AHC: Elected in 1976, Reagan effectively leads taking on oil companies during '79 energy crisis.

. . . Regulating prices is almost always a bad thing. Prices are how the economy communicates scarcity. You can manipulate interest rates up and down, taxes up and down and level of spending but when you micromanage to the extent of dictating prices you tend to end up with shortages and wastage. . .
I generally agree, with the big exception of stock market prices. And I'm going to pull a quote from economist Alan Blinder to the effect that stock markets certainly are subject to booms and busts.

Now, that doesn't mean the remedy is to try to clumsily dictate stock market prices. Rather, the remedy is more like not repealing Glass-Steagall in Nov. 1999 and keeping the wall of separation between safe, boring banking on the one hand, and wild-assed gambling which is sometimes wise investment on the other. And insisting that it be made very clear to investors which is which.
 
He might try but Chappiquidick killed any chance he would succeed. Too many people thought he simply "left the girl to drown" if not flat out murder her to cover up an affair. He also was unpopular outside of Massachutsus.
And Brown outside of Cali. This was the prime of his Moonbeam period.
 
What Did We Learn from the Financial Crisis, the Great Recession [2008 & 2009], and the Pathetic Recovery?
Alan Blinder, Princeton University, 2014

https://www.princeton.edu/ceps/workingpapers/243blinder.pdf


Lesson # 2: Minsky was basically right.

" . . . The financial world envisioned by Minsky is different in every respect from the EMH [Efficient Markets Hypothesis] paradigm. While the good times are rolling, people forget the bitter lessons of the past. ("This time is different.") So financial excesses grow more, not less, severe as the bubble progresses—creating greater vulnerability to shocks and more damage when the crash comes. The crash itself always seems to come as a surprise; and after it, sentiment swings radically in the other direction. People shun risk, pessimism rules, and the economy struggles.

"Which of these two world views sounds more descriptive of what happened in the United States and elsewhere between, say, 2000 and 2010?"
Hyman Minsky is an economist who lived from 1919-1996. And in summarizing his views, I think Al Blinder makes some very good points.
 
I am very skeptical of the argument that "Reagan helped end the Cold War, therefore we can get him to take left-wing positions on other issues." Reagan was just as anti-Communist after he warmed up to Gorbachev as before; he simply recognized that the USSR under Gorbachev was changing. By contrast, blaming business rather than government for the oil crisis in 1979 would have been totally against everything Reagan believed ever since his conversion to economic conservatism under the tutelage of GE's Lemuel Boulware in the mid-1950's (though this was only the completion of a process that had been underway for some years and accelerated after his marriage to Nancy Davis). It's not surprising that ending price controls on oil was one of the very first major actions he took after becoming president: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/29/us/president-abolishes-last-price-controls-on-us-produced-oil.html

In fact, Reagan's position on energy was so well-defined and so often repeated that it was even the subject of satire: On April 19, 1980 Saturday Night Live had a skit called "Invasion of the Brian Snatchers" where some lefties at a party have suddenly become Reaganite pod people. (My favorite part was when a stereotyped folksinger sang to the tune of Blowin' in the Wind "Yes, and how many times must our taxes be raised/Before they forever are banned?/The answer, my friend, is Ronald Reagan/The answer is Ronald Reagan.") One of the pod people, watching Reagan on TV, says in a mechanical voice, "He's so right--federal bureaucrats never produced a single barrel of oil!"
Okay, what about Pres. George W. Bush running on, and helping to push through Congress, prescription drug benefits for seniors? Or, Pres. Obama increasing drone warfare, increasing criminal prosecutions of whistleblowers, and increasing deportations (whatever the Fox "news" crowd says!)?

My point being, that presidents often play against type. Maybe because they face much less opposition.
 
Okay, what about Pres. George W. Bush running on, and helping to push through Congress, prescription drug benefits for seniors? Or, Pres. Obama increasing drone warfare, increasing criminal prosecutions of whistleblowers, and increasing deportations (whatever the Fox "news" crowd says!)?

My point being, that presidents often play against type. Maybe because they face much less opposition.

Bush never really campaigned as a free-market conservative, though, so that he didn't stick to conservative economic orthodoxy isn't surprising. Of course, Reagan sometimes disappointed economic-conservative purists, but only to the extent that he, for example, partly offset the effects of his tax cut with things like TEFRA (and also saw that it would be politically suicidal to go after things like Social Security). On the basic question of whether the oil companies or "big government" was to blame for the energy crisis, there is no doubt he would have said the latter. This is shown not only by his remarks at the time, but also by that the fact that in 1981 he made lifting the remaining oil price controls one of his earliest actions as president, even though he knew the immediate effect would be an increase in gas prices.
 
. . . by that the fact that in 1981 he made lifting the remaining oil price controls one of his earliest actions as president, . . .
You bring up excellent points.

I can only say, like the example of Social Security, if there’s enough public pressure, Reagan may bend.
 
FWIW, here is what Reagan actually said about energy in announcing for the presidency in 1979:

***

Another serious problem which must be discussed tonight is our energy situation. Our country was built on cheap energy. Today, energy is not cheap and we face the prospect that some forms of energy may soon not be available at all.

Last summer you probably spent hours sitting in gasoline lines. This winter, some will be without heat and everyone will be paying much more simply to keep home and family warm. If you ever had any doubt of the government's inability to provide for the needs of the people, just look at the utter fiasco we now call "the energy crisis." Not one straight answer nor any realistic hope of relief has come from the present administration in almost three years of federal treatment of the problem. As gas lines grew, the administration again panicked and now has proposed to put the country on a wartime footing; but for this "war" there is no victory in sight. And, as always, when the federal bureaucracy fails, all it can suggest is more of the same. This time it's another bureau to untangle the mess by the ones we already have.

But, this just won't work. Solving the energy crisis will not be easy, but it can be done. First we must decide that "less" is not enough. Next, we must remove government obstacles to energy production. And, we must make use of those technological advantages we still possess.

It is no program simply to say "use less energy." Of course waste must be eliminated and efficiently promoted, but for the government simply to tell people to conserve is not an energy policy. At best it means we will run out of energy a little more slowly. But a day will come when the lights will dim and the wheels of industry will turn more slowly and finally stop. As President I will not endorse any course which has this as its principal objective.

We need more energy and that means diversifying our sources of supply away from the OPEC countries. Yes, it means more efficient automobiles. But it also means more exploration and development of oil and natural gas here in our own country. The only way to free ourselves from the monopoly pricing power of OPEC is to be less dependent on outside sources of fuel.

The answer, obvious to anyone except those in the administration it seems, is more domestic production of oil and gas. We must also have wider use of nuclear power within strict safety rules, of course. There must be more spending by the energy industries on research and development of substitutes for fossil fuels.

In years to come solar energy may provide much of the answer but for the next two or three decades we must do such things as master the chemistry of coal. Putting the market system to work for these objectives is an essential first step for their achievement. Additional multi-billion-dollar federal bureaus and programs are not the answer.

In recent weeks there has been much talk about "excess" oil company profits. I don't believe we've been given all the information we need to make a judgment about this. We should have that information. Government exists to protect us from each other. It is not government's function to allocate fuel or impose unnecessary restrictions on the marketplace. It is government's function to determine whether we are being unfairly exploited and if so to take immediate and appropriate action. As President I would do exactly that.

http://www.4president.org/speeches/reagan1980announcement.htm

***

Now, granted, to be a candidate and to be a president are two different things--but candidates as well as presidents have to pay attention to public opinion. And in this case, Reagan's address does pretty much forecast his actual outlook as president--namely that the answer to the problem was to "produce, produce, produce" https://newrepublic.com/article/98083/reagan-and-big-oil and that government interference with the market was the cause of US economic difficulties in general and its energy problems in particular. Yes, Reagan did realize that the oil companies were unpopular. But notice he even takes an agnostic position on the extremely widespread belief that the oil companies were making "excess" profits. Probably as president he would make some ritualistic criticism of the big oil companies--and suggest that government regulations were the obstacles to allowing the smaller oil companies to find the energy America needed! "No company will refuse favors bestowed by the administration, yet there’s concern about Reagan’s tone, which resembles the upbeat, we-can-produce-lots-more rhetoric of the independent wildcatters more than it does the cautious forecasts of industry giants like Exxon..." https://newrepublic.com/article/98083/reagan-and-big-oil
 
Kick
Perhaps he could propose alternative economic policies to cushion the energy collapse. Perhaps a restoration of slavery as a means to help cushion the impact of economic decline, with it being obvious* who'd get the unwanted "job" as one option to be considered.

* 90% of them don't vote GOP, so no reason for Mr. Republican Reagan to care about that.
 
Perhaps he could propose alternative economic policies to cushion the energy collapse. Perhaps a restoration of slavery as a means to help cushion the impact of economic decline, with it being obvious* who'd get the unwanted "job" as one option to be considered.

Because cutting Federal Regulations is just like putting people in chains?

There was no real shortage of Crude Oil in 1979.
There was a shortage of Oil that wouldn't be taxed heavily. There were basically three separate classes of Oil at this time, 'New' and 'Old' Domestic produced, and Foreign imported.

There were strict limits by regulations what type could be used where, and what types of taxes would be applied in each case. These regs got their start under Nixon's Price Controls.

Using the 'wrong' Oil in a refinery would be penalized enough to not only have no profit, but actual penalties.

So there were cases of Oil tankers sitting offshore, that made no economic sense to refine.
 
Oil prices weren't going up because of speculation but for three reasons, cheaply available oil was getting scarce in US oil fields, the oil embargo, and Nixon and Ford's price controls caused big shortages.

Regulating prices is almost always a bad thing. Prices are how the economy communicates scarcity. You can manipulate interest rates up and down, taxes up and down and level of spending but when you micromanage to the extent of dictating prices you tend to end up with shortages and wastage. It is a big part of the reason the Soviet Economy eventually collapsed.

Price controls are not why the Soviet economy collapsed lack of proper planning.. . Plus the collapse of the Soviet union is what killed the Soviet economy
 
Price controls are not why the Soviet economy collapsed lack of proper planning.. . Plus the collapse of the Soviet union is what killed the Soviet economy

You can't plan a huge economy. Micromanaging an economy is like trying to control your entire body on a cellular level. Even if you could have conscious control of every cell of your body it would be stupid to do so. The Soviet Economy stalling and then crashing is what caused the entire country to crash.
 
Plus the collapse of the Soviet union is what killed the Soviet economy
The USSR collapsed because the Soviet Economy could not meet the demands of the nations Consumers.
historica-empty-shelves.jpg
 
. . . Perhaps a restoration of slavery . . .
9780446675505_p0_v1_s1200x630.jpg


Written in 1993, I think this one of the best near-term dystopias. Set in 2024, and helped along by widespread drought in California, the U.S. has basically become a third world country.

And slavery is slowly re-introduced, with there first being corporate compounds which receive little if any effective government oversight. And yes, people’s children are taken from them.

==============

Now, the author may have picked the “wrong” ecological disaster, but other than that, I think all too realistic.

And interestingly, with most science fiction writers and readers traditionally being white men, Octavia was a black woman. Unfortunately, she died at age 59.
 
The mechanism for a reintroduction of slavery would be expanding privatized prisons more, expanding student debt type restrictions to other forms of debt
 
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