I prefer freedom. Freedom not to cast a vote in this election. This country has been headed downhill since Reagan took office. Downword spiral since.
too stupid!! and prefectly exactly liberal!!!!
J: The National Bureau of economic Research in 1999 declared the period 1982-99 one continuous macroeconomic expansion, " the longest sustained period of prosperity in the twentieth century."
J: and of course this is not to forget that Reagan ended the cold war, saved the world from nuclear annihilation, and set billions free from liberal communism.
J: When Reagan took office the misery index (unemployment + inflation was 20, when he left it was 10. In "The 7 Fat Years" Bartley aptly summarize Reagan's years by saying, "It was like we added another California to the US economy.
J: Kemp Roth was the largest tax cut in American History; enacted 8 months after Reagan too office. The Dow Jones average doubled during Reagan and real federal revenue grew by 24%.
NY Times: "One popular misconception is that the Republican tax cuts caused the crippling budget deficit now approaching 300 billion a year. The fact is the deficit resulted because the government vastly expanded what it spent each year." The new spending went to the military, but since it defeated communism it was worth every penny!!
Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke
The Great Moderation
One of the most striking features of the economic landscape over the past twenty years or so has been a substantial decline in macroeconomic volatility. In a recent article, Olivier Blanchard and John Simon (2001) documented that the variability of quarterly growth in real output (as measured by its standard deviation) has declined by half since the mid-1980's, while the variability of quarterly inflation has declined by about two thirds. Several writers on the topic have dubbed this remarkable decline in the variability of both output and inflation "the Great Moderation." Similar declines in the volatility of output and inflation occurred at about the same time in other major industrial countries, with the recent exception of Japan, a country that has faced a distinctive set of economic problems in the past decade.
By ARTHUR B. LAFFER
For 16 years prior to Ronald Reagan's presidency, the U.S. economy was in a tailspin—a result of bipartisan ignorance that resulted in tax increases, dollar devaluations, wage and price controls, minimum-wage hikes, misguided spending, pandering to unions, protectionist measures and other policy mistakes.
In the late 1970s and early '80s, 10-year bond yields and inflation both were in the low double digits. The "misery index"—the sum of consumer price inflation plus the unemployment rate—peaked at well over 20%. The real value of the S&P 500 stock price index had declined at an average annual rate of 6% from early 1966 to August 1982.
For anyone old enough today, memories of the Arab oil embargo and price shocks—followed by price controls and rationing and long lines at gas stations—are traumatic. The U.S. share of world output was on a steady course downward.
Then Reagan entered center stage. His first tax bill was enacted in August 1981. It included a sweeping cut in marginal income tax rates, reducing the top rate to 50% from 70% and the lowest rate to 11% from 14%. The House vote was 238 to 195, with 48 Democrats on the winning side and only one Republican with the losers. The Senate vote was 89 to 11, with 37 Democrats voting aye and only one Republican voting nay. Reaganomics had officially begun.
President Reagan was not alone in changing America's domestic economic agenda. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, first appointed by Jimmy Carter, deserves enormous credit for bringing inflation down to 3.2% in 1983 from 13.5% in 1981 with a tight-money policy. There were other heroes of the tax-cutting movement, such as Wisconsin Republican Rep. Bill Steiger and Wyoming Republican Sen. Clifford Hansen, the two main sponsors of an important capital gains tax cut in 1978.
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Associated Press
Ronald Reagan after signing his first tax cut, Aug. 14, 1981.
