Ronald Reagan: Worst President Ever? | Consortiumnews
No shit. Sad its taken almost 30 years to realize this. The man destroyed America for normal every day Americans and set it on a path for the rich and only the rich.
Let's check.
And the tax cuts of the Economic Recovery Act of 1981 stimulated economic growth. “As a 1982 JEC study pointed out,[
1] similar across-the-board tax cuts had been implemented in the 1920s as the Mellon tax cuts, and in the 1960s as the Kennedy tax cuts. In both cases the reduction of high marginal tax rates actually increased tax payments by "the rich," also increasing their share of total individual income taxes paid.”
http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwth/reagtxct/reagtxct.htm
“As inflation came down and as more and more of the tax cuts from the 1981 Act went into effect, the economic began a strong and sustained pattern of growth.”
http://www.ustreas.gov/education/fact-sheets/taxes/ustax.shtml
- The benefits from Reaganomics:
- The economy grew at a 3.4% average rate…compared with 2.9% for the previous eight years, and 2.7% for the next eight.(Table B-4)
- Inflation rate dropped from 12.5% to 4.4%. (Table B-63)
- Unemployment fell to 5.5% from 7.1% (Table B-35)
- Prime interest rate fell by one-third.(Table B-73)
- The S & P 500 jumped 124% (Table B-95) http://www.gpoaccess.gov/eop/tables10.html
- Charitable contributions rose 57% faster than inflation. Dinesh D’Souza, “Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary May Became an Extraordinary Leader,” p. 116
b. and c.
Kiva Lending Team: Team REAL Americans | Kiva
While the ranks of the wealthy quickly multiplied, middle-class investors also entered the stock market in rapidly growing numbers. The creation by Congress in 1978 of the
401(k) tax-deferred retirement plan provided new incentives for workers to invest their savings in the stock market (often through mutual funds) rather than relying on company-funded pensions for retirement. The 401(k) led to a kind of democratization of Wall Street, as the percentage of American households owning some stake in the stock market—either directly or through mutual funds—shot quickly from 15.9% in 1983 to 29.6% in 1989.
23 Thus the great bull market of the 1980s created more wealth, for more American families, than any previous boom in history.
Investment Company Institute, "Equity Ownership in America, 2005,"
http://www.ici.org/pdf/rpt_05_equity_owners.pdf,
Shmoop’s sources cited for The Reagan Era
www.shmoop.com
And then Reagan passed the largest peace time tax hike in history thereby wiping out any previous tax cuts.
People were paying MORE taxes not less when Reagan left office.
Reagan spent like a drunken Keynesian all while claiming that "government is the problem" and increased government spending by 82% but there are idiots here who still claim that Reagan was a small government conservative.
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt
And then Reagan passed the largest peace time tax hike in history thereby wiping out any previous tax cuts.
Really? You have any details?
What were the rates before he raised them....what were the rates after he raised them?
Ronald Reagan is the patron saint of lower taxes and smaller government. He cut taxes, yes. But he also raised them several times, in part to reduce high deficits and in part to pave the way for true tax reform.
money.cnn.com
Two bills passed in 1982 and 1984 together "constituted the biggest tax increase ever enacted during peacetime," Thorndike said.
The bills didn't raise more revenue by hiking individual income tax rates though. Instead they did it largely through making it tougher to evade taxes, and through "base broadening" -- that is, reducing various
federal tax breaks and closing tax loopholes.
For instance, more asset sales became taxable and tax-advantaged contributions and benefits under pension plans were further limited.
"What people forget about Ronald Reagan was that he very much converted to base broadening as a means of reducing deficits and as a means of tax reform," said Eugene Steuerle, an Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute who had helped lay the groundwork for tax reform in 1986 and served as a deputy assistant Treasury secretary during Reagan's second term.
There were other notable tax increases under Reagan.
In 1983, for example, he signed off on Social Security reform legislation that, among other things, accelerated an increase in the payroll tax rate, required that higher-income beneficiaries pay income tax on part of their benefits, and required the self-employed to pay the full payroll tax rate, rather than just the portion normally paid by employees.
The tax reform of 1986, meanwhile, wasn't designed to increase federal tax revenue. But that didn't mean that no one's taxes went up. Because the reform bill eliminated or reduced many tax breaks and shelters, high-income tax filers who previously paid little ended up with bigger tax bills.
"Some of these taxpayers were substantial contributors to the Republican Party and to the president's re-election campaign, and had direct access to the White House. Reagan rebuffed their pleas," wrote J. Roger Mentz, the Treasury assistant secretary for tax policy in 1986, in a Tax Notes commentary last year.
All told, the tax increases Reagan approved ended up canceling out much of the reduction in tax revenue that resulted from his 1981 legislation.