The Obama economy vs. The Reagan Economy

Bush's fault!

Wasn't much of Reagan's economic growth spurred by massive military expansion?

jthomas666 said:

Wasn't much of Reagan's economic growth spurred by massive military expansion?

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It wasn't 'expansion' it was recovery after what Carter did to it.

Massive expansion that exploded the deficit and put the military industrial complex in the king's chair. The ONLY benefit was that it hastened the demise of the USSR (which would have happened anyway). I remember the $300 (or was it $600) dollar toilet seats.

Thanks Bamacon. FRED and the BEA are new to me. What a wealth of info.

jthomas666 said:

Wasn't much of Reagan's economic growth spurred by massive military expansion?

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I think you folks need to make up your minds which excuse you're going to use.




It was because it was purchased on a credit card.

It was because of the military build-up.

It was because of Paul Volcker (because he's a Democrat) at the Fed.

It was a terrible economy (yes, I've actually heard THAT one).


I'm guessing it had nothing to do with the rich folks having their taxes cut from 70% to 35% and thus investing in things that made them (and thus others) more money. (This is also why the GOP idiots nowadays who think a cut from 39% to 36% is going to bring back Reagan Era prosperity are dolts - since there's no comparison of the two in the real world).


Fact is that Reagan left the economy and country in better shape than he found it. We can argue over the details I guess but that part is pretty much undeniable. Furthermore, despite being a right-wing ideologue, Reagan was a pragmatic politician in his actions. The BIG FEAR at the time was he was going to get us into a war with his tought talk. Ironically, he took his own vow of "no more Vietnams" more seriously than his successors have.

twofbyc said:

Massive expansion that exploded the deficit and put the military industrial complex in the king's chair.

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Oliver Stone claims this happened under Eisenhower. I saw "JFK" and it's real!!!

twofbyc said:

The ONLY benefit was that it hastened the demise of the USSR (which would have happened anyway). I remember the $300 (or was it $600) dollar toilet seats.

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You also need to remember it was Reagan's folks who DISCOVERED AND REPORTED this stuff - as he pointed out in the second debate with Mondale in 1984.

selmaborntidefan said:

I'm guessing it had nothing to do with the rich folks having their taxes cut from 70% to 35% and thus investing in things that made them (and thus others) more money. (This is also why the GOP idiots nowadays who think a cut from 39% to 36% is going to bring back Reagan Era prosperity are dolts - since there's no comparison of the two in the real world).

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While the top end tax cuts may have had an effect, I doubt that the impact was nearly as significant as the military expansion--which created middle class jobs directly, not via trickle down.

ETA: You also probably can't overstate the importance of factors outside the scope of Reagan's policies as well. For instance, how much of the economic expansion was driven--directly or indirectly-by the emergence of the personal computer?

jthomas666 said:

While the top end tax cuts may have had an effect, I doubt that the impact was nearly as significant as the military expansion--which created middle class jobs directly, not via trickle down.

ETA: You also probably can't overstate the importance of factors outside the scope of Reagan's policies as well. For instance, how much of the economic expansion was driven--directly or indirectly-by the emergence of the personal computer?

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We had the money to buy them then, the first 18,000 of our income was not taxed and PC'S went for $2000 and up with 5K of memory. The PC was a beneficiary of the economy but not a driving force.
Also until 1986-87, all other taxes outside FICA and Fed Wh were deductible, along with mortgage interest, CCard interest and auto loan interest.
Our world did not revolve around the gov't and businesses could operate in a steady policy environment that was predictable without the constant threat of regulation or more taxes that we see now. Got your 1.5-2.0 raise this year? It's because business does not know what it will be hit with next year. Whole different world today.And not better. I really hate that my three grown children since their earning years have started, have yet to see a truly GOOD economy, like I enjoyed in my 20's and early 30's.
Rant over.

jthomas666 said:

While the top end tax cuts may have had an effect, I doubt that the impact was nearly as significant as the military expansion--which created middle class jobs directly, not via trickle down.

ETA: You also probably can't overstate the importance of factors outside the scope of Reagan's policies as well. For instance, how much of the economic expansion was driven--directly or indirectly-by the emergence of the personal computer?

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That's also true along with the breaking up of AT&T and the massive proliferation of cable channels and the communications industry.

Of course, we could make those same points about Clinton, whose VP invented the Internet for the military back in 1969.


This is why I don't think arguments about who is a good President based on the economy go very far. Bill Clinton himself was once quoted as saying that when one looks over the history of who we consider Presidents, the performance of the economy has next-to-nothing to do with how that guy is viewed. Clinton further noted that the economy is the best issue to get elected on and then has so salience whatsoever to how a guy is viewed. (This is part of why I think Clinton was perhaps the most irrelevant President since Warren Harding - a trained monkey would have gotten the same results and wouldn't have gotten impeached. Probably - because other than the booming economy that began 7 months before he even announced he was running, what specifically did the guy actually do other than not get lynched on the White House lawn?).

I think these types of comparisons are probably not helpful, however. What exactly is the relevance of Reagan's recovery was better OR worse than Obama's? For starters, you have to be my age (45) to even faintly remember Reagan, and I don't have any personal recollection of MY OWN trouble of paying the bills because I was 11 when he was elected. Such people are now in their 50s or even older and a smaller voting bloc - somebody 24 could care less about how nostalgic we get.

I worked in a manufacturing machine shop at this time. It was not government spending that was growing as much as it was in the private sector. We went from about to close the doors to the company in 1981 to having more work then we could do at the beginning of 1983. Our shop expanded in buying new machines and hiring a lot of skilled people.

crimson fan man said:

I worked in a manufacturing machine shop at this time. It was not government spending that was growing as much as it was in the private sector. We went from about to close the doors to the company in 1981 to having more work then we could do at the beginning of 1983. Our shop expanded in buying new machines and hiring a lot of skilled people.

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This libtard says that compared to Carter, Reagan was a breath of fresh air. Selma these kind of comparisons may not be helpful but they are fun!

Does anyone dispute that Reagan signed the biggest tax hike in American history? That rather than making government smaller he made it bigger?

seebell said:

Does anyone dispute that Reagan signed the biggest tax hike in American history?

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Actually, he didn't. He UNDID tax cuts that were SUPPOSED to happen, which liberals ought to be overjoyed at. Liberals AND conservatives amuse me with their Reagan views. Chris Mathews likes to say Reagan did the "courageous thing" and raised taxes. Fine - then you can't say ANYTHING about trickle down economics causing the budget deficit of the 80s. Furthermore, if Reagan's tax cuts were weighted towards the wealthy then.....guess who didn't get those tax cuts?

Long-term I'd guess Obamacare will be the biggest.

seebell said:

That rather than making government smaller he made it bigger?

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Ok, so Reagan was a New Dealer. Kinda makes me wonder why liberals hate him so much then.


(My other favorite is the old "Reagan couldn't win today's GOP nomination." True but irrelevant - do you honestly think FDR in the wheelchair would win the nomination in the TV age? Or JFK, who was more conservative than his younger brother Teddy? Of course not, making the "point" irrelevant).

Selma, I called Reagan "a breath of fresh air". I voted for the man twice. I must be a conservative. :eek2: Did Obama raise taxes(on the wealthy) by not renewing the Bush era cuts? Or did he un-do them?

seebell said:

Selma, I called Reagan "a breath of fresh air".

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I know, and I wasn't attacking you so much as the left-wing narrative. To be fair, you did not invoke that so my response wasn't at you. That's okay; the right-wing narrative is just as ridiculous.

seebell said:

I voted for the man twice. I must be a conservative.

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Not really; who in their right minds wanted a second-term Jimmy Carter or Carter's VP? Remember - Reagan carried MASSACHUSETTS in 1984. 1980 doesn't really count because Reagan only carried it because John Anderson split the liberal vote (just as Clinton only carried Ohio in 1992 because Perot split the GOP vote; however, Clinton carried going away in 1996).

seebell said:

Did Obama raise taxes(on the wealthy) by not renewing the Bush era cuts? Or did he un-do them?

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I'd have to look but the cases are different in one immediate sense: Reagan undid HIS OWN tax cut as guided by James Baker, David Gergen, Richard Darman, and Bob Dole among others. Reagan raised taxes after he had lowered them and he also tried to simplify the tax code later in his Presidency (1986 Tax Reform Act). Obama already undid Bush and will need more for his health care long-term.

It wasn't Obama so much I was thinking of as it was Clinton in 1993. Clinton decided to promise a middle class tax cut his record in Arkansas showed there was no way he'd actually do. Then - even before he took office - he informed us all that because the budget deficit was so much worse than he thought (because Clinton thought the $292 billion deficit was MUCH WORSE than the PROJECTED while he was making the promise $400 billion deficit), he was going to raise taxes on all of us. (It was especially amusing as he had attacked Paul Tsongas in the primaries for proposing a gas tax.....and then....raised the gas tax).

One could argue which was larger either way. One could even argue that the guys who all sought office promising tax cuts found ways to make up the revenue elsewhere. It's really not as simple as left and right or Republican or Democrat. What Reagan DID do was restore the confidence Americans had in their leadership from DC even when they didn't agree with it. He also never got us bogged down in a senseless war although he was willing to be sneaky in Nicaragua.

What most folks need to accept both left and right is that Reagan was a pragmatic politician who got things done even when they were "violations" of his previous commitments and he got away with it PRIMARILY because as far as politicians go he was seen as "generally honest" (except during the Iran-Contra period late in his term) and had espoused the same ideas for years. Carter was seen as honest but incompetent just like his predecessor, Gerald Ford. And in my view, those two AND Nixon were victimized by the inflation of the dollar coming off the Vietnam War (this is the general consensus of economists at the time). Reagan benefited from the cooling of inflation - whether it was a timing thing or something else, I don't know (I'm not an economist).

If folks would quit trying to pigeonhole politics into their agendas, they'd learn something. But everyone tries to spin it so their favorite guy is good and the opponent is evil. I find Reagan fascinating, an ideologue who did not always govern ideologically but is treated by both sides as if he did.

As usual Selma I find your posts enlightening. Thanks. We need your help on the Warren/Sanders ticket in 2016.

Selma, I agree with the last post, especially the last points.

seebell said:

As usual Selma I find your posts enlightening. Thanks. We need your help on the Warren/Sanders ticket in 2016.

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You ruined my supper with the visual.