[bonehead]

I mean really,the guy was an idiot president.The republican party has based itself on trickle down and de-regulation.But the way some people talk,you'd think he was a God.With one pass of his mighty hand he brought down the Soviet Union!What a bunch of crap,i submit to all of you that the mess we're in started the day the idiot was elected.

[AlexdeLarge]

Yawn..........

[BigTex]

The question is whether the U.S.'s creditors still believe in Reaganomics.

They're the ones who enabled it.

Any other country that tried to run up a debt like we have over 25 years would have seen their bond market collapse long ago.

Talk about giving someone enough rope to hang themselves with...

Read "Empire of Debt". Excellent discussion of the rotton core of this spending binge we have been on since the 1980s.

No one believes that something can collapse until it does, and afterwards they wonder how it remained standing as long as it did.

[americandream]

I mean really,the guy was an idiot president.The republican party has based itself on trickle down and de-regulation.But the way some people talk,you'd think he was a God.With one pass of his mighty hand he brought down the Soviet Union!What a bunch of crap,i submit to all of you that the mess we're in started the day the idiot was elected.

Couldn't have put it better. From what I've read about the old coot and Thatcher his sidekick, I reckon the yuppifying of greed was when the rot set in big time. What few redeeming features capitalism had simply went out the window.

[BigTex]

"The Triumph of Politics" was written by David Stockman, who was Reagan's Budget Director in the early 1980s and the architect of a lot of the original Reaganomics, which was supposed to be tax cuts AND spending cuts.

In the book, he outlines his horror when he realized early on that tax cuts are a lot easier than spending cuts, and that enormous deficits for as far as the eye could see would likely be their legacy.

The rest is history.

As dumb and naive as that sounds, that's about the way it went down.

I read the book in 1990 and it was one of the first books that really made me worry about where we were headed.

[jbrovont]

Well first off, Reagan was an actor, not an economist. He was very good at getting people to follow him, but to really understand what and why a president does, you have to look at their cabinet. No one person could get their mind around everything that needs done during a presidency, which is where their advisors come in.

Reagan based "Reaganomics" on Arthur Laffer's theories on "supply-side" economics.

From wiki:

Supply-side economics is an arguably heterodox school of macroeconomic thought that argues that economic growth can be most effectively created using incentives for people to produce (supply) goods and services, such as adjusting income tax and capital gains tax rates. Supply-side economics is often conflated with trickle-down economics, now a term given to right-leaning economists' views.[1] The term supply-side economics was coined by journalist Jude Wanniski in 1975, and popularized the ideas of economists Robert Mundell and Arthur Laffer.

Also from wiki, per George Bush's economic advisor:

Bush advisor Greg Mankiw offered similarly sharp critisim of the school in the early editions his introductory economics textbook.[9]

In a 1992 article for the Harvard International Review James Tobin wrote, "[The] idea that tax cuts would actually increase revenues turned out to deserve the ridicule…"[10]

Having grown up in the 80s and 90s, and being able to compare them to today, I have to defer to the Mankiw and Tobin schools of thought.

My personal observations are that corporations are rewarded (through investment growth) by not spending tax incentives and reducing expenditures. In a localized economy, this would work, but in the real world, they ship the expenditures (jobs) overseas to get the lowest price. The money never finds its way back into the real economy, and stays locked in securites.

Since it gets kept out of the everyday economy, it isn't taxed, and furthermore can't contribute to the standard of living of any American (except the select few controlling the securities of the company).

So over all: looks good on paper. In practice however, I have to stick it in the bin with communism. Sounds like a noble and socially responsible idea on the surface, but after trying it repeatedly in various forms, doesn't work in the hands of men.

Greed is the absolute master before which all economies will ultimately be judged.

I mean really,the guy was an idiot president.The republican party has based itself on trickle down and de-regulation.But the way some people talk,you'd think he was a God.With one pass of his mighty hand he brought down the Soviet Union!What a bunch of crap,i submit to all of you that the mess we're in started the day the idiot was elected.

[3aidlillahi]

Reagan based "Reaganomics" on Arthur Laffer's theories on "supply-side" economics.

The Laffer Curve was actually discovered more than 600 years ago by the "Renaissance" ibn Khaldun who noted in his "Muqaddimah" that at first, nation's have small governments. This abundance of freedom causes great expansion of the economy through investment and invention. However, as nations become "more civilized", as he puts it, and away from Bedouin-ish forms of government (ie. become larger), they then demand more tax revenues for social programs, war, and the like. This then causes a reduction in investment and invention, thus a slowing down in the economy, leading towards fewer tax receipts. You know how the theory goes.

He doesn't spend much time on the subject in his book. But he lays it out much like I have above.

Ibn Khaldun, it should be noted, was living at the end of one of the world's great empires, much like we are. He had witnessed the economic decline across the Muslim world due to overspending by the government (among other reasons).

My personal observations are that corporations are rewarded (through investment growth) by not spending tax incentives and reducing expenditures. In a localized economy, this would work, but in the real world, they ship the expenditures (jobs) overseas to get the lowest price. The money never finds its way back into the real economy, and stays locked in securites.

Likely true, from my own economic understanding. That's likely why the Khaldun Curve worked so well back in his day; while they had long-distance economic trade, it's nothing compared to what we have. Most of everything was not imported nor could it be imported or labor outsourced, thus making businesses reinvest locally.

I think it's hysterical that all of the Arab and Muslim bashers are supply-side freaks - yet they don't know their beloved theory originated from a great Muslim qadi and theologian (as well as economist, sociologist, etc.).

[StuckInPhilly]

I mean really,the guy was an idiot president.The republican party has based itself on trickle down and de-regulation.But the way some people talk,you'd think he was a God.With one pass of his mighty hand he brought down the Soviet Union!What a bunch of crap,i submit to all of you that the mess we're in started the day the idiot was elected.

I was studying Economics in the eighties when that Fool was elected and I thought it was a simplistic joke back then.
The big problem is that it's so simple that the common idiots can get their brains around it and so they support it.

I completely agree that our economic problems started then and no one has had the guts to correct things since.
Of course the people who might have done the correcting where undoubtedly the ones that were getting richer because of it.

The Soviet Unions economy brought it down, Ronny Raygun just took credit.