Dick Tuck
Board Troll
- Aug 29, 2009
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These economic policies amounted to the most successful economic experiment in world history. The Reagan recovery started in official records in November 1982, and lasted 92 months without a recession until July 1990, when the tax increases of the 1990 budget deal killed it. This set a new record for the longest peacetime expansion ever, the previous high in peacetime being 58 months.
Reaganomics Vs. Obamanomics: Facts And Figures - Forbes
Smoke and mirrors. Reagan's supply side experiment only appears to have succeeded, because he radically increased the deficit, size of the federal workforce, and federal spending in general. His defense spending wound up resulting in one of the greatest defense contractor scandals in our history, i.e. Ill Winds, which was consultants creating a market, in collaboration with contractors and military procurement officials, in the trade of insider procurement document.
Reaganomics also included capricious deregulation that led directly to the S&L collapse, handing Bush I a severe recession and cost the taxpayers hundreds of billions. Reagan's fiscal irresponsibility also resulted in the devaluation of the dollar.
If you want to see real growth in American prosperity, you ought to look at Clinton. He raised taxes, mostly at the top rates, and that resulted in increased value of the dollar, attracted foreign investment, low unemployment, and among other things creating budget surpluses.
Bush II tried the same Reagan approach, without Reagan's flexibility, with an even worse result. Trillions of dollars of American wealth was lost due to Bush's policies.
Obama, has been reducing the size of the federal workforce and when the Bush tax cuts expire, we'll start seeing results similar to Clinton. The biggest problem in our economy today is the lack of recovery in housing and construction. Congress rebuffed Obama's attempts to invest more in infrastructure, that would provide immediate aid to the hardest hit of our industries. But as it stands, Obama's discretionary spending is at the lowest rates we've seen in a very long time.
But I really wonder how the right would react if Obama did what Reagan did with both the Amnesty program and his zero option proposal with the Soviets. I suspect your heads would explode and you'd further snarl yourselves into incohesion.
Job creation from 81-89
Notice: Data not available: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
1981 95 67 104 74 10 196 112 -36 -87 -100 -209 -278
1982 -327 -6 -129 -281 -45 -243 -343 -158 -181 -277 -124 -14
1983 225 -78 173 276 277 378 418 -308 1114 271 352 356
1984 447 479 275 363 308 379 312 241 311 286 349 127
1985 266 124 346 195 274 145 189 193 204 187 209 168
1986 123 107 93 188 125 -93 318 113 346 187 186 204
1987 171 232 249 338 227 171 346 170 229 492 231 294
1988 94 452 276 245 227 363 223 121 340 268 339 289
1989 262 258 192 173 118 117 39 47 249 111 277 95
there is no smoke and mirrors here
Oh yes there is. Most of those jobs were federal jobs or defense contractor jobs. Reagan exploded government spending and the size of the federal workforce to get those numbers. He also exploded the size of the debt, not really because of his tax cuts, since he quickly began raising them, but because of the radical increase in deficit spending.