Re: Boycott CBS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 17:08:34 GMT, William Cook
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Gunner wrote:
>> On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 16:38:35 GMT, William Cook
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>>No, he didn't.  The most vibrant economic period in our 
>>>recent history came under your good pal Bill Clinton, 
>>>who presided over 8 uninterrupted years of economic 
>>>growth, saw unemployment fall to under 5% for the first 
>>>time in 40 years, whose administration eliminated the 
>>>federal budget deficit for the first time in over 30 
>>>years, who saw interest rates fall continually. 
>>>Reagan, by contrast, brought on the sharpest recession 
>>>in the post war period, although it may well have been 
>>>a corrective to the stagflation of the late 1970s.
>> 
>> 
>> Economics is not your strong suite, is it?
>
>Yes, actually, it is.  BA in economics, 1975; graduate 
>studies in economics, 1979-1982.
>
>> Clinton rode 7 yrs of the
>> Reagon boom,
>
>WHAT "Reagan boom", you fucking moron?  Do you not 
>remember the recession of 1990-91, the collapse of the 
>aerospace industry, the increasing umemployment rate?
>
>    The U.S. national unemployment rate was 5.3 percent
>    of all workers in April 1990 and 6.7 percent in
>    October 1991.
>
>What the fuck is the matter with you (other than your 
>partisan stupidity)?
>
>> only fucking the pooch himself and causing the current
>> recession which we are finally climbing out of.
>
>So did Bush senior "cause" the recession out of which 
>Clinton climbed?
>
>> 
>> Do your research a bit better Brainerd.
>
>Do ANY research at all, you gun-crazed fuck.

http://russp.org/taxcuts.html
US Presidents are commonly thought to influence the economy only
during, or shortly after, their actual terms in office. Not true.
Entitlement programs instituted by FDR and LBJ still profoundly affect
our economy today. More importantly, Ronald Reagan's historic tax cuts
of 1981 are still largely in effect and are still pumping huge amounts
of additional money into the economy. However, Bill Clinton and Al
Gore got most of the credit during their administration for the
continuing economic boom unleashed by the Reagan tax cuts. That
undeserved credit may have gotten Clinton re-elected and saved him
from being removed from office. It almost got Gore elected too.

When Reagan took office in 1981, the US economy was in shambles. We
have difficulty remembering how bad the economy was under Carter, but
it was described in terms of the "misery index," and the word
"stagflation" was coined to refer to the double-whammy of economic
stagnation combined with runaway inflation. The automotive industry
was on the verge of collapse under the pressure from Japanese
competition and an oil crisis. The American way of life itself seemed
to be in serious jeapordy. It wasn't the Great Depression, but it was
as close as we've come to it since.

The top tax rate was 70% when Reagan took office. He got it cut in
half to 35%. At the same time, he eliminated many tax shelters that
the rich routinely relied on to avoid paying taxes altogether, forcing
them to invest in the free market and actually pay taxes. Shortly
after the tax cuts were enacted, the economy took off for an
unprecedented period of peacetime growth. The misery index plummeted
as unemployment fell, inflation slowed, and interest rates dropped,
leading to a seven-year boom that the liberal media cynically dubbed
"the decade of greed."

Eight years later George Bush swept into office on Reagan's coattails
and a pledge of "no new taxes." Although he tried to keep his pledge,
Bush ultimately succumbed to unrelenting pressure by the
Democratically controlled Congress to increase taxes. Not
surprisingly, the economy went into a mild recession, though nothing
like the recession of a decade earlier. Unemployment was well below
what it had been under Carter, and inflation was completely under
control. Nevertheless, the liberal media shamelessly dubbed it the
"worst economic period of the last fifty years."

The media hype succeeded at getting their man, Bill Clinton, elected.
Although barely reported, the Bush recession had actually ended before
Clinton even took office, with a vibrant 3.9% annual growth rate in
the last quarter of Bush's administration. In other words, the second
phase of the great Reagan economic boom had already begun before
Clinton even moved to Washington. But of course that didn't stop the
liberal media from giving Clinton credit for it and dubbing it the
"decade of prosperity."

How can we be sure the economic boom presided over by Clinton was
actually due to Reagan? It's simple. Even though Clinton increased tax
rates, the top rate after his tax hikes was still less than 40%, down
a full 30% from the 70% rate before Reagan's tax cuts. In terms of the
money left after taxes, that's a huge jump from (100-70=) 30% to
(100-40=) 60% -- a doubling of the amount of money that continues,
year after year, to go into the private economy rather than the
federal budget. It hardly takes an economist to understand the huge
effect on economic growth of doubling after-tax income.

Clinton also got credit for eliminating the federal deficit, of
course. It is no coincidence, however, that the deficit didn't start
coming down until the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994. As
for the touted "Reagan deficits," the indisputable fact is that
revenues grew tremendously during Reagan's two terms -- but spending
by the Democratically controlled Congress grew even faster, at an
astronomical rate. And contrary to the liberal media spin, the lion's
share of the growth of the federal budget under Reagan was not on
defense, but rather on social entitlement programs such as social
security and Medicare.

Contrary to Democratic demogoguery about "tax cuts for the rich,"
incidentally, the rich actually paid higher taxes after Reagan's tax
cuts. How could that be? Simple. Along with cutting tax rates, Reagan
also eliminated many tax shelters and loopholes. Before Reagan, the
rich avoided paying taxes by investing in windmills and other
boondoggles blessed by the federal government (the "targeted" tax cuts
that Al Gore wanted to reinstate). After Reagan, the rich shifted
their investments to the free market, greatly stimulating the private
economy and causing the information technology boom.

There's more to the story, of course, but everything else is really
secondary. In fairness, Clinton actually did a few things himself to
help the economy, such as opening up free trade and keeping the
Federal Reserve Board under competent leadership. On the other hand,
if Clinton had not been restrained by the Republicans, who took
control of Congress in the middle of his first term, he would have
raised taxes even more than he did, and his wife would have
nationalized the health care industry.

When Clinton was impeached, his party argued that he should be given a
pass because he was doing a good job managing the economy. Without the
huge economic boost from Reagan's tax cuts, Clinton might well have
been removed from office, or might have failed to win re-election.
Gore would have suffered a humiliating defeat in the election to
succeed him, or might have failed to even win the nomination. But
don't hold your breath waiting for the liberal media to start
reporting the truth. If America wants the Reagan economic boom to
continue, they need to figure out for themselves what caused it in the
first place. --8/01

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-261.html


http://www.shalomjerusalem.com/politics/politics3.htm
It's Reagan's Economy, Stupid

The roots of America's new prosperity--and how to sustain it
By James K. Glassman
James K. Glassman is the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fellow at the
American Enterprise Institute. He writes two weekly columns for The
Washington Post on finance, economics and politics. He also hosts
Capital Gang Sunday on CNN and TechnoPolitics on PBS. 

Americans are living in an economic golden age. For the first time in
our history, 15 years have passed with only a single shallow
recession. The gross domestic product, that grand measure of all our
goods and services, is clipping along at 3 percent annually.
Unemployment is 4.9 percent. Inflation is 2.2 percent--and probably
closer to 1 percent if a more accurate gauge were used than the
Consumer Price Index. 

While these figures are impressive, even more remarkable is the
stability that has descended on the economy. Growth, inflation,
interest rates have reached a kind of stasis--a glorious plateau. This
lack of volatility has encouraged investors to commit more of their
money to long-term investments in the stock of U.S. corporations, and
partly as a result, since the recession of 1982, the Dow Jones
industrial average has risen from 777 to over 8000-- an unprecedented
advance. At the same time, the total number of Americans employed has
increased by 30 million, or one-third. 

Who gets the credit for this golden age? 

First and foremost, individual Americans and the companies they create
and work for. 

In the past 15 years, we've made things (and provided services)
better, cheaper and faster--through risk taking, talent, better
education and training, hard work and good management. 

But what about government? Is there something government has done to
encourage the private sector to boom? And, if so, whose government? 

The answer, it seems to me, couldn't be clearer. The golden age began
under Ronald Reagan, and policies set during his administration have
sustained it. George Bush and Bill Clinton deserve credit mainly for
not tampering excessively with the changes Reagan wrought. And then
there's the Republican Congress. But for the GOP victory in 1994,
Clinton almost certainly would have ended the game prematurely. (In
this assessment of the role of Republican majorities on Capitol Hill,
the market seems to concur. For the first two years of the Clinton
administration, with a Democratic Congress, the market rose 21
percent, or about 10 percent annually. Since November 1994, the market
is up 98 percent, or about 30 percent every 12 months.) 

Tax cuts, inflation, spending and regulation 

The causes of economic growth remain a mystery, but the barriers to
growth are clear: high tax rates, high inflation, high government
spending and excessive regulation. Reagan's goals, at the start of his
administration in 1981, were to reduce all four, writes William
Niskanen, a member of his Council of Economic Advisors. 

The reason these conditions thwart growth is that they put heavy
burdens on businesses and prospective entrepreneurs, restricting their
flexibility and their ability to raise capital, hire good workers and
plan for the future. The four conditions do something else. They deter
experimentation, which is the wellspring of growth--an issue I'll get
to a little later. 

Reagan was successful on taxes and (with the help of Paul Volcker, who
was appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve Board by President
Carter in 1979) on inflation. He reallocated government spending to
defense, but didn't reduce it overall. In 1980, spending on the
military and on domestic discretionary programs was roughly equal. By
1990, spending on the military was 50 percent greater. Today, domestic
spending exceeds military. 

But, to the disappointment of those who wanted to see a smaller
government, total federal outlays as a percentage of GDP rose from
22.3 percent in 1980 to a post-World War II record of 24.4 percent in
1983 before settling back to 22.1 percent in the last year of Reagan's
term. 

The regulatory record was mixed, and perhaps the single most important
accomplishment in this area was the work of a judge: the breakup of
AT&T, which led to at least a partial lifting of the restrictions on
what communications companies can do. In the July issue of Wired
magazine, Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden argue that what they call
"The Long Boom" began with two events that occurred at roughly the
time Reagan took office: "One is the introduction of personal
computers. The other is the breakup of the Bell System." Both led to
wider, cheaper dispersion of information, which, in turn, has meant
that individuals and businesses can work more efficiently. 

On both spending restraint and regulation, the new Republican Congress
has picked up the ball for Reagan. Federal outlays have now fallen to
20.8 percent of GDP; subsidies are, at last, being phased out in
farming; and free-market competition is the norm in transportation and
telecommunications--with gas and electric utilities next on the
agenda. 

Meanwhile, another of Reagan's economic victories was the firing of
striking air-traffic controllers just seven months into his
presidency--a watershed in the history of organized labor.
Subsequently, the percentage of union members in the work force fell
by one-fourth, from 20 percent to 15 percent. 

Finally, in a surprising failure that was remedied in great measure by
Bush and Clinton, Reagan "added more trade barriers than any
administration since Hoover," as Niskanen puts it. Still, Reagan's
successful defense policy, which led to the demise of the Soviet
empire and the spread of democracy and capitalism throughout Latin
America, helped create vast new markets for American goods. His tax
policies were mimicked by Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and much
of the rest of Europe and Asia. It's an amazing record, considering
that throughout his term the Democrats held majorities of from 51 to
101 seats in the House, where revenue and spending bills originate. 

Some critics, including Niskanen, cite large deficits as another
failure of Reagan's, but I disagree. As Reagan told David Stockman,
his budget director, in 1981: "I did not come here to balance the
budget--not at the expense of my tax-cutting program and defense
program. If we can't do it in 1984, we'll have to do it later." 

Reagan took a courageous position, pushing tax cuts and national
security while ignoring deficits in the short term--and his prediction
about the budget will turn out to be right. We'll end fiscal 1997 with
a deficit of only $34 billion, the lowest since 1974, and, next year,
I'll lay even money that we'll have a surplus. The zero deficit, some
17 years after Reagan took office, is his legacy as well. Let me
explain . . . 

The myth of the Reagan deficits 

The Reagan deficits have been widely misunderstood. They were created
not by a shortfall in revenues, but by a surfeit of spending. Roughly
half the spending increase came from defense, which rose from 5.1
percent of GDP in 1980 to a peak of 6.3 percent in 1987. In my
opinion, that was money well spent. 

But revisionists have attacked Reagan mainly on the revenue side, and
they're dead wrong. Reagan and his supporters in Congress didn't cut
tax revenues in 1981 and 1986. He cut tax rates. The view of his
advisers was that rate cuts would generate more economic activity
because, at the margin, Americans would have more incentive to work
and invest. And that's just what happened. 

It's not a difficult concept. Before Reagan took office, the top rate
on "unearned" (that is, investment) income was 70 percent; the top
rate on earned income was 50 percent; on capital gains, 35 percent.
All of these rates fell to 28 percent in the 1980s. In addition,
Reagan took the important step of indexing tax brackets so that
Americans no longer encountered higher rates simply because of
inflation. 

Consider a woman, pre-Reagan, who is offered the chance to work longer
hours and earn an extra $10,000. That sounds tempting-- until she
realizes that the U.S. Treasury will take $5,000 of that additional
income in taxes. She decides the extra work is not worth the $5,000
she'll keep, so she chooses leisure. 

But, under Reagan, the bite at the margin drops to 28 percent, so
she'll keep $7,200. The differences in marginal rates are even more
dramatic for interest and dividend income. Instead of keeping just
$3,000 out of every additional $10,000 in "unearned income," an
investor in the top bracket keeps the same $7,200. 

By cutting marginal rates in this way, Reagan and his advisers
believed they could boost economic growth, and they were right.
Between 1981 and 1989, GDP advanced at a 3.1 percent annual clip--
including the recession year of 1982--and 18 million net jobs were
created as new businesses were launched. The 1980s became "the great
heyday of the venture capital industry," wrote Robert Bartley,
editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal in his book on the
Reagan boom, The Seven Fat Years. After the 1982 recession--the result
of action by Volcker, with Reagan's encouragement, to stop virulent
inflation created in the Carter years--the recovery would last nearly
eight years, second in the modern era only to the 1961D1969 boom
during the Vietnam War (which lasted an extra year). But net fixed
investment--a good measure of how much new capital was pouring into
the economy--grew at a record 3.5 percent annually. 

It's tax cuts, stupid 

But back to the tax cuts. Alan Reynolds, who was present at the
creation and now directs economic research at the Hudson Institute,
makes the interesting point that, "since revenues are constant at 19
percent of GDP, the only way for an administration to raise more money
is to increase GDP." Why are revenues constant--or roughly so--at 19
percent? "That's all you can collect," he says. "The American public
won't put up with anything higher." 

Indeed, between 1958 and 1980 tax revenues averaged 18.5 percent of
GDP annually, ranging from a low of 17.4 percent to a high of 20.2
percent. During the Reagan years (1981D89), revenues averaged 18.9
percent of GDP--actually, higher than in the preceding three
decades--with a low of 18.0 percent and a high of 20.2 percent.
They've stayed in that range since. 

So the key was constructing a tax system (and making other policy
changes) that would make government less obtrusive and encourage
growth. That policy worked, without a doubt. The proof is in the tax
revenues that were generated. In 1980, Jimmy Carter's last year as
president, the Treasury raised $517 billion; in 1989, at the end of
Reagan's term, it raised $991 billion. That's a 92 percent increase
during a period when consumer prices rose just 46 percent. 

It's true that most of the tax rate cuts accrued to higher-income
Americans--but, because those cuts encouraged them to work and invest
more, these higher earners became the source of much of the tax
revenue growth. "In effect," wrote James D. Gwartney of Florida State
University in the Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics, "lower rates
soaked the rich." 

There were, however, deficits. Big ones. But, despite dire warnings,
those deficits did not cause inflation to accelerate, nor did they
boost interest rates. Doomsayers like Lester Thurow-- who in 1985
wrote, "American were enjoying the thrill of a cyclical recovery in
1984, but ahead lie more sickening bouts with inflation and
unemployment"--were dead wrong. 

While consumer prices doubled in the 1970s, they rose by less than
half in the 1980s. Rates on 30-year Treasury bonds were 12 percent
when Reagan took office and less than 9 percent when he left. One big
reason that inflation and rates were relatively low was that the
supply-side revolution actually did increase supply. Inflation is too
much money chasing too few goods; Volcker (and later Alan Greenspan)
took care of the money part, and the tax cuts and deregulation
encouraged the production of goods. 

The Reagan legacy 

The Reagan Boom continues today. In July, Investor's Business Daily
commissioned a survey of 200 CEOs and chief financial officers from
the nation's largest publicly traded corporations. They were asked,
"What triggered recent economic growth?" 

Leading the list was productivity, followed by Federal Reserve
monetary policies, information technology, restructuring and
globalization. Following these, in sixth place, came "Reagan policies"
(which, I'd argue, ignited four of the preceding factors as well).
They were credited by 26 percent of the executives. Farther down the
list, at 14 percent, were "Bush policies," and nearly at the bottom,
at 8 percent, "Clinton policies." 

At a press conference on August 6 touting what he considered his own
economic achievements, Clinton could not resist taking a swipe at
Reagan. "In 1993," he said, "we abandoned supply-side trickle- down
economics." 

Oh, really? 

In fact, while Clinton (and, alas, Bush) chipped away at Reagan's
economic edifice, it still stands. It's performed as advertised. Tax
rates are higher now than they were under Reagan, and that's a
shame--but they are still far below the levels that existed before he
took office. The top rate on ordinary income is 39.6 percent instead
of 70 percent (and 50 percent for earned income). The capital gains
rate held steady at 28 percent, and, thanks to the Republican
Congress, will be lowered next year to 20 percent. 

Just as important, the principle that government usually does more
harm than good to the economy is well entrenched. While spending has
not fallen, it's risen at a relatively moderate pace. The result, as
Reagan predicted, is an imminently balanced budget. 

People, things and recipes 

It's a mistake, however, to give too much credit to any politician.
Economic growth is strictly a private-sector phenomenon. Government
can hurt a lot but help not much. 

In a famous formulation, Paul M. Romer, a Stanford economist (whose
father, by the way, is Democratic National Committee General Chairman
and Colorado Gov. Roy Romer), wrote, "Economic growth occurs whenever
people take resources and rearrange them in ways that are more
valuable." He says that three things show up in every economy: people,
things and recipes (or arrangements). For example, "we used to use
iron oxide to make cave paintings, and now we put it on floppy disks.
The point here is, the raw material we have to work with has been the
same for all of human history . . . So when you think about growth,
the only place it can come from is finding better recipes for
rearranging the amount of stuff we have." 

The function of government in this growth equation is to help these
rearrangements occur more quickly and more often by liberating people
to pursue their imaginations. One way to do that is by keeping tax
rates low--that is, minimizing the penalties applied to the rewards of
finding better recipes. As Romer puts it, "If the government
confiscated most of the oil from major discoveries and gave it to
consumers, oil companies would do much less exploration." 

Some Americans worry that, if we let government stand aside and let
the market operate, unknown things will happen. That's true, and, as
far as I'm concerned an unknown future, as long as it's created by the
intelligence and imagination of free people, is the good part of the
economic story. A certain faith is required, and Ronald Reagan had it.

Lawrence Kudlow, a former Reagan budget official who is now chief
economist for American Skandia, the insurance firm, noted last April
that the Dow Jones industrial average was 777 in 1982, and, at the
time, "not a living soul would have believed it would be 6500 in
1997." (Later, of course, the Dow would pass 8000.) 

Not a living soul would have believed that a high-technology
revolution would account for 40 percent of the annual increase in GDP
or that a company called Intel, started by a Hungarian immigrant,
would have a market value of $156 billion--20 percent more than
General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and U.S. Steel combined. Or that a
place called Silicon Valley (along with its outposts in Washington
state and Oregon) would be more vital to the economy than Detroit or
New York. 

And more vital, for that matter, than Washington, D.C.--which may be
the most important development of the Reagan Boom. The declining
relevance of government to our lives is something for which Reagan
devoutly wished -- and brilliantly accomplished. 

"The British attitude is to treat society like a game preserve where a
certain percentage of the 'antelope' are expected to be eaten by the
"lions".
Christopher Morton