Donald Trump will soon be president of America and will inherit the legacy of Obama. When Obama first came into office, the country was in one of worst recessions that it had ever faced. Eight years later where do we stand as a country, in terms of the economy? Unfortunately for Obama, the economy has spoken for itself and its view is not so favorable for the first African American pr esident. The Labor Participation Rate, GDP, taxing policy, his inefficient stimulus program and other results of the Obama administration have showed that America is not in a prosperous economy like Barack had promised. While Obama had good intentions his economic policies have led to a stagnated economy that has damaged America.

While left wing pundits have praised the Obama recovery, many fail to see the big picture. Many look at the fact that we have had GDP growth and applauded the president for leading a national recovery. This is pure ignorance. One of the most widespread fallacies that have ever been spread is that markets do not recover by themselves. Markets DO recover by themselves, the real question is how FAST they recover. For Obama, this growth is not only slow but almost non existent. According to national statistics, “Obama is the only U.S. chief executive in history not to preside over even a single year with 3 percent GDP growth.” which shows the absolute terrible fiscal policy of Obama. Not even the terrible Great Depression under Herbert Hoover and FDR had less than an annual 3 percent GDP growth. Why is this? Because of the terrible economic policies of the Obama administration!

Obama has said numerous times that he disdains “trickle down” economics, but let's actually look at the consequences of raising taxes for the wealthy. What do taxes do? Taxes are when the government forcefully takes money away from the citizens for revenue. So what happens when the government takes more taxes than they usually do? Say you have 100 dollars and you want to spend it or invest it. If the government takes 15 dollars then you have 85 dollars to spend and invest into the economy. However let's say the government takes 50 dollars. You will only now have 50 dollars to invest into the economy instead of 85 dollars. This kind taxing has been apparent in the Obama administration in terms of top 1 percent income taxing. As research from the Heritage Foundation fund, “Raising taxes has important results as higher taxes discourage the forces of economic growth, thus spreading their consequences far and wide in terms of lost jobs, wages, and opportunities.” which basically is what happened in the economy in the U.S under Obama. Of course you may ask, won't the government invest that 50 dollars in the economy anyway the same way? Actually no and this will be discussed when we talk about Obama’s stimulus.

Obama’s terrible tax plan and other fiscal policies have also been evident in the amount of people in the work force. We have all heard the unemployment rate figure. When looking at this figure, you may think that Obama is actually getting more people into the workforce but actually the opposite is true. Say you have 100 individuals; 10 of these individuals are not working, so the unemployment rate is 10 percent. Now let's look at a situation analogous to the Obama’s economic predicament. We still have the same 100 individuals; however instead of 10 not working, 50 are on relief programs and of those 50 about 5 look for jobs. Now technically the unemployment rate is now 5 percent but much less are working. This whole analogy is reinforced by the Labor Participation Rate in which the active labor force has decreased from 66 percent to 63 percent! This may not seem like much but it actually is an extreme amount of negative change. In fact the Labor Participation Rate drop under Obama has been one of the largest drops in the Labor Participation Rate in whole history of the United States. One of the most problematic things in the study of economics is context. While unemployment was decreasing, the labor participation in the work force was actually decreasing! And like the unemployment rate, lack of context has also covered up the issue of jobs.

Jobs is also an area of focus that has become something that the Obama administration seems to take great pride in! Now if you look at sources such as the New York Times or the Washington Post you might actually believe that. These papers constantly gloat of the “job growth” under Obama, however they are ignorant at best or misleading the public at worst. Like many economic policies, context is extremely important. Yes, it is indeed true, Obama will have created 14.4 million jobs by the end of his term. But the population that will have come into the work force by the end of the Obama administration will be 15.8 million. So we have actually had a net loss of 1.4 million jobs per person under Obama. Compare that to Reagan who had a population increase in the work force of 8 million while boasting a job growth of 16 million. So thats a surplus of 8 million jobs! Its apparent that the corporatist economic policies of Obama are extremely inferior to the free market policies of Reagan.
The toxic effects of Obamanomics have also been documented in the number of individuals on relief. As of 2016, almost 47 million Americans are on food stamps. Some, like the Washington post, suggest that we have so many welfare recipients because, “we have had a horrific recession.”. However one thing that the many normal people fail to see is that recessions rarely cause this much influx in welfare recipients. The real reason why so many people are on welfare is not because of the recession was horrible, but really because the recession recovery was horrible. Unfortunately many of the policies of Obama have even led to welfare dependence which is one of the driving factors of the low Labor Participation rate. The food stamp program has also been reinforced by the Obama stimulus program, which has been a complete disaster.

The stimulus package has been a controversial plan since it was in the works of 2008. The argument was that the economy, in chaos at the time, needed a jump start. However it will serve as being an example of one of the biggest failures of government intervention into the economy since the New Deal. For many, they simply look to see the immediate effects of the policy instead of seeing what would happen if the stimulus was not ever conceived. They say, “It created or saved an average of 1.6 million jobs a year for four years” and rarely ever consider what the consequences ever tend to be. The stimulus package was about 832 billion dollars. Yes, Billion. Proponents of the bill said that it would stimulate growth and jobs, but we have already seen that job growth under Obama was negative and GDP growth has been at its worst. So what would've happened if there was no stimulus? Well the 832 billion dollars had to come from somewhere and it came from taxes. As we have already discussed taxes take away money from investors who would have potentially invested the money into the economy. So the investors now invested 832 billion dollars less into the economy. Not only that but private investors are almost always more efficient than the government. The private investors lose their own money on a bad investment while the government loses your money. This is why the Obama stimulus was just another example of what happens when the government interferes in the economy.

However this is not to say that Obama has been a terrible president on all accounts in the economy. He has actually succeeded in balancing the deficit and even reducing it to a quarter of its size! The claim that “the deficit has in fact declined (by roughly three-quarters)” is justified. Obama may have done terrible things to other parts of the economy but his deficit reduction and debt growth shrinkage is something that ought to be admired. Nevertheless, Obama’s policies in order to get these small deficits were atrocious. Many of us just look at the deficits and say “Obama is great!” but we should realize that Ronald Reagan almost doubled his deficits and had one of the most prosperous economies in American history, second only to the 1920’s.

Overall, Obama’s economic policies not only hurt the economy but he also hurt those whom he wished to help in the first place. Obama's dangerous mix of socialism and crony capitalism has led a dangerous precedent of big business reliance on the government. All of this comes at the expense of the normal american who gets hurt by the Obama’s policies and does not profit from the policies that gives money to corporations. The common American has suffered Obama in terms of the economy, and the results of the election just prove that America is fed up with Obama’s ineffective and backward economic policies.

Works Cited
Dubay, Curtis S. "Obama Tax Hikes: Bad for All Americans." Heritage. N.p., 23 Sept. 2016. Web. 3 Dec. 2016
"Labor Force Statistics." Bureau of Labor. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Dec. 2016.
Merlin, John. "How Good Is Job Growth? The Chart Obama Doesn't Want You To See." Investor's Business Daily. N.p., 2016. Web. 03 Dec. 2016.
Murdock, Deroy. "Barack Obama's Economy: The Ugly Truth." National Review. N.p., 6 May 2016. Web. 3 Dec. 2016. 
Plumer, Brad. “Why are there 47 Million Americans on Food Stamps? It's the recession- Mostly” Washington Post N.p, 23 Sept 2016, Web. 3 Dec. 2016
Sorkin, Andrew Ross. "President Obama Weighs His Economic Legacy." The New York Times. The New York Times, 2016. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.
"What the Stimulus Accomplished." The New York Times. The New York Times, 2014. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.