Reaganomics was a bad idea

[Alien Space Bats]

What all of the countries you've mentioned have in common, is that they are either far more racially homogenous than the US, smaller in land area than the US, or have far less people than the US. So, many HDI indicators such as health and crime are inherently biased towards those countries. I don't believe any of those nations could do a better job of running an economy of 310+ million people. If the US is developing, why then does it have the most money?

In asserting that racially homogeneity improves public health and reduces crime, you're making one Hell of an assumption.

Got sauce for that assertion?

[Raumm]

Reaganomics was the catalyst for the coming mirage of prosperity in 90's and onward til 06'-08'. letting corporations get that bloated and that greedy is what caused this damn mess. Regulation in terms of economics is essential and I am tired of hearing libertarians and tea-mensen chalk it up to infringement of personal liberty.

[Eboinland]

Reaganomics are horrible.

/Thread.

I concur.

[Corporate Councils]

In case it's not been posted yet, here is a graph indicating the annual income share of the top 1%. You might notice what many other economists have noticed that there tends to be large market failures when it spirals out of control. You might also notice that it increased rapidly throughout the 80's and especially the 90's and 2000's.

[The Mongol Ilkhanate]

catalyst

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

[The Mongol Ilkhanate]

In case it's not been posted yet, here is a graph indicating the annual income share of the top 1%. You might notice what many other economists have noticed that there tends to be large market failures when it spirals out of control. You might also notice that it increased rapidly throughout the 80's and especially the 90's and 2000's.

(Image)

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

[Wikkiwallana]

In case it's not been posted yet, here is a graph indicating the annual income share of the top 1%. You might notice what many other economists have noticed that there tends to be large market failures when it spirals out of control. You might also notice that it increased rapidly throughout the 80's and especially the 90's and 2000's.

(Image)

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

Funny you should say that.

[The Mongol Ilkhanate]

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

Funny you should say that.

That's cum hoc, ergo propter hoc I did. Considering Reagan entered stagflation, which we can predict what would have happened if it continued (STAGflation, doesn't go anywhere), contrast that with what DID happen, one can better evaluate his performance.

You can't predict what would have happened if it was more egalitarian, which, I point out, egalitarian societies have more economic collapses.

[Wikkiwallana]

Funny you should say that.

That's cum hoc, ergo propter hoc I did. Considering Reagan entered stagflation, which we can predict what would have happened if it continued (STAGflation, doesn't go anywhere), contrast that with what DID happen, one can better evaluate his performance.

You can't predict what would have happened if it was more egalitarian,

Why not?

which, I point out, egalitarian societies have more economic collapses.

Source?

[The Mongol Ilkhanate]

Source?

More of a theoretical thing. Egalitarian societies, such as the paleolithic hunter gatherers of South America and those rare few still in Africa face starvation and resource shortages far more often than we. There are no egalitarian societies elsewhere, they are the MOST egalitarian.

[Corporate Councils]

I don't think anybody is arguing a return to Paleolithic hunter-gathering egalitarian society, just a decrease in wealth disparity.
I think most rational people in the free market accept that there is going to be inequality, which isn't necessarily a bad thing; however, inequality to the point the market is not only inefficient, but also too unbalanced to permit competition is indeed a bad thing for everyone involved.

[The Mongol Ilkhanate]

I don't think anybody is arguing a return to Paleolithic hunter-gathering egalitarian society, just a decrease in wealth disparity.
I think most rational people in the free market accept that there is going to be inequality, which isn't necessarily a bad thing; however, inequality to the point the market is not only inefficient, but also too unbalanced to permit competition is indeed a bad thing for everyone involved.

Why does it matter to you, if someone is richer?

Let's draw an analogy here.

Situation A: Boss hands you 100 dollar bonus, and gives the same to everyone else.

Situation B: Boss hands you 500 dollars, and everyone else one hundred thousand. (Assume it was all anonymous and you won't have social repercussions, you were chosen at random for the 500)

Which situation would you rather be in?

[Wikkiwallana]

Source?

More of a theoretical thing. Egalitarian societies, such as the paleolithic hunter gatherers of South America and those rare few still in Africa face starvation and resource shortages far more often than we. There are no egalitarian societies elsewhere, they are the MOST egalitarian.

Who said I wanted radical egalitarianism?

[Wikkiwallana]

I don't think anybody is arguing a return to Paleolithic hunter-gathering egalitarian society, just a decrease in wealth disparity.
I think most rational people in the free market accept that there is going to be inequality, which isn't necessarily a bad thing; however, inequality to the point the market is not only inefficient, but also too unbalanced to permit competition is indeed a bad thing for everyone involved.

Why does it matter to you, if someone is richer?

Let's draw an analogy here.

Situation A: Boss hands you 100 dollar bonus, and gives the same to everyone else.

Situation B: Boss hands you 500 dollars, and everyone else one hundred thousand. (Assume it was all anonymous and you won't have social repercussions, you were chosen at random for the 500)

Which situation would you rather be in?

A. B is being run by people who either can't use a calculator, or are running one of the cruelest psychological experiments allowed since they put in professional safeguards.

[Jinos]

Reaganomics was the catalyst for the coming mirage of prosperity in 90's and onward til 06'-08'.

Actually, the prosperity of the 90s was based on the invention of the Internet, which created the Dot Com bubble, not a lot of people seem to realize, but there was a brief recession at the end of the 90s due to the bubble bursting. That was then followed by the housing bubble, which wasn't even built on real economic growth, just tons of gambling on mortgages.

[The Mongol Ilkhanate]

Why does it matter to you, if someone is richer?

Let's draw an analogy here.

Situation A: Boss hands you 100 dollar bonus, and gives the same to everyone else.

Situation B: Boss hands you 500 dollars, and everyone else one hundred thousand. (Assume it was all anonymous and you won't have social repercussions, you were chosen at random for the 500)

Which situation would you rather be in?

A. B is being run by people who either can't use a calculator, or are running one of the cruelest psychological experiments allowed since they put in professional safeguards.

So you'd rather NOT have the 400 dollars?

[Jinos]

A. B is being run by people who either can't use a calculator, or are running one of the cruelest psychological experiments allowed since they put in professional safeguards.

So you'd rather NOT have the 400 dollars?

The problem is that stupid analogies like that don't actually happen. It's based on the lie off the 'Trickling down wealth' myth.

Rich people don't give their employees bonuses out of a kindness of heart. They hoard their wealth.

In today's business climate, your boss is more likely to give himself a raise while laying off some people from your department to get you to work overtime. One only has to look at the way median CEO pay has rised something like 300% since 1980 while your average worker's pay has increased almost nothing.

[Corporate Councils]

I don't think anybody is arguing a return to Paleolithic hunter-gathering egalitarian society, just a decrease in wealth disparity.
I think most rational people in the free market accept that there is going to be inequality, which isn't necessarily a bad thing; however, inequality to the point the market is not only inefficient, but also too unbalanced to permit competition is indeed a bad thing for everyone involved.

Why does it matter to you, if someone is richer?

Let's draw an analogy here.

Situation A: Boss hands you 100 dollar bonus, and gives the same to everyone else.

Situation B: Boss hands you 500 dollars, and everyone else one hundred thousand. (Assume it was all anonymous and you won't have social repercussions, you were chosen at random for the 500)

Which situation would you rather be in?

Well if everyone else having $100,000 made my $500 worth less than the $100 (which it would), then I would pick the former because I would have more actual wealth.

Now instead of a false analogy, let's try one closer to reality.

Inflation is a 2%/year, but my wages increase at .6%/year while healthcare and education costs increase at 7%/year, at the same time I'd like to stimulate the economy by purchasing commodities and services, but my decreasing wealth prevents me from buying less and less, how long does it take for me to be removed from the economy as a productive worker and become a strain on everyone else?
Meanwhile my boss has been given a bonus worth more than I'll make in my lifetime, but instead of consuming more commodities and services than I could in my lifetime within the year, he holds on to it by placing it in a Swiss bank account, where it is difficult to tax and creates no new jobs or wealth within my economy; furthermore, the money he does spend of that is to lobby for laws to be created that allow him to avoid regulations designed to protect the public from being exploited or from having its collective environmental rights from being abused.

-or-

My boss pays higher taxes, but because I've received better healthcare and education I'm a more productive worker who can buy more things, including the things that my boss sells, earning him substantial profits (just not as much as he previously made).
I'm able to consume enough to keep the economy flowing, while at the same time I can support my family on the income that I make preventing me from going into debt to pay for rent. This allows me to support the system and pay taxes of my own which helps the government do things like pay off its crippling $15 trillion debt.

Which of these two situations would you prefer?

[The Richard Bastion Republic]

I still don't believe Reaganomics were bad. All of basically said it sucked, and you didn't even prove why.
No one showed in graphs or any other evidence to reveal a decrease in GDP, or anything like that. So I will show you that Reaganomics were good for the economy

The four pillars of Reagan's economic policy were to reduce the growth of government spending, reduce income tax and capital gains tax, reduce government regulation of economy, and control money supply to reduce inflation

Prior to the Reagan administration, the United States economy experienced a decade of rising unemployment and inflation, (known as stagflation). Political pressure favored stimulus resulting in an expansion of the money supply. President Richard Nixon's wage and price controls were abandoned.[3] The federal oil reserves were created to ease any future short term shocks. President Jimmy Carter started phasing out price controls on petroleum, while he created the Department of Energy. Much of the credit for the resolution of the stagflation is given to two causes: a three year contraction of the money supply by the Federal Reserve Board under Paul Volcker, initiated in the last year of Carter's presidency,[3] and long term easing of supply and pricing in oil during the 1980s oil glut.
In his stated intention to increase defense spending while lowering taxes, Reagan's approach was a departure from his immediate predecessors. Reagan enacted lower marginal tax rates in conjunction with simplified income tax codes and continued deregulation. During Reagan's presidency the annual deficits averaged 4.2% of GDP[4] after inheriting an annual deficit of 2.7% of GDP in 1980 under president Carter.[4] The rate of growth in federal spending fell from 4% under Jimmy Carter to 2.5% under Ronald Reagan. GDP per working-age adult, which had increased at only a 0.8% annual rate during the Carter administration, increased at a 1.8% rate during the Reagan administration. The increase in productivity growth was even higher: output per hour in the business sector, which had been roughly constant in the Carter years, increased at a 1.4% rate in the Reagan years.[2]
Before Reagan's election, supply side policy was considered unconventional by the moderate wing of the Republican Party. While running against Reagan for the Presidential nomination in 1980, George H. W. Bush had derided Reaganomics as "voodoo economics".[5] Similarly, in 1976, Gerald Ford had severely criticized Reagan's proposal to turn back a large part of the Federal budget to the states. Reagan's policies have since become widely accepted by many Republicans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics

[The Mongol Ilkhanate]

So you'd rather NOT have the 400 dollars?

The problem is that stupid analogies like that don't actually happen. It's based on the lie off the 'Trickling down wealth' myth.

Rich people don't give their employees bonuses out of a kindness of heart. They hoard their wealth.

In today's business climate, your boss is more likely to give himself a raise while laying off some people from your department to get you to work overtime. One only has to look at the way median CEO pay has rised something like 300% since 1980 while your average worker's pay has increased almost nothing.

A simple yes or no will suffice.

[The Mongol Ilkhanate]

Why does it matter to you, if someone is richer?

Let's draw an analogy here.

Situation A: Boss hands you 100 dollar bonus, and gives the same to everyone else.

Situation B: Boss hands you 500 dollars, and everyone else one hundred thousand. (Assume it was all anonymous and you won't have social repercussions, you were chosen at random for the 500)

Which situation would you rather be in?

Well if everyone else having $100,000 made my $500 worth less than the $100 (which it would), then I would pick the former because I would have more actual wealth.

Now instead of a false analogy, let's try one closer to reality.

Inflation is a 2%/year, but my wages increase at .6%/year while healthcare and education costs increase at 7%/year, at the same time I'd like to stimulate the economy by purchasing commodities and services, but my decreasing wealth prevents me from buying less and less, how long does it take for me to be removed from the economy as a productive worker and become a strain on everyone else?
Meanwhile my boss has been given a bonus worth more than I'll make in my lifetime, but instead of consuming more commodities and services than I could in my lifetime within the year, he holds on to it by placing it in a Swiss bank account, where it is difficult to tax and creates no new jobs or wealth within my economy; furthermore, the money he does spend of that is to lobby for laws to be created that allow him to avoid regulations designed to protect the public from being exploited or from having its collective environmental rights from being abused.

-or-

My boss pays higher taxes, but because I've received better healthcare and education I'm a more productive worker who can buy more things, including the things that my boss sells, earning him substantial profits (just not as much as he previously made).
I'm able to consume enough to keep the economy flowing, while at the same time I can support my family on the income that I make preventing me from going into debt to pay for rent. This allows me to support the system and pay taxes of my own which helps the government do things like pay off its crippling $15 trillion debt.

Which of these two situations would you prefer?

I can play this "false analogy" game too. I've already refuted your household income statistic. Try again.

[The Richard Bastion Republic]

Why does it matter to you, if someone is richer?

Let's draw an analogy here.

Situation A: Boss hands you 100 dollar bonus, and gives the same to everyone else.

Situation B: Boss hands you 500 dollars, and everyone else one hundred thousand. (Assume it was all anonymous and you won't have social repercussions, you were chosen at random for the 500)

Which situation would you rather be in?

Well if everyone else having $100,000 made my $500 worth less than the $100 (which it would), then I would pick the former because I would have more actual wealth.

Now instead of a false analogy, let's try one closer to reality.

Inflation is a 2%/year, but my wages increase at .6%/year while healthcare and education costs increase at 7%/year, at the same time I'd like to stimulate the economy by purchasing commodities and services, but my decreasing wealth prevents me from buying less and less, how long does it take for me to be removed from the economy as a productive worker and become a strain on everyone else?
Meanwhile my boss has been given a bonus worth more than I'll make in my lifetime, but instead of consuming more commodities and services than I could in my lifetime within the year, he holds on to it by placing it in a Swiss bank account, where it is difficult to tax and creates no new jobs or wealth within my economy; furthermore, the money he does spend of that is to lobby for laws to be created that allow him to avoid regulations designed to protect the public from being exploited or from having its collective environmental rights from being abused.

-or-

My boss pays higher taxes, but because I've received better healthcare and education I'm a more productive worker who can buy more things, including the things that my boss sells, earning him substantial profits (just not as much as he previously made).
I'm able to consume enough to keep the economy flowing, while at the same time I can support my family on the income that I make preventing me from going into debt to pay for rent. This allows me to support the system and pay taxes of my own which helps the government do things like pay off its crippling $15 trillion debt.

Which of these two situations would you prefer?

Now, what exactly did you mean by the phrase that I highlighted?
Do you mean more affordable education and healthcare? In that case you are not a more productive worker, you are just having your boss pay for some of your living expenses so that you can still have left over money to buy the stuff you want. That may sound good to you, but your boss is probably going to lay off a lot of workers because he's paying a higher tax.

If by that you mean that an increases in taxes causes better healthcare, then you must live in a country with socialized health care. I see why education will make you more productive, but healthcare wouldn't matter in your young healthy years.

The higher tax on the bosses is a good way to increase unemployment.

[New Bazlantis]

Deleted

[No Water No Moon]

I don't think anybody is arguing a return to Paleolithic hunter-gathering egalitarian society, just a decrease in wealth disparity.
I think most rational people in the free market accept that there is going to be inequality, which isn't necessarily a bad thing; however, inequality to the point the market is not only inefficient, but also too unbalanced to permit competition is indeed a bad thing for everyone involved.

Why does it matter to you, if someone is richer?

Let's draw an analogy here.

Situation A: Boss hands you 100 dollar bonus, and gives the same to everyone else.

Situation B: Boss hands you 500 dollars, and everyone else one hundred thousand. (Assume it was all anonymous and you won't have social repercussions, you were chosen at random for the 500)

Which situation would you rather be in?

The first, obviously - and anyone who says they'd rather be in the second situation clearly doesn't understand how even the most basic economic models work.

[No Water No Moon]

I still don't believe Reaganomics were bad. All of basically said it sucked, and you didn't even prove why.

Choosing to ignore posts you don't like, doesn't mean they didn't happen.