The Success of Reaganomics

[Jroc]

Net worth of families earning between $20,000 and $50,000 annually grew by 27%

The numbers being circulated by the Reagan Legacy Project have been roundly discredited, most notably by Reagan's own budget director, David Stockman.

The middle 20% didn't see a 27% rise. Between '83-'89 their net worth grew only 7%, from 55,000 to 58,800**

The real winners were the top half, whose net worth grew from 7.2 to 9.1 million = 26.9%. [The Reagan Legacy Project is famous for applying their gains to the middle 20 percent]

**The growth of the Reagan years is illusory on many levels. First, Reagan created historic deficits, in part because of highly questionable weapons contracts for things like Star Wars, but also because he was creating an uber-Pentagon to centrally manage global markets. He increased the federal workforce over Carter, who was socially, militarily, and fiscally more conservative. He never cut spending to match his historic revenue shortfall. Reagan made Government more expensive for future Americans. Because so much money became concentrated in so few hands, citizens and government under Reagan began to over-rely on debt. Indeed, under Reagan, America went from creditor to debtor nation. Reagan was the original Big Government Conservative. He was the first modern president to abandon pay as you go. Reagan's followers have brilliantly hid is economic record so they can continue his disastrous policies (which merely concentrates political and financial power around a small group of interests).

Lastly, the Reagan years are problematic because they reflect a time during which America was misallocating resources with artificially cheap oil, building massive energy sucking suburbs, big box stores, SUV's, and McMansions. These things would prove to be our death when the age of cheap oil ended and gas went north of 3$. Reagan convinced America to over-rely on cheap oil, and he hid the military cost of stabilizing the middle east off budget, in emergency spending measures. One of his aids famously quipped (and was fired): "if Americans knew what they were really spending on oil, the Carter alternative energy movement would be back tomorrow". Reagan and Big Oil crushed energy competition through every manner of market and political manipulation.

Reagan's policies began the trend of moving American manufacturing to Asian sweatshops for the purpose of giving capital a higher return. This had the effect of making one group wealthy, while another group lost solid jobs and thus required more and more debt to drive consumption. Reagan also deregulated finance, leading to the era of mergers and acquisitions. [Surely you remember the merger mania of the 80s] This created "too big to fail monopolies" whose very size gave them bailout insurance. Their leverage over the economy not only allowed them to buy Washington, but they had no incentive to curb risk. You can't get monsters like AIG (who burned trillions of taxpayer dollars in a derivative ponzi scheme) without the Reagan Revolution which completely ignored the Sherman Act and anti-trust regulation.

America swallowed poison in 1980.

Were's your link?...I love Margret Thatcher


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9eQIWKBR-s"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9eQIWKBR-s[/ame]

 

[georgephillip]

"Tax Wealth As Much As Work
June 11th, 2008

"Eliminate the Tax Preference for Income from Corporate Stock Dividends and Capital Gains

"Revenue: Estimated $100 billion a year

"Our proposal is that all income – wages, corporate stock dividends or capital gains –be taxed with the same graduated rates that exist for ordinary earned income. Lower income earners would pay at low rates and higher income earners would pay at higher rates.

"This would greatly simply the federal tax system and generate an estimated $100 billion a year."

Working Group...

Is it time for Congress to raise taxes on incomes from wealth--both capital gains and dividends?

"Our proposal is that all income – wages, corporate stock dividends or capital gains –be taxed with the same graduated rates that exist for ordinary earned income.

"Lower income earners would pay at low rates and higher income earners would pay at higher rates.

"This would greatly simply the federal tax system and generate an estimated $100 billion a year.

"If a person with a low income has a capital gain or dividend, then it will be taxed at the lowest income tax rate of 15 percent.

"But if a multi-million dollar income person has a capital gain, it should be taxed at the higher rate which today is 35 percent.

"If we implement this, we close the Hedge Fund manager loophole –and myriad other tax code games that the rich play to avoid paying their fair share."

If not now...when?

Working Group...

 

[georgephillip]

Why do the middle-to-lower-middle class right wingers you see here and elsewhere fight so hard for their masters?

Stockholm Syndrome?

Low IQ?

Naive beyond comprehension?

Stupid as Glenn Beck?

Conservatives may feel that progressive taxation is inherently unfair.

"Lower income earners would pay (taxes) at low rates and higher income earners would pay at higher rates" may sound like discrimination to conservatives.

Even worse, it may imply government sanctioned punishment of success.

As to why conservatives would feel this way, George Lakoff's book The Political Mind speculates that progressives and conservatives base their moral foundations on completely different principles.

Progressive choose empathy as a moral bedrock while conservatives favor obedience to a higher authority.

Conservatives may fight so hard for their masters because their religions (church & patriotism) demand it.

 

[Leweman]

Everything in life is a circumstance of birth, government isn't going to fix that.

 

[Dot Com]

thats so sweet two little left wingers praising each other's stupidity....how touching.

Thats all you got Why did you even bother to post Your's was a content-free post

 

[Jroc]

thats so sweet two little left wingers praising each other's stupidity....how touching.

Thats all you got Why did you even bother to post Your's was a content-free post

I posted the stats, you guys keep post the same bull, or praising yourselves, it's not worth my time. I'm not going to rebut Geogie because he posts from the same left wing sites on all the threads, Chomsky and so on, if you been here a little longer you would know this...I actually feel sorry for him

 

[jgarden]

Reagan had the distinct advantage of having "Bonzo" as his advisor on "trickle-down economics!"

 

[Jroc]

The thing is all these liberal unsustainable programs are finally catching up to us, the party is over we are going broke because of all this big wasteful government.

 

[georgephillip]

Everything in life is a circumstance of birth, government isn't going to fix that.

That was one of the arguments conservatives used to justify segregation in the US for generations.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Everything in life is a circumstance of birth, government isn't going to fix that.

Eeeeeeeeasy, there.

There's an awful-lotta White Trash, in this Country, who only HAVE being-born-White as their primary-accomplishment in Life!!!!

​

 

[Mr. Shaman]

The thing is all these liberal unsustainable programs are finally catching up to us, the party is over we are going broke because of all this big wasteful government.

Ya' (finally) heard-about-that, did ya'?????

Ronald Reagan's Records