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.


Seems your degree was wasted..Would you like fries with that????  

Snicker

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

Take a look at the graphs at the end btw...

Supply Tax Cuts and the Truth About
the Reagan Economic Record
by William A. Niskanen and Stephen Moore 

William A. Niskanen is chairman and Stephen Moore is director of
fiscal policy studies at the Cato Institute.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Executive Summary

Bob Dole's proposal for a 15 percent income tax cut has reignited the
long-standing debate about the economic impact of Reaganomics in the
1980s. This study assesses the Reagan supply-side policies by
comparing the nation's economic performance in the Reagan years
(1981-89) with its performance in the immediately preceding
Ford-Carter years (1974-81) and in the Bush-Clinton years that
followed (1989-95). 

On 8 of the 10 key economic variables examined, the American economy
performed better during the Reagan years than during the pre- and
post-Reagan years.

Real economic growth averaged 3.2 percent during the Reagan years
versus 2.8 percent during the Ford-Carter years and 2.1 percent during
the Bush-Clinton years. 
Real median family income grew by $4,000 during the Reagan period
after experiencing no growth in the pre-Reagan years; it experienced a
loss of almost $1,500 in the post-Reagan years. 
Interest rates, inflation, and unemployment fell faster under Reagan
than they did immediately before or after his presidency. 
The only economic variable that was worse in the Reagan period than in
both the pre- and post-Reagan years was the savings rate, which fell
rapidly in the 1980s. The productivity rate was higher in the
pre-Reagan years but much lower in the post-Reagan years. 
This study also exposes 12 fables of Reaganomics, such as that the
rich got richer and the poor got poorer, the Reagan tax cuts caused
the deficit to explode, and Bill Clinton's economic record has been
better than Reagan's.

Introduction

Bob Dole's call for a 15 percent across-the-board income tax cut has
provoked yet another fierce debate about the Reagan economic record.
Because Dole's tax plan is at least partly modeled after Reagan's tax
cuts of 1981, the Reagan record has recently been put squarely back on
trial. [1]

Judging from the partisan political discourse in Washington, there is
virtually no agreement about what that record tells us. Republicans
describe the 1980s as an era of prosperity--a decade when America
reasserted its economic and military might. Democrats, on the other
hand, portray the Reagan presidency as a period of record budget
deficits, economic decline, and widening income gaps between rich and
poor. Senator Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) recently described the 1980s as a
decade of "discredited supply side economics." President Clinton
recently warned that, like the Reagan tax cuts, the Dole tax cut would
"balloon the deficit, raise interest rates, and weaken the economy."
[2]

Often partisanship and ideology prevent a dispassionate assessment of
the Reagan years. The political left has adopted the convention of
arguing that the beneficial economic changes in the 1980s--the
conquering of inflation, the surge in employment, and the sustained
economic expansion--had little to do with Reagan's policies, whereas
any negative change--the explosion in the budget deficit, the savings
and loan crisis, and so forth--was a direct consequence of the failed
theology of Reaganomics. [3] Meanwhile, the right argues that only the
triumphs of Reagan's record deserve much attention, and that any
blemishes--again the big budget deficits--were inconsequential or the
fault of the Democrats in Congress. [4]

This study attempts to cut through the fog created by this partisan
dialogue and spotlight the real economic record of the 1980s--sticking
to "just the facts." All the figures provided in this study come from
standard statistical sources: Bureau of the Census, the Economic
Report of the President, and Historical Tables, Budget of the U.S.
Government. To judge how well the economy performed under Reagan's
policies, we compare the economic performance of the Reagan years
(1981-89) with that of the immediate pre-Reagan years (1974-81) and
the post-Reagan years (1989-95). 

In the last part of the study we provide some interpretation of these
economic and fiscal data and sort out fact from fable regarding the
1980s. We also examine the implications of the economic data as they
relate to the advisability of an income tax rate cut in 1997. 

The Era of Reaganomics

In 1981 Ronald Reagan entered the White House and immediately
implemented a dramatic new economic policy agenda for the country that
was dubbed "Reaganomics." [5]Reaganomics consisted of four key
elements to reverse the high-inflation, slow-growth economic record of
the 1970s: (1) a restrictive monetary policy designed to stabilize the
value of the dollar and end runaway inflation; (2) a 25 percent
across-the-board tax cut enacted (The Economic Recovery Tax Act of
1981) designed to spur savings, investment, work, and economic
efficiency; (3) a promise to balance the budget through domestic
spending restraint; and (4) an agenda to roll back government
regulation. 

Clearly, some of those goals were accomplished; others were not. The
most objective way to assess whether the policies were a success is to
examine the economic evidence for the Reagan years once the policies
were implemented. 

A Model for Assessing the Reagan Record

There is some disagreement about what date should be used to measure
the economic starting point of the Reagan era. A common ploy of
Reagan's critics is to measure the economy's performance from 1979 to
1989 and falsely describe the record over this period as "the Reagan
years." For example, in 1991 the Democrats on the Joint Economic
Committee of Congress released a report entitled "Falling Behind: The
Growing Income Gap in America," which purportedly proves that the
victims of Reaganomics were the least affluent Americans. The report
concluded that "families in the lowest forty percent of the income
distribution actually had lower real incomes on average in 1989 than
they did in 1979." Upon closer inspection, however, what the income
data really show is that when Jimmy Carter's economic policies were in
effect, family incomes plummeted by 9 percent, but that after Reagan's
economic policies took effect (1982-89), family incomes rose by 11
percent. In the Joint Economic Committee report, Reaganomics is blamed
for the poor performance of the economy under Carter. Ronald Reagan
had many seemingly magical qualities, but his policies were never able
to influence the economic direction of the nation at least two years
before they took effect. Some of Reagan's supporters, on the other
hand, define the Reagan years as only the seven years of economic
expansion, 1983-89, while conveniently omitting the recession years of
1981 and 1982. [6] 

There are two defensible methods of measuring the performance of the
economy on Reagan's watch. One method is to examine the economic
record from the month Reagan formally took office, January 1981,
through the month he left the White House, January 1989. 

An alternative approach is to allow a one-year lag for the policy
changes to be enacted and take effect on the economy. Reagan's tax
cuts were not even passed by Congress until midsummer of 1981 and did
not begin to take effect until October 1, 1981. His first budget
proposal was for fiscal year 1982. Hence, if we define the beginning
of the Reagan years as the first full year when the policies were in
effect, the eight years in which Reagan's policies were in effect were
1982-89. This latter approach seems to provide a more accurate gauge
of the economy's reaction to the change in policies Reagan enacted in
1981, and for this reason we adopt this as the standard for analysis
in this study--that is, we measure the economic effects of Reagan
policies beginning with January 1982 and using 1981 as the base year
of comparison. (This still picks up the deep recession of the early
1980s.) For those who are unsatisfied with this method of measuring
the Reagan record, in Table 1 we present the data both ways: first,
from the month Reagan entered office through the month he left office,
and second, with a one-year lag to adjust for the timing of the policy
changes. The results do not differ substantially regardless of which
dates are used. 

Just as controversial is the issue of when the Reagan era ended.
Again, Reagan's political foes often describe the entire 12 years of
the Reagan and Bush administrations as the "Reagan years." [7]At first
blush this seems logical: two Republican administrations in succession
would normally suggest a continuation of policy from one to the other.
Yet the real and dramatic shift in economic policy in Washington
occurred not in 1993, with the start of the Clinton administration,
but rather in 1990, with George Bush's repudiation of his "no new
taxes" pledge that led to both the enactment of a large
anti-supply-side tax increase and a flurry of legislation--from the
Clean Air Act amendments, to the Civil Rights Act of 1991, to the
Americans with Disabilities Act--that began the reregulation of
America in the 1990s. [8] Indeed, the Clinton economic program in most
respects has been closest to that of George Bush, particularly with
respect to the direction of fiscal policy. 

In sum, we delineate two years as marking turning points in economic
policy in the United States: 1981 and 1990. Because these two years
represent dramatic policy shifts, they provide a convenient and unique
laboratory-like testing ground for assessing the success or failure of
Reaganomics. In this study we compare the economic performance in the
pre-Reagan years (1974-81), the Reagan years (1981-89), and the
post-Reagan years (1989-95). [9]

For fiscal variables examined at the end of this report, there is much
less controversy over the start and the end of the Reagan presidency.
Reagan's first budget was for fiscal 1982 (not 1981), and his last
budget was for fiscal 1989. [10]

The Real Reagan Economic Record

Table 1 contrasts side by side the economy's performance for the three
periods of analysis--1974-81, 1981-89, and 1989-95--for 10 key
variables. We measure the change in each economic variable from the
start of the period through the end and present the annualized change.
[11] On 8 of the 10 key variables, the Reagan record unambiguously
outperformed the records of the pre- and post-Reagan years. The two
exceptions were the savings rate, which declined in the Reagan years
at a faster rate than in the pre- and post-Reagan years, and
productivity, which grew faster in the pre-Reagan years but slower in
the post-Reagan years. [12] The following is a summary for each of the
10 variables: 

Economic Growth. The average annual growth rate of real gross domestic
product (GDP) from 1981 to 1989 was 3.2 percent per year, compared
with 2.8 percent from 1974 to 1981 and 2.1 percent from 1989 to 1995.
The 3.2 percent growth rate for the Reagan years includes the
recession of the early 1980s, which was a side effect of reversing
Carter's high-inflation policies, and the seven expansion years,
1983-89. During the economic expansion alone, the economy grew by a
robust annual rate of 3.8 percent. By the end of the Reagan years, the
American economy was almost one-third larger than it was when they
began. [13] Figure 1 shows the economic growth rate by president since
World War II. That rate was higher in the 1980s than in the 1950s and
1970s but was substantially lower than the rapid economic growth rate
of more than 4 percent per year in the 1960s. The Kennedy income tax
rate cuts of 30 percent that were enacted in 1964 generated several
years of 5 percent annual real growth. 

Economic Growth per Working-Age Adult. When we adjust the economic
growth rates to take account of demographic changes, we find that the
expansion in the Reagan years looks even better and that the 1970s'
performance looks worse. GDP growth per adult aged 20-64 in the Reagan
years grew twice as rapidly, on average, as it did in the pre- and
post-Reagan years. 

Median Household Incomes. Real median household income rose by $4,000
in the Reagan years--from $37,868 in 1981 to $42,049 in 1989, as shown
in Figure 2. This improvement was a stark reversal of the income
trends in the late 1970s and the 1990s: median family income was
unchanged in the eight pre-Reagan years, and incomes have fallen by
$1,438 in the anti-supply-side 1990s, following the 1990 and 1993 tax
hikes. [14] Most of the declines in take-home pay occurred on George
Bush's watch. Under Bill Clinton's tenure, there has been zero income
growth in median household income. 

Employment. From 1981 through 1989 the U.S. economy produced 17
million new jobs, or roughly 2 million new jobs each year. Contrary to
the Clinton administration's claims of vast job gains in the 1990s,
the United States has averaged only 1.3 million new jobs per year in
the post-Reagan years. The labor force United States has averaged only
1.3 million new jobs expanded by 1.7 percent per year between 1981 and
1989, but by just 1.2 percent per year between 1990 and 1995. [15] 

Hours Worked. Table 1 confirms that hours worked per adult aged 20-64
grew much faster in the 1980s than in the pre -or post-Reagan years. 

Unemployment Rate. When Reagan took office in 1981, the unemployment
rate was 7.6 percent. In the recession of 1981-82, that rate peaked at
9.7 percent, but it fell continuously for the next seven years. When
Reagan left office, the unemployment rate was 5.5 percent. This
reduction in joblessness was a clear triumph of the Reagan program.
Figure 3 shows that in the pre-Reagan years, the unemployment rate
trended upward; in the Reagan years, the unemployment rate trended
downward; and in the post-Reagan years, the unemployment rate has
fluctuated up and down but today remains virtually unchanged from the
1989 rate. 

Productivity. For real wages to rise, productivity must rise. Over the
past 30 years there has been a secular downward trend in U.S.
productivity growth. Under Reagan, productivity grew at a 1.5 percent
annual rate, as shown in Figure 4. This was lower than in the 1950s,
1960s, and 1970s but much higher than in the post-Reagan years. Under
Clinton, productivity has increased at an annual rate of just 0.3
percent per year--the worst presidential performance since that of
Herbert Hoover. 

Inflation. The central economic evil that Ronald Reagan inherited in
1981 from Jimmy Carter was three years of double-digit inflation. In
1980 the consumer price index (CPI) rose to 13.5 percent. By Reagan's
second year in office, the inflation rate fell by more than half to
6.2 percent. In 1988, Reagan's last year in office, the CPI had fallen
to 4.1 percent. Figure 5 shows the inflation and interest rate trend. 

Interest Rates. In 1980 the interest rate on a 30-year mortgage was 15
percent; this rate rose to its all-time peak of 18.9 percent in 1981.
The prime rate steadily fell over the subsequent six years to a low of
8.2 percent in 1987 as the inflationary expectation component of
interest rates fell sharply. The prime rate hit its 20-year low in
1993 at 6.0 percent. The Treasury Bill rate also fell dramatically in
the 1980s--from 14 percent in 1981 to 7 percent in 1988. In the 1990s,
interest rates have continued to migrate gradually downward, as shown
in Figure 5. 

Savings. The savings rate did not rise in the 1980s, as supply-side
advocates had predicted. In fact, in the 1980s the personal savings
rate fell from 8 percent to 6.5 percent. [16]In the 1990s the average
savings rate has fallen even further to an average of 4.9 percent
[17]--although the rate of decline has slowed. 
The decline in the personal savings rate in the 1980s was
disappointing, but two factors mitigate the implications of these
statistics. First, the drop in the savings rate was partly a natural
response to demographic changes in America--namely, the baby boomers
entering their peak spending years. Second, the savings rate data fail
to account for real gains in wealth, which clearly are an important
form of savings. The real value of capital assets and property doubled
from 1980 to 1990. The Dow Jones Industrial Average nearly tripled
from a low of 884 in 1982 to 2,509 in 1989. These increases in the
value of stocks, bonds, homes, businesses, and so forth added to
Americans' balance sheets hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth
that are not accounted for in the savings rate statistics. [18]


"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