Pareto analysis is totally irrelevant to my points. Your providing garbage in, and you get garbage out no matter how what type of analysis you use or how well you do it.
Your ignoring the role of congress.
Your ignoring the role of events outside the control of the US government.
Your ignoring the policies and programs put in place by previous presidents (before Reagan) that amount to a majority of our spending.
Your ignoring the fact that you have a very small samples size. 5 presidencies (1 for just 1 year) is too small of sample size to draw meaningful conclusions by party, esp. when the policies of presidents within each party vary widely. Spending was controlled under Clinton (some might give most of the credit to the Republicans in congress, or to the situation with things like the tech bubble, the peace dividend and such, but however you assign credit the simple fact is spending was controlled), while its gone wild under Obama (yes and Bush as well, but I'm making an intra party comparison). Reagan (and Carter, but again he's in a different party) deregulated, while Nixon (and FDR) imposed wage and price controls. Reagan and Bush II (and JFK) cut tax rates, while Bush I raised them. There is no real consistency inside each party on these issues, you have discreet individuals.
Even if presidents where solely or almost solely responsible for the differences in deficits (a rather silly idea BTW), the whole "Republicans cause the debt" theme in your analysis relies on two individuals Reagan and Bush II.
A less important point, but one I'll make anyway, is that even your application of the idea of Pareto analysis is suspect.
Your using nominal dollars for the debt figures, when a dollar added to the debt today is worth less than each dollar added in the past. Also recent deficits, and thus the current debt, are increased by the need to pay interest on past debts. Your calculations should at least be based on real dollars. Better yet (if more complex) would be to use percentage of GDP.
That would still leave you with a majority of the debt being created by recent presidents. But your ignoring past deficits that where very large that to some extent where latter paid down. It isn't reasonable to ignore the president who created the largest debt (as a percentage of our economy) in American history (with the possible exception of the very beginning of our country), FDR.
In fact your analysis ignores the president with the largest deficits (FDR), and the president who will probably have the 2nd largest (Obama). And the "probably" about Obama, is not because of doubts that his deficits will be larger than any other post WWII president, but because if we have a hard double dip recession, his deficits might be higher than FDRs. |
