Why the GOP must be stopped

[Mr. dB]

David Stockman: How Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes and their GOP Demolished the Economy - David Stockman on Deficit Spending | FlaglerLive - Your News Service for Flagler County News Palm Coast News Bunnell Flagler Beach Beverly Beach and Marineland

Back in 1981 David Stockman was the wonderkid of the Reagan administration–the director of the Office of Management and Budget who’d craft in actual budgets the trickle-down miracle Reagan had promised on the campaign trail: lower budgets, lower spending, higher tax revenue. But trickle-down economics was a wish, not a reality. It’s never worked. Lower taxes don’t generate more revenue. They generate deficits.

Reagan knew it. So did Stockman. So did their guru, Friederich von Hayek. The deficits were intentional all along. They were designed to “starve the beast,” meaning intentionally cut revenue as a way of pressuring Congress to cut the New Deal programs Reagan wanted to demolish. “The plan,” Stockman told Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan at the time, ” was to have a strategic deficit that would give you an argument for cutting back the programs that weren’t desired.

And:

Stockman resigned from the Reagan administration in 1985, himself disillusioned. Today in The New York Times, he writes a damning piece that sums up Republican duplicity on budgets and fiscal responsibility going back to the Nixon administration. “IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians,” Stockman begins, “the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase. More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy.”

 

[TrueLiberal]

Federal spending increased to record highs under Reagan. Reagan railed against "tax and spend" Democrats, but himself was a "borrow and spend" Republican. The economy also flourished under Reagan. This has more to do with the Federal Reserve drastically increasing interests rates during the watch of Paul Volcker than anything Reagan did though.

 

[SpyWizard]

socialism is wrong mmmmmkkkkkk

 

[Headholio]

Great piece you quote dB. A lot of great lines in a couple of paragraphs, like;

But trickle-down economics was a wish, not a reality. It’s never worked. Lower taxes don’t generate more revenue. They generate deficits.

and

The plan,” Stockman told Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan at the time, ” was to have a strategic deficit that would give you an argument for cutting back the programs that weren’t desired.

Republican politics of the 80s to hurt America and Americans just as true today.

And;

That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.

McConnell amounts to nothing more than a traitor the way he whines about the deficit and sucks rich peoples dicks at the same time.

 

[TrueLiberal]

The Trickle down economics does work if you live in a free market capitalist economy. Trickle down economics sets the environment for a surplus of wealth which can be reinvested in the economy to set the environment for even greater wealth. If you take surplus wealth, tax it, then redistribute it to people who do not produce wealth you reduce further wealth production because there is less capital available for saving and investment. If you take surplus wealth, tax it, then redistribute it you also create a disincentive for entrepreneurs to produce. Why would anyone want to produce wealth if the government is just going to tax it and give it away to another business or somebody else?

 

[mrplunkey]

I enjoy watching aides that resigned in disgrace 27 year ago blathering over sour grapes.

If that's the best the liberal establishment has, then the conservatives are in great shape.

 

[Headholio]

The Trickle down economics does work if you live in a free market capitalist economy. Trickle down economics sets the environment for a surplus of wealth which can be reinvested in the economy to set the environment for even greater wealth. If you take surplus wealth, tax it, then redistribute it to people who do not produce wealth you reduce further wealth production because there is less capital available for saving and investment. If you take surplus wealth, tax it, then redistribute it you also create a disincentive for entrepreneurs to produce. Why would anyone want to produce wealth if the government is just going to tax it and give it away to another business or somebody else?

I think true liberal is a fraud.

Trickle down was an experiment that did not work. If you make the argument that it's because our market is not free, then I have to disagree because that has nothing to do with it.

History shows us that pandering to the rich is very effective at doing one thing: Making the rich richer. Taxes would have to be much much higher to squash innovation or capitalist drive. How do I know? Because Americas greatest years have been during times of much much higher tax rates than the current rates.

The market in fact is too free. So free that corporate ass kissing resulted only in corporate elite increasing their own salary's 10 fold and using the rest of their tax savings to invest in slave labor overseas. Republicans believe in trickle down to third world countries, and then propose an economic model that would make us third world as well.

 

[mrplunkey]

I think true liberal is a fraud.

Trickle down was an experiment that did not work. If you make the argument that it's because our market is not free, then I have to disagree because that has nothing to do with it.

History shows us that pandering to the rich is very effective at doing one thing: Making the rich richer. Taxes would have to be much much higher to squash innovation or capitalist drive. How do I know? Because Americas greatest years have been during times of much much higher tax rates than the current rates.

The market in fact is too free. So free that corporate ass kissing resulted only in corporate elite increasing their own salary's 10 fold and using the rest of their tax savings to invest in slave labor overseas. Republicans believe in trickle down to third world countries, and then propose an economic model that would make us third world as well.

That is just awesome.

We spent decades abusing the commerce clause to justify government intervention to the point where there are precious free markets left in the US. Really the only hope for true entrepreneurs is to find a technology that moves so fast the government can't understand it yet (and therefore screw it up). That's how computers, cell phones, social networking and a number of other technological successes escaped early government intervention. But alas, like anything else, government will eventually get hold of it and screw it up (i.e. cars, energy, airlines).

But you keep thinking that markets are "too free". Maybe speech is too free too.

 

[Mr. dB]

I enjoy watching aides that resigned in disgrace 27 year ago blathering over sour grapes.

If that's the best the liberal establishment has, then the conservatives are in great shape.

Yeah, he was disgraced by his association with a policy that you GOP jock sniffers still support.

 

[Mr. dB]

socialism is wrong mmmmmkkkkkk

Who said anything about socialism?