Trickly Down, Starve The Beast and Outsourcing.
Reagan fucked your country in the ass. Without lube.
Reagan didn't starve the beast and unemployment went down throughout the 80s. So we outsourced our jobs but gained jobs, why is this bad exactly?
Trickly Down, Starve The Beast and Outsourcing.
Reagan fucked your country in the ass. Without lube.
Your 'educated guess' is just as worthless as mine and everyone else's. Since we can't go back in time and try different scenarios, we'll never know for certain.
When will you ignorant fools ever understand that the president does not control spending levels? The president can ask for whatever he wants, but congress controls the purse. Democrats held congress during Reagan's presidency, if you want to blame someone for deficit spending, blame them.
I'm glad to see all the TRUE patriots paying homage to the greatest hero and leader there ever was, and it's pathetic to see all the atheist libtards making up lies to try and tear him down because they know no libtard will ever be as great. Just more proof of how much you hate America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfB4e3EkGVw&NR=1
Reagan didn't starve the beast and unemployment went down throughout the 80s. So we outsourced our jobs but gained jobs, why is this bad exactly?
Reagan didn't starve the beast and unemployment went down throughout the 80s. So we outsourced our jobs but gained jobs, why is this bad exactly?
Yes, those things started before Reagan, but he supported them and accelerated the results. He made the soviets realize that they were toast and that hanging on was useless. Had a wimp like Carter been there for 12 more years it could have been decades more. Of course this is all speculation, we'll never know.
The reason Reagan is beloved and revered has nothing to do with policy and taxes and all that. It's all about restoring confidence and self image after Carter left American's self image in tatters. He came in and allowed people to feel proud to be American again, to hold their heads up high. For all his flaws that was his biggest accomplishment, and that's why people remember him fondly.
Clinton was basically lucky to stumble into the great internet boom, combined with a republican congress to force him into the middle of the road and a minute level of fiscal restraint.
I'm glad to see all the TRUE patriots paying homage to the greatest hero and leader there ever was, and it's pathetic to see all the atheist libtards making up lies to try and tear him down because they know no libtard will ever be as great. Just more proof of how much you hate America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfB4e3EkGVw&NR=1
I'm glad to see all the TRUE patriots paying homage to the greatest hero and leader there ever was, and it's pathetic to see all the atheist libtards making up lies to try and tear him down because they know no libtard will ever be as great. Just more proof of how much you hate America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfB4e3EkGVw&NR=1
I'm glad to see all the TRUE patriots paying homage to the greatest hero and leader there ever was, and it's pathetic to see all the atheist libtards making up lies to try and tear him down because they know no libtard will ever be as great. Just more proof of how much you hate America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfB4e3EkGVw&NR=1
"The Cold War was ending anyway, Russia was crumbling from within" is pure progressive drivel and historical revisionism. Under Carter the USA agreed to cuts that put the USSR solidly ahead of US power, at a level that the USSR could afford to maintain. Had we continued with Carter's idea of diplomacy and world balance, the USSR would likely still be in existence today. Had you been alive at the time you would know that Democrats at the time were decrying Reagan and claiming he was going to destroy the world because the free world could never match the Soviet top-down command economy in military production.
Come to think of it, Democrats today are claiming pretty much the same thing, that Republicans and capitalism are destroying the world (through catastrophic anthropogenic global warming) and that American must adopt a top-down command economy to save it. The more things change . . .
In 1980, Jimmy Caner's last year as president, the federal government spent a whopping 27.9% of "national income" (an obnoxious term for the private wealth produced by the American people). Reagan assaulted the free-spending Carter administration throughout his campaign in 1980. So how did the Reagan administration do? At the end of the first quarter of 1988, federal spending accounted for 28.7% of "national income."
Even Ford and Carter did a better job at cutting government. Their combined presidential terms account for an increase of 1.4%compared with Reagan's 3%in the government's take of "national income." And in nominal terms, there has been a 60% increase in government spending, thanks mainly to Reagan's requested budgets, which were only marginally smaller than the spending Congress voted.
TAXES
Before looking at taxation under Reagan, we must note that spending is the better indicator of the size of the government. If government cuts taxes, but not spending, it still gets the money from somewhereeither by borrowing or inflating. Either method robs the productive sector. Although spending is the better indicator, it is not complete, because it ignores other ways in which the government deprives producers of wealth. For instance, it conceals regulation and trade restricdons, which may require little government outlay.
If we look at government revenues as a percentage of "national income," we find little change from the Carter days, despite heralded "tax cuts." In 1980, revenues were 25.1% of "national income." In the first quarter of 1988 they were 24.7%.
Reagan came into office proposing to cut personal income and business taxes. The Economic Recovery Act was supposed to reduce revenues by $749 billion over five years. But this was quickly reversed with the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. TEFRAthe largest tax increase in American historywas designed to raise $214.1 billion over five years, and took back many of the business tax savings enacted the year before. It also imposed withholding on interest and dividends, a provision later repealed over the president's objection.
But this was just the beginning. In 1982 Reagan supported a five-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax and higher taxes on the trucking industry. Total increase: $5.5 billion a year. In 1983, on the recommendation of his Spcial Security Commission chaired by the man he later made Fed chairman, Alan Green-spanReagan called for, and received, Social Security tax increases of $165 billion over seven years. A year later came Reagan's Deficit Reduction Act to raise $50 billion.
Even the heralded Tax Reform Act of 1986 is more deception than substance. It shifted $120 billion over five years from visible personal income taxes to hidden business taxes. It lowered the rates, but it also repealed or reduced many deductions.
According to the Treasury Department, the 1981 tax cut will have reduced revenues by $1.48 trillion by the end of fiscal 1989. But tax increases since 1982 will equal $1.5 trillion by 1989. The increases include not only the formal legislation mentioned above but also bracket creep (which ended in 1985 when tax indexing took effecta provision of the 1981 act despite Reagan's objection), $30 billion in various tax changes, and other increases. Taxes by the end of the Reagan era will be as large a chunk of GNP as when he took office, if not larger: 19.4%, by ultra-conservative estimate of the Reagan Office of Management and Budget. The so-called historic average is 18.3%.
The fact remains that Reagan DID NOT propose cutting spending when submitting budgets.
This is so wrong. By the time Reagan took office, the Soviet Union was already suffering the Brezhnev Stagnation as he was rolling back reforms put in place by Khrushchev. Brezhnev did more to hurt Soviet society and economics than Reagan could even dream. Dissent was not allowed and consumer goods suffered severe shortages.... all beginning in the mid-70s. It's a shame that someone like you, alive at the time, knows little about what was actually happening in the Soviet Union.
The soviet union was crumbling, but that doesn't mean it would actually collapse. Cuba has been crumbling from within for 50 years and is still there. Who's to say the soviet union would not have 'held on' for another 30 years, crumbling or not? Who's to say it might not have turned into something even far uglier as desperation mounted?
It would not have. There were already cracks in the Eastern bloc as evidenced by, say, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia or the rise of Solidarity (founded in 1980, btw). The Soviet Union had to maintain power over separate satellite states that had shown a history of dissent before Reagan took power. It was bound to fail.
I'm glad to see all the TRUE patriots paying homage to the greatest hero and leader there ever was, and it's pathetic to see all the atheist libtards making up lies to try and tear him down because they know no libtard will ever be as great. Just more proof of how much you hate America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfB4e3EkGVw&NR=1
You don't know what starve the beast is. It's piling on the debt so that the government becomes unable to pay for programs the political proces wouldn't cur otherwise.
That debt is used for anything from buying votes (Reagan's phony prosperity) to corrupt spending (e.g., feeding the military-industrial complex).
That's your perspective, but that is speculation and certainly not a fact. What is a fact is that the soviet union fell without any war/violence, in part because Reagan worked so effectively with the one man (Gorbachev) who could control the soviet military and political machine. Gorby himself gave Reagan a lot of credit (along with the pope), I'll take his word over that of others speculating about the 'inevitable' collapse.
It was inevitable. If you think about it, the argument from the right is that Reagan's military build-up forced the Soviets to do so in-kind, which stunted their economic growth and caused shortages. Of course, this was already happening in the Soviet Union, beginning in the mid-70s. It's one of the main reasons the argument holds no water.
And it's a stretch to say that Gorbachev was in control of the military and political machine. It was a failed military coup, after all, that spelled the final dissolution of the Soviet Union.
If President Ronald Reagan and I had not succeeded in signing disarmament agreements and normalizing our relations in 1985-88, the later developments would have been unimaginable.
Yeah, we all remember what a paradise the USSR was prior to the 70s. What Reagan did was not to damage the Soviet economy; what Reagan did was to put the USSR on notice that the USA would not restrict arms to a level that allowed the USSR's creaky economy to remain ahead. That did not damage the Soviet economy, it merely forced the Soviets to admit that they could not match Western productivity and technology. Without Carter-style appeasement, the Soviets had no hope of retaining parity with, much less superiority over, the West.This is so wrong. By the time Reagan took office, the Soviet Union was already suffering the Brezhnev Stagnation as he was rolling back reforms put in place by Khrushchev. Brezhnev did more to hurt Soviet society and economics than Reagan could even dream. Dissent was not allowed and consumer goods suffered severe shortages.... all beginning in the mid-70s. It's a shame that someone like you, alive at the time, knows little about what was actually happening in the Soviet Union.
SNIP
People love Reagan for what they imagine him to be.... not who he actually was.
Oddly enough, Obama seems to get it, or at least has someone savvy enough to understand it and use it.
I agree the preponderance of evidence points that way, but I continue to have hope for him. Politicians often do things that seem completely asinine if not outright counterproductive to us, but that must seem reasonable to them, so it's difficult to determine the true beliefs of the vast majority of politicians.I don't think he does. Note his apology tour and countless speeches where he just doesn't seem to think that this country is special in any way. He seems to be believe it's just another country that would be better off copying other countries.
I don't think he does. Note his apology tour and countless speeches where he just doesn't seem to think that this country is special in any way. He seems to be believe it's just another country that would be better off copying other countries.
Ah yes, American exceptionalism, or a lesson on how to deny reality.
