Ronald Reagan, still a piece of shit

[thewhyteboar]

I'm shocked, shocked!

[Jason]

Quote

The economist John Kenneth Galbraith noted that "trickle-down economics" had been tried before in the United States in the 1890s under the name "horse-and-sparrow theory", writing:

Quote

Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy—what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: 'If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.'

Galbraith claimed that the horse-and-sparrow theory was partly to blame for the Panic of 1896.^[23] While running against Ronald Reagan for the Presidential nomination in 1980, George H. W. Bush had derided the trickle-down approach as "voodoo economics".^[24] In the 1992 presidential election, independent candidate Ross Perot also referred to trickle-down economics "political voodoo".^[25] In the same election during a presidential town hall debate, Bill Clinton said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics#Economics

[Spork3245]

[Keyser_Soze]

It's such a trickle you just haven't felt the trickle yet.

[Spork3245]

1 minute ago, Keyser_Soze said:

It's such a trickle you just haven't felt the trickle yet.

“Fake news: it takes at least 100 years for the trickle to reach the average person” -Republicans probably 

[Jason]

3 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

It's such a trickle you just haven't felt the trickle yet.

 

1 minute ago, Spork3245 said:

“Fake news: it takes at least 100 years for the trickle to reach the average person” -Republicans probably 

 

"We have to drink more water if you want it to be more of a flow."

[Spork3245]

1 minute ago, Jason said:

 

 

"We have to drink more water if you want it to be more of a flow."

 “The Democrats have dehydrated the trickle, we have to use some flomax-style tax cuts for this to really become the stream Jesus-Reagan intended!”

[CitizenVectron]

"It works, common sense says so, it's just that we haven't given enough money to the rich," is the more likely GOP/rich response.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

Every time we elect a Democrat it stops the trickle, because the rich are too afraid of their taxes going back up so they just hoard their money for a rainy-day. If we’d just keep electing Republicans we’d feel the trickle. 

[Greatoneshere]

I certainly feel a trickle. A trickle of piss on my leg as Republicans and the rich laugh in my face. 

[Bloodporne]

2 hours ago, CitizenVectron said:

"It works, common sense says so, it's just that we haven't given enough money to the rich," is the more likely GOP/rich response.

I pretty much heard exactly this sentiment in response to NY wanting to tax the hyper-rich more on NPR last night. So yup. "They'll leave the state and leave us barren, broken and broke if we ask them to contribute something akin to $100 more for the average tax payer" That's what I heard.

[CitizenVectron]

17 minutes ago, Bloodporne said:

I pretty much heard exactly this sentiment in response to NY wanting to tax the hyper-rich more on NPR last night. So yup. "They'll leave the state and leave us barren, broken and broke if we ask them to contribute something akin to $100 more for the average tax payer" That's what I heard.

 

The correct counter to this is (always): commerce is a side-effect of people living together. 

 

People (idiots) will claim that unless we give corporations and rich people more money (in the form of tax breaks, etc) then our local communities will be abandoned. But it's total bullshit. Wherever people live there will be a demand for commerce, and if one company leaves then another will take its place. You can use tax policy to encourage new HQs or facilities, but it's a race to the bottom. No matter how a local community treats any specific group of rich people, other rich people (or non-rich people) will fill the vacuum to provide services.

[marioandsonic]

Ronald Reagan and his entire family deserve to burn forever in the darkest depths of hell.

[Brick]

Reagan was a shitty person, and a shitty president whose policies are having long lasting effects America is still feeling today, and many of the problems currently facing America are caused by those policies. So much of what's wrong with America, and the Republican party are because of Reagan. 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

Reagan was a symptom, just like Trump.

[osxmatt]

Trump has all but solidified the fact, but the idea Reagan shrank the federal government when he raised the debt, raised the deficit, increased taxes, was the foundation for the idea that in Republican circles, substance is irrelevant and it’s all about right-wing messaging.

[Fizzzzle]

Reagan and Thatcher: Basically the worst™

[cusideabelincoln]

"Why did those rich people get rich in the first place?"

 

"They took and kept the money that was given to them"

 

"So what happens when we give them more money?"

 

"They'll keep it!" "They'll give it back to us!"

[Jason]

53 minutes ago, osxmatt said:

Trump has all but solidified the fact, but the idea Reagan shrank the federal government when he raised the debt, raised the deficit, increased taxes, was the foundation for the idea that in Republican circles, substance is irrelevant and it’s all about right-wing messaging.

 

The huge privatization push also cost the government a ton of money. Like how maintenance of military equipment got pushed to contractors. It looks better if you're dumb and myopic because it shuffles the bookkeeping around about how they're getting paid, and it gets stuff like the pension benefits for some soldiers off the government books...but you ultimately have to pay them more upfront as contractors. Plus it's a major inefficiency because instead of having guys who can become experts on a system over the course of 5 or 10 years and pass along their institutional knowledge, the guys rotate out to a different contract after a year right as they're finally getting their bearings and it kills the ability to have institutional knowledge. 

[Signifyin(g)Monkey]

While you could argue the optimal level of taxation is a low one with theoretical soundness, the whole idea of supply-side/trickle-down was never theoretically sound in the first place, and is actually is a lot older than people think.

 

It's basically a rejiggered version of 'Say's Law', which Jean-Baptiste Say formalized in 1803--the general idea of which is that production finances its own demand.  I.e., when producers set up an enterprise to create goods and services (supply), they hire labor, and generally pay that labor enough so that the laborers can buy what they produce.

 

Those wages then flow into the economy and create demand for those goods, and you get a 'virtuous circular flow' between production and consumption.  So, theoretically, if you cut taxes to provide producers with more money, eventually the circular flow carries it back to wage earners and 'supply creates its own demand', leading to economic expansion for everyone.

 

What the theory and its modern derivatives never accounted for is the effects of rising levels of debt, which breaks up the circular flow by diverting money towards debt service that sucks demand out of the economy.  And while some of the money that the supply-siders' tax cuts was supposed to free up did go to actual production, a huge portion of it was recycled instead into loans (i.e., new debt) by the newly deregulated banks (particularly loans against housing and loans to loot pension funds or small companies via M&A's) and speculation on the stock market, driving up the private debt/GDP ratio, bloating the financial sector, and ultimately setting the stage for the financial crisis and Great Depression 2.0, which (big surprise!) was characterized and exacerbated by a huge shortfall of demand. 

[BloodyHell]

17 hours ago, marioandsonic said:

Ronald Reagan and his entire family deserve to burn forever in the darkest depths of hell.

I literally came in here to post “and Nancy was worst!”