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Class Warfare
- Thread starter Tellurian
- Start date
Is this sarcasm I am missing or are you two trying to be serious? How deeply do you misunderstand the america you are living in. Enlighten me.
Requia
Active Member
What future? A future where a college graduate has no realistic hope of ever making more than 15$ an hour? One where the median wage sinks year after year?
Really? What happened to the economy during Regan's reign, when the top rate fell drematically?
T-Dawg
Self-appointed Lunatic
A recession happened, our national debt tripled, and income inequality shot up?
Tellurian
Active Member
Like the gospel stories about the biblical Jesus, the conservative Republican memories of the Reagan years and Reagnomics are also more fantasy than fact.
From The Economy in the 1980s
"The nation endured a deep recession throughout 1982. Business bankruptcies rose 50 percent over the previous year. Farmers were especially hard hit, as agricultural exports declined, crop prices fell, and interest rates rose.
Reagan (1981-1989) based his economic program on the theory of supply-side economics, which advocated reducing tax rates so people could keep more of what they earned. The theory was that lower tax rates would induce people to work harder and longer, and that this in turn would lead to more saving and investment, resulting in more production and stimulating overall economic growth. While the Reagan-inspired tax cuts served mainly to benefit wealthier Americans, the economic theory behind the cuts argued that benefits would extend to lower-income people as well because higher investment would lead new job opportunities and higher wages."
(The old "trickle down" failure is being pushed again today even though Reaganomics did not live up to its hype)
"The central theme of Reagan's national agenda, however, was his belief that the federal government had become too big and intrusive. In the early 1980s, while he was cutting taxes, Reagan was also slashing social programs. Reagan also undertook a campaign throughout his tenure to reduce or eliminate government regulations affecting the consumer, the workplace, and the environment. At the same time, however, he feared that the United States had neglected its military in the wake of the Vietnam War, so he successfully pushed for big increases in defense spending.
The combination of tax cuts and higher military spending overwhelmed more modest reductions in spending on domestic programs. As a result, the federal budget deficit swelled even beyond the levels it had reached during the recession of the early 1980s. From $74,000 million in 1980, the federal budget deficit rose to $221,000 million in 1986. It fell back to $150,000 million in 1987, but then started growing again. Some economists worried that heavy spending and borrowing by the federal government would re-ignite inflation, but the Federal Reserve remained vigilant about controlling price increases, moving quickly to raise interest rates any time it seemed a threat. Under chairman Paul Volcker and his successor, Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve retained the central role of economic traffic cop, eclipsing Congress and the president in guiding the nation's economy."
That description seems to also explain the failed economic policies of the Bush administration that led us into the Bush recession of 2008. It also describes what some of the conservative Republican presidential candidates want to return to despite the problems caused by our previous experiences with that short sighted thinking.
From The Economy in the 1980s
"The nation endured a deep recession throughout 1982. Business bankruptcies rose 50 percent over the previous year. Farmers were especially hard hit, as agricultural exports declined, crop prices fell, and interest rates rose.
Reagan (1981-1989) based his economic program on the theory of supply-side economics, which advocated reducing tax rates so people could keep more of what they earned. The theory was that lower tax rates would induce people to work harder and longer, and that this in turn would lead to more saving and investment, resulting in more production and stimulating overall economic growth. While the Reagan-inspired tax cuts served mainly to benefit wealthier Americans, the economic theory behind the cuts argued that benefits would extend to lower-income people as well because higher investment would lead new job opportunities and higher wages."
(The old "trickle down" failure is being pushed again today even though Reaganomics did not live up to its hype)
"The central theme of Reagan's national agenda, however, was his belief that the federal government had become too big and intrusive. In the early 1980s, while he was cutting taxes, Reagan was also slashing social programs. Reagan also undertook a campaign throughout his tenure to reduce or eliminate government regulations affecting the consumer, the workplace, and the environment. At the same time, however, he feared that the United States had neglected its military in the wake of the Vietnam War, so he successfully pushed for big increases in defense spending.
The combination of tax cuts and higher military spending overwhelmed more modest reductions in spending on domestic programs. As a result, the federal budget deficit swelled even beyond the levels it had reached during the recession of the early 1980s. From $74,000 million in 1980, the federal budget deficit rose to $221,000 million in 1986. It fell back to $150,000 million in 1987, but then started growing again. Some economists worried that heavy spending and borrowing by the federal government would re-ignite inflation, but the Federal Reserve remained vigilant about controlling price increases, moving quickly to raise interest rates any time it seemed a threat. Under chairman Paul Volcker and his successor, Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve retained the central role of economic traffic cop, eclipsing Congress and the president in guiding the nation's economy."
That description seems to also explain the failed economic policies of the Bush administration that led us into the Bush recession of 2008. It also describes what some of the conservative Republican presidential candidates want to return to despite the problems caused by our previous experiences with that short sighted thinking.
That doesn't speak to the issue at hand though - prosperity.
Requia
Active Member
The economy tanked so hard that we never recovered pre 1981 employment levels, wages stagnated, and an entire generation had their lives ruined because they weren't able to get careers started.
I recall it being great while he was in office. We recovered from the Jimmy Carter "malaise".
I would've noticed if it tanked.
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Started going South and he had to raise taxes again -- six or seven times, I believe.
He finally hit on the stagflation cure -- borrow, borrow, borrow. Live on credit.
Kathryn
It was on fire when I laid down on it.
I guess we can tell the different regiments by the different pastel colors of their sweaters.
Alceste
Vagabond
If you rich folks were actually investing your income in job creation, as you're so fond of pretending, you'd have no cause to worry about increased income tax. It would be taxed at a corporate or business tax rate.
That's one of the reasons high taxes historically raised all boats.
America's "golden age" occurred during a 91% top tax rate period. Employers re-invested in their own companies rather than parking their money in Swiss banks, investing in the stock market, or buying corporate jets and mansions.
Mathematician
Reason, and reason again
The rich are almost always born to a life of privilege. If most people had the opportunities Bill Gates or Warren Buffet had, they too would be job creators.
Let's stop fooling ourselves. Capital is a lot more important in this world than a good idea or hard work.
The super rich create -- or outsource -- jobs to areas with a large workpool, cheap wages, lax regulation, &c.
Henry Ford once doubled the wages in one of his factories so his workers could afford the products they were making. Both sales and workers benefited.
Today, however, with a worldwide free market and no more tariffs (in the US, anyway) manufacturers can maintain a virtual slave labor force and simply ship the goods to where there's a market for them.
Henry Ford once doubled the wages in one of his factories so his workers could afford the products they were making. Both sales and workers benefited.
Today, however, with a worldwide free market and no more tariffs (in the US, anyway) manufacturers can maintain a virtual slave labor force and simply ship the goods to where there's a market for them.