I've linked him to the inception of this silly as fuck notion that debt and deficits do not matter. It has spurred a group of folks (economic gurus??) who make excuses for a President that rang up nearly 9 trillion dollars of debt in a 4 year period! ( When economic guru's were predicting 3% plus GDP)
Are you asking me if Reagan's embrace of Saudi oil was partially responsible for global warming and the subsequent fried brains of Reagan acolytes, Yes maybe we can make that argument but not in this thread.
Now that we've diagnosed the problem with these economic guru's
...Do you want to dispute Stockman assertion of just when Republicans stopped being concerned with debt and deficits?
Which was the topic of this thread.
I'd be happy to discuss income inequality in another thread if you'd like to start one. Now please stfu with this talk and get back on the orginal subject matter which you have currently avoided.
There that should satisfy us both. You can either comment on the topic of this thread and/or start another thread on income inequality. Hopefully, you're capable of both.
Originally Posted by WTF
I've got a couple more things to add, other than what's already been said in this thread. Please note in the graphs I'm linking to that recessions are identified by shaded areas.
Reagan and Congress lowered taxes in 1981. I was looking at this graph, of federal receipts as a % of GDP:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
Note the U.S. was in a recession, around 1981/1982/1983, when federal receipts declined. You'd expect that. Businesses that weren't making money weren't paying income tax. Neither were workers who were laid off. So how much of the decline in receipts was from the recession and how much was from the 1981 tax cuts?
And isn't that what you're supposed to do? Cut taxes when there's a recession? I'm no economist but I thought that was classical Keynesian theory. Then you raise them when times are good. Somebody, maybe you, said Congress and Reagan did that in 1986. I'm not sure that's true, as I note the 1986 tax act lowered the income tax rate to a flat 28% and also lowered the corporate rate from 50% to 35%. But given the elimination of loopholes in the same bill, maybe that's true. By the way, the two sponsors of the 1986 bill were Bill Bradley in the Senate and Dick Gephardt in the House, both Democrats.
And here's another graph, federal debt held by the public as a % of GDP:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYGFGDQ188S
The national debt as a % of GDP went up during the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, when Democrats controlled the House, as a result of two recessions and two wars (the Cold War and the Kuwait War), which we won. Then it went down during years of uninterrupted prosperity during the Clinton administration. When Clinton left office, the federal debt held by the public was only 32%. That's the way things are supposed to work.
I wish we were allowed to go off topic in threads. They're more interesting that way, and you don't have a ton of threads being created on slightly different topics. In this thread you tried to hang (a) inequality, (b) excessive CEO pay, and (c) the increase in national debt because of COVID and by implication because of wars and recessions, on Reagan and his tax policy. You're way overreaching. It's reasonable for Lusty Lad to reply.
He may be partisan and caustic at times. But you should bear with him, you might learn something. like I have. I'd be damn happy if Paul Krugman decided to start posting here. And even though he's partisan and caustic at times, I'd treat him with respect.
I've gotten into disagreements with Lusty Lad on the trade deficit, protectionism, government debt, and the probability that COVID was engineered in a laboratory. He may not have necessarily changed my view on all the economic topics, but he's certainly moderated my thinking and made me more knowledgeable. It's worth listening to what he has to say. Except about COVID.
I'll note that you've moderated my thinking as well on a couple of topics, for example how federal spending is better controlled when the parties controlling the House and the Presidency are different.
