Liberal Forum

Cannonpointer » 16 Feb 2014 2:56 am » wrote:I want to give credit where it's due: Glory Hole Clem is the fool who got me to googling and discovering these facts. My own nature is what gets me crowing about it.

Contards, you are on notice: CARTER WAS BETTER FOR THE ECONOMY THAN REAGAN. SO WAS CLINTON - BETTER THAN REAGAN, BUSH AND BUSH. You people suck at business and the economy - and everything else. You even suck off men in public bathrooms.

Reaganomics at 25....

The achievement of Reaganomics can only be fully understood by recalling the miserable state of affairs a quarter-century ago. Newsweek summarized the national mood when it wrote in 1981 that Reagan "inherits the most dangerous economic crisis since Franklin Roosevelt took office 48 years ago."

That was no exaggeration. The economy was enduring a cycle of rising inflation with growing levels of unemployment. Remember 20% mortgage interest rates? Terms like "stagflation" and "misery index" entered the popular vocabulary, and declinists of various kinds were in the saddle. The perception of American economic weakness encouraged the Soviet empire to ever bolder adventures, as reflected by Soviet tanks in Kabul and Communists on the march in Nicaragua and Africa.

The reigning Keynesian policy consensus had no answer for this predicament, and so a new group of economic ideas came to the fore. Actually, they were old, classical economic ideas that were rediscovered via the likes of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School, Arthur Laffer, Robert Mundell, and such policy activists in Washington as Norman Ture and Jack Kemp, among others. These humble columns under our late editor, Robert Bartley, led the parade.

The results have been better than even some of its supporters hoped. The Dow Jones Industrial Average first broke 1,000 in 1972, but a decade later it was barely above 800 -- one of the worst and most enduring bear markets in history. In the 25 years since Reaganomics, however, the Dow has climbed to about 11,000, accounting for an increase in national wealth on the order of $25 trillion. To match that increase in percentage terms, the Dow would have to rise to some 150,000 in the next quarter century. American living standards have risen steadily, and U.S. businesses have created entire industries that didn't exist a generation ago.

Obviously, the economic policy path from 1981 to the present day has not been a straight line.....

The rest of the world, meanwhile, has followed the Gipper down the tax-cut curve. Daniel Mitchell of the Heritage Foundation finds that the average personal income tax rate in the industrialized world is now 43%, versus 67% in 1980. The average top corporate tax rate has fallen to 29% from 48%. This decline in global tax rates has been the economic counterpart to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Most of Eastern Europe has adopted flat tax rates of 25% or lower, and the Russians now have a flat income tax of 13%. In Old Europe, Ireland's corporate and personal income tax rate cuts have helped generate the swiftest economic growth in the EU.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... d_outlooks