’s nothing special. And if you’re a Trump-hater: he’s not wrecking anything either.
P.S. At the time that I write this, I’ve barely begun the revision of my text for Spring 2019. One thing I intend to include is some simulations looking at whether we could have forecast the economy’s performance over Trump’s first 7 quarters at the time of the election. So there will be more to come.
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