Wednesday, October 19th, was the final debate many were expecting the candidates to focus on the undecided voters, and talk more to the center rather than trying to focus on exciting their base, but like the first and second debate this one became heated quickly, which has caused many people to look at other candidates.
The issue was raised about who the candidates would appoint to the vacancy of the supreme court, and possible future vacancies. This issue is very important to many people and will likely to push undecided and independent voters to vote for the party that they agree with socially rather than many of the issues that focus on fiscal, foreign, and immigration policy. Clinton wants justices who will repeal citizens united, and uphold Roe v. Wade and marriage equality. Trump wants to appoint justices that support 2nd Amendment, repeal Roe v Wade. Both candidates comments on ISIS, Syria and immigration were all consistent with the previous debates.
There were questions on the National Debt and the economy. Clinton's plan was consistent with my previous review of her tax plan as was Trump's plan. Clinton did however mentioned wanting college to be debt free for those under 125k for the first time. Since a lot of the answers were the same I will take this time to explain some basic economics to help anyone who doesn’t know a lot about it to help them make more informed decisions about the election. In this portion of the debate, several terms were thrown around including GDP, National Debt, Growth and Debt ratio. Firstly the GDP or Gross Domestic Product is monetary value of all goods and services produced in the United States the current GDP is approximately 19 trillion dollars. National debt is the total amount of money owed by the US government caused by budget deficits when government spending exceeds tax revenue the current debt is around 20 trillion dollars. GDP to debt ratio is the total debt divided by GDP. The current US debt to GDP ratio is 105 percent. Finally, growth is the comparison of one year’s GDP with previous. In the event of zero or less growth, that is a recession. The numbers for the economy and forecasting are done by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, however, unemployment and job growth are calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The growth numbers of the US were compared to China and India. The US was slower, but middle-income countries often have higher growth rates but often have difficulty sustaining them once they get close to the size of many of the high-income countries. These two also have had a strong dependency ratio which I explain fully here . It also mentioned the TPP which you can learn all about here. In the past, Hillary Clinton did call it the gold standard, but that was 3 years before the text of the agreement was finalized.
I hope this has informed you for the upcoming election and come November I hope you vote for whoever you believe to be the best candidate.
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