The Reagan Legacy

Others have responded to the the comments made, but I want to point out a few details.Loudmouth writes:

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3. Increased the number of jobs in America.

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Only as a raw number. From WW II to Clinton, there were five Democratic presidents and five Republican ones. Every Democratic president has turned in better job creation numbers than every Republican. Even Carter. In fact, Carter's numbers are #2 being beaten only by Lyndon Johnson according to 1994 numbers (I don't have the final numbers for Clinton's entire term.) And don't forget that Reagan's numbers are inflated due to the number of public-sector jobs he created. Clinton cut more public-sector jobs than Reagan created and still he beat Reagan's numbers.Yes, Reagan created jobs, but fewer than his predecessor and fewer than any other Democrat of the modem presidency.

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Supply side or not, he did vastly improve the way of life for most middle class Americans.

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Not compared to the 70s. Despite the economic collapse of the Nixon years, the economic output of the 70s beat that of the 80s. The economic stratification of the country increased in the 80s, reversing a long standing trend started in the 60s.

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As to ending the Cold War, Reagan does deserve some credit.

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In some sense, yes, in that he finished what JFK started. But he did it in part by scaring the hell out the entire world. His rhetoric convinced many in the USSR that he really was going to push the button.Throw in Iran-Contra and you're left with the impression that he was a traitor.And that doesn't even bring in his devastation of the care of the mentally ill, throwing many who needed hospitalization onto the streets where they could not survive.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

custard responds to me:

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1- your definition of 'modern presidency.' From what date does this era begin? I want to know the parameters we are discussing.

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The end of WWII:Truman
Eisenhower
JFK
Johnson
Nixon
Ford
Carter
Reagan
Bush
ClintonFive Democrats. Five Republicans. It represents the shift out of the Industrial Revolution, through the wartime, and into the modern economy of automation and suburbanization.

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Throw in Iran-Contra and you're left with the impression that he was a traitor.

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Well maybe you, Michael Moore, and Al Franken might, but I certainly wouldn't.

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When Congress writes a law prohibiting the Executive from selling arms and fomenting war and the Executive breaks that law, isn't that treason? Isn't getting the US involved in an international conflict against the express consent of the Congress, who has sole power to declare war, a reasonable example of treason?

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You mean the bill sponsored by Patrick Moynahan (DEM NY) that required all individuals must be released from asylums who could not be demonstrated as a danger to themselves or others? That bill? The one for which Moynahan went on 60 minutes ten years later and took responsibility? The one Moynahan admitted was a good idea but had disastrous consequences?

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Yeah that was the President's fault.

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He signed it, didn't he?You seem to think I am a Democrat. I blame Clinton just as much for the passage of DOMA as the Congress. The support for DOMA was overwhelming.But let us not forget that only a single Republican voted against it. Not Jim Kolbe of Arizona nor Mark Foley of Florida who are gay, themselves. The only Republican who voted against it was Steve Gunderson of Wisconsin...who's gay. While the overwhelming majority of Democrats supported it, too, that doesn't let the Republicans off the hook.The Democrats may be bad, but the Republicans are worse.

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What else, the budget deficit? The ones the democratic congresses kept passing?

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Actually, that was Reagan's fault, too. Reagan was outspending Congress. If the Congress had simply rubberstamped Reagan's budgets, the debt would have been $30 billion more than it turned out to be.And let us not forget that for the first six years of Reagan's presidency, the Senate was controlled by the Republicans.With the head of the Senate Finance Committee being Bob Dole.If the budget deficit was really the fault of Tip O'Neil, why didn't Dole and Reagan shoot him down?

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In some sense, yes, in that he finished what JFK started. But he did it in part by scaring the hell out the entire world. His rhetoric convinced many in the USSR that he really was going to push the button.

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Because JFK didn't scare anyone during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

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Um, they were actually putting missiles in Cuba and claiming they weren't. You're quite right that JFK was threatening war. But it was not without provocation.Reagan, on the other hand, with his "Evil Empire" rhetoric, made many in the Soviet government think that he didn't really need an excuse. He would do it simply to prove that the US is tougher than the USSR.Sound like another Republican in the White House we know? Doesn't matter that there isn't any real threat...we'll claim there is, fire first, and then insist that we were "liberating" the populace.

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I don't remember Reagan pulling off is shoe and slamming it on the podium shouting 'we will crush you.'

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But you've got it backwards.If JFK was right to stand up to Kruschev and his ranting of "we will crush you" (of course, it isn't like he wasn't provoked given JFK's attempt to invade Cuba), then what do you think the appropriate response from the USSR should have been with Reagan's "Evil Empire" rhetoric?If we were worried about Kruschev thinking he could win a nuclear war given his penchant for acting like a maniac, why would they not be worried about Reagan doing the exact same thing? Didn't we learn anything from the Cuban Missile Crisis? Don't piss off the other side or they might just blink and we've got ourselves a war nobody can win.So why did Reagan go out of his way to deliberately antagonize the USSR?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

custard writes:

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Well it certainly seems you forgot about him budgeting nearly $3 billion for AIDS research between 1984 and 1989.

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And where did that money go?Why did the Surgeon General have to fight to send out a mass mailing to every household in the US in order to describe the impending threat and honestly talk about how it could be prevented?Just because money was budgeted doesn't mean it was doing any good.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

custard writes:

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AIDS wasn't diagnosed as AIDS until what, 1982?

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Because the Reagan administration refused to provide budget to investigate a burgeoning epidemic that showed up in 81. Why? Because it was happening in gay men.In November of 1982, the entire nation was gripped by the possibility that Tylenol might have been tampered with and only seven people died.By that time, nearly 500 people had died from AIDS and AIDS had been diagnosed in 1200. The CDC was begging for funds to investigate and had to bowdlerize their reports in order to avoid references to the fact that it was appearing in gay men.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

custard writes:[responding to holmes]

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In short, part of Reagan's legacy was ensuring that HIV became a worse threat to world health than it had to be.

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This is just an outlandish accusation that ignores the fact that AIDS was not solely a US issue

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Indeed. But the US could have held a leading role in teaching the world how to respond to the crisis. We blew it.One year, the World AIDS Conference was held in the US. Immigration policy, however, prevented people with HIV from entering the country and thus, many delegates could not attend. US policy, legacy of the Reagan administration, deliberately stood in the way of coordinating a concerted effort to respond to the problem.To this day, we have a problem providing HIV medication to poor countries because the US refuses to allow the patents to be dissolved on the medications so that they can be produced cheaply enough to be widely distributed.THAT is Reagan's legacy. Money is more important than people if the people aren't the right sort of people.

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If this is true, where do we get off singling RR out as the person responsible for the US's refusal to address AIDS in the early eighties they way we would have liked to have seen it addressed, now, in 2004?

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Because he was the one in power. The buck stops at the person in charge. Reagan was in charge. The buck stops with him. The fact that his subordinates didn't step up to the challenge doesn't let him off the hook. It was his responsibility to make sure they do step up.Oh, there were plenty of people that had their own parts to play in the piss poor response this country had. But they all pointed upward to the guy at the top. If Reagan had treated HIV the same way he treated Tylenol, there is no question that things would be different throughout the world.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

custard responds to me:

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When Congress writes a law prohibiting the Executive from selling arms and fomenting war and the Executive breaks that law, isn't that treason?

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Forgive my ignorance here, I'm not sure to which law you refer.

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(*blink!*)Did you not pay attention to the Iran-Contra hearings?The Boland amendments specifically prohibited the DoD, the CIA, or any other government agency from providing aid to the Contras.The Reagan administration used the NSC and then claimed that because the NSC wasn't explicitly mentioned in the Boland amendments, there was no violation.At the time, there was a trade and arms embargo going on with Iran. McFarlane and North were involved in deals to ship arms to Iran. That money was then to be used to fund the Contras.Ergo, Ronald Reagan violated both an act of Congress and the embargo with Iran.What is that if not treason?

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So in that regard, yes Reagan was responsible for deficit spending. But big deal? Why?

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Two reasons:

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1- It is not uncommon for the govt to engage in deficit spending to try to refuel the economy, so the concept of deficit spending is not an 'evil' in itself. It's been done time and time again when needed.

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This wasn't a simple question of "deficit spending." This was an absolute explosion of deficit spending. Reagan claimed that by cutting taxes, the government would get more revenues and the "tax cuts would pay for themselves."This was a complete crock. At the time he proposed trickle-down, no more than 12 members of the 18,000 member American Economics Association said that it had any chance of succeeding. And yet, Reagan managed to push it through.If it weren't for the interest on the Reagan/Bush debt...just the interest on just the Reagan/Bush debt...the budget would have been balanced in 1994.

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however, and most important, the deficit, as I posted, had been falling rapidly

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(*blink!*)You did not just say that, did you?The deficit was sky-rocketing! Reagan/Bush tripled the deficit! Two trillion dollars more in debt by the time they were through! GDP actually shrank during the 80s (2.6) compared to the 70s (2.8).

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and, as measured as a percentage of GDP, was almost down to the same level when Reagan left office, as it had been when Reagan took office.

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And you think that's a good thing?I'm reminded of the Mark Russell special during Reagan's re-election campaign commenting that when Reagan was first running, he was saying that unemployment was up to 7.5% so Carter ought to go. Now in 1984, he was saying unemployment was back down to 7.5%, so he should be kept on.

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So why did Reagan go out of his way to deliberately antagonize the USSR?

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Because America, the people who overwhelmingly voted him into office, twice, wanted him to?

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And just because people want it, that makes it a smart, intelligent, rational thing to do?Isn't a good leader someone who can stand up to the emotional mob and refuse to be forced into making a bad decision?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

custard responds to me:

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This wasn't a simple question of "deficit spending." This was an absolute explosion of deficit spending. Reagan claimed that by cutting taxes, the government would get more revenues and the "tax cuts would pay for themselves."

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Really? Says who? Certainly not the White House budget plan of 1981:

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Well, let's take a look at what people were saying about it:William Safire (debate with James Carville, Pacific University, Forest Grove, OR, 1995): Benjamin Friedman (Day of Reckoning, Vintage Books, New York, 1988, p. 128) Let's not forget Reagan's budget director, David Stockman (New Perspectives, "America Is Not Overspending; North America: The Big Engine That Couldn't," March 22, 1993): There you go. Even the budget director says that Reagan was saying that the tax cuts would pay for themselves.

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If it weren't for the interest on the Reagan/Bush debt

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(*blink!*)

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Who said anything about Bush? The topic is The Reagan Legacy.

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(*blink!*)You don't think that Bush was simply continuing in the grand tradition of Reagan? Is not the current Republican "cut taxes, raise revenue!" mantra a direct example of the Reagan legacy? Reagan was the one that came up with the nutty idea. Every other person who is supporting it is doing so because of Reagan.If my enactment a policy and handing the reins to you with you not changing it isn't the definition of a legacy, I don't know what is.

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The deficit was sky-rocketing! Reagan/Bush tripled the deficit!

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You keep mentioning Bush. Are you rolling in his administration with Reagan's? If so, that's not germain to this discussion.

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Are you seriously saying that the reason the deficit tripled is because of Bush alone? That the main thrust of Bush's economic plan wasn't the same as Reagan's?If I start a process, give you control, and you don't change it, do I get off the hook for its later consequences?

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Please show me on the graph of the deficit below exactly where the deficit was skyrocketing.

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You see the part where it goes up? That would be where. And it goes down only when taxes get raised.And notice that the deficit went down in the Carter administration.

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GDP actually shrank during the 80s (2.6) compared to the 70s (2.8).

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(*blink!*)

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Really? Well you are the math expert, but from the GDP data below I have a hard time understanding how a number that is getting larger is actually shrinking.

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Are you incapable of reading for context?Take a look at your numbers and take a look at mine. Was I referring to raw values? Obviously not. Despite the fact that I did not explicitly state it, I was obviously referring to the rate of GDP growth...which was higher in the 70s than in the 80s.

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Ohhhh I see, you are including that huge Kennedy/Johnson spike.

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No, I'm not. I'm referring simply from the period of 1970 to 1980 compared to the period between 1980 and 1990 as reported by the Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis. Real GDP growth for the 70s was 2.8% per year while for the 80s it was 2.6%.Even as a simple percentage from year to year, the average change in GDP for 1970 - 1979 was 10.1 while for 1980-1989 was 7.9. For Carter alone, it was 11.2 and for Reagan alone, it was 7.9.For chained dollars, the 70s was 3.3 while the 80s were 3.1.

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So the 'eighties' did not outperform the 'seventies,' so what?

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The argument is that Reaganomics was wonderful for the country and the justification is that the 80s were somehow a better economic time than the 70s.They weren't.

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Isn't a good leader someone who can stand up to the emotional mob and refuse to be forced into making a bad decision?

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Defeating the Soviets was a bad decision? Wow, that's a new one.

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(*sigh*)Tell me you aren't arguing that the ends justifies the means....

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

custard writes:

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but you will have to show at least a modicum of evidence to convince me that the Reagan administration was solely responsible (if at all responsible) for the necessity of families to work more hours to obtain the same income.

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From 1960 to 1973, the poverty rate was cut in half (data from Census Bureau). The economy collapsed then and the poverty rate began to rise. In the mid-90s, the value of a minimum wage job was the lowest it had been since 1955. Before 1973, 85% of young men working full time could keep a family of four above the poverty line. In 1994, it was down to 60%. Wages for male high school dropouts fell 25% while for graduates, it fell 20% (again, from the Census Bureau).

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

crashfrog responds to custard about me:

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I'm pretty sure he's referring to the fact that while Reagan was president, George Bush was vice president. Aka, "the Reagan/Bush administration."

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No, I'm referring to the 12-year period when Reagan and then Bush were president.Bush's economic policy was very much like Reagan's. Since we're talking about the legacy of Reagan, doesn't it make sense to include the effect of those who continued Reagan's policies?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

custard writes:

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You show me some data that indicates the Reagan administration had any idea of how bad the AIDS epidemic was going to get,

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Hmmm...disease that seems to be transmitted sexually, has killed 400 people, and has a very real probability of being in the blood supply.......7 people dead from contaminated Tylenol.One of these prompts a national response from the government and one doesn't. Strange how the government fell over itself to prevent the possibility of death when only 7 people had died, but when more than 400 gay men had died, we get nothing but you saying, "How could he know?"Everybody who was investigating it knew. Why not Reagan?Before there was a test for HIV, it was found that 80% of those who had AIDS also tested positive for hepatitis. It was suggested to the blood banks by the CDC to screen for hepatitis in order to better screen out possible infection with whatever it is that is causing AIDS.They refused citing costs.Don't you think the president would be a good person to say, "Screw your costs...we'll cover any loss. The blood supply is too important to play around with"?As was said at the time by the researcher asking the blood banks to do this, "How many people have to die?"They knew. Why didn't Reagan?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

custard writes:

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Much like America's decision to enter WWII. Is FDR to be held responsible for not doing more or acting sooner to save the Jews extirminated in camps because now, in 2004, we know how bad it was in 1940?

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Yes.He was being directly told about what was going on in Germany by people who had escaped.He refused to do anything about it. Despite the fact that war had broken out in Europe, France had fallen, and Great Britain was about ready to follow, we still refused to do a damn thing until we got attacked.Regarding poverty and the living standards of those in poverty:

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Care to present your data showing how many people live out of Ryder trucks?

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Well, according to Lee Rainwater and Timothy Smeeding, Doing Poorly: The Real Income of American Children in a Comparative Perspective, Luxemborg Income Study Working Paper Number 127, August 1995, comparing conditions in industrialized countries, the United States is third from the bottom in living conditions for poor children. Only Israel and Ireland were worse.In fact, according to Lawrence Mishel and Jared Bernstein, The State of Working America: 1994-1995, the US has the highest level of poverty of industrialized countries.Considering how meager our social safety net is, this isn't surprising.

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One example of how this can be obtained is just about any poor person under thirty can join the military and qualify for practically a free ride (depending on the school they choose) once they get out after a few years.

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Are there no poorhouses? Are there no orphanages!And if you really think it's that easy to join the military (not to mention that the military would accept them), you have another think coming.

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There are also things called grants and scholarships and loans that most people can obtain in one form or another.

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Not nearly as many as there used to be.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

custard responds to MexicanHotChocolate:

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The rich got richer and the poor got poorer.

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That's a myth, it is untrue

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Incorrect.Bureau of Census:From 1950 to 1978, real family income growth:Bottom 20%: 138%
Second 20%: 98%
Middle 20%: 106%
Fourth 20%: 111%
Top 20%: 99%From 1979 to 1993, real family income growth:Bottom 20%: -15%
Second 20%: -7%
Middle 20%: -3%
Fourth 20%: 5%
Top 20%: 18%Edward N. Wolff, American Prospect, "How the Pie Is Sliced: America's Growing Concentration of Wealth," Summer 1995 states that from 1983 to 1989, over 60% of new wealth went to the richest 1% of the population and 99% went to the top 20%.The United States is the most economically stratified country in the industrialized world (Peter Gottschalk and Timothy Smeeding, Cross-national Comparisons of Levels and Trends in Inequality, Luxembourg Income Study Working paper 126, July 1995, measured as the ratio of earnings for the worker at the 90th percentile compared to the 10th percentile.)

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

jar responds to me:

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Well, it's not at all true that FDR did nothing. FDR did as much as he believed was possible.

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Sending troops wasn't possible?London is being carpet bombed and FDR does nothing? He even refuses to run the blockade! People who have escaped the concentration camps come and tell him what is going on and it never dawns on him, "Perhaps we should enter the war"? He doesn't go to Congress to point out the travesty of what is going on in Europe, how it cannot be countenanced, how it will affect the United States, in order to convince Congress to declare war?

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but could go no faster than the country itself and in particular, Congress.

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He could have pushed, but he didn't. He was just as much an isolationist as everyone else.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!