Because he spent the Soviets into the ground instead of nuking them? I, for one, would much rather win a war (even a Cold one), by economic means instead of radioactive ones.Yet another reason to hate Reagan.....
Because he spent the Soviets into the ground instead of nuking them? I, for one, would much rather win a war (even a Cold one), by economic means instead of radioactive ones.Yet another reason to hate Reagan.....
Because he spent the Soviets into the ground instead of nuking them? I, for one, would much rather win a war (even a Cold one), by economic means instead of radioactive ones.
Reagan did not win the Cold War. And, if you ask me, we're lucky that the Cold War ended with a fizzle and not a bang- because Reagan was clearly pushing towards that possible outcome.
April '86, brought the Chernobyl disaster, which, among other things, made Gorbachev realize that information had to circulate more openly (the beginnings of glasnost) and made him think that the ultimate enemy may be nukes themselves.
He didn't realize it, but Reagan viewed nukes the same way. Samuel Wells, a Cold War historian at the Woodrow Wilson Center, who has examined all the relevant documents, put it this way in a phone conversation: "His staff, for all of the first term and most of the second, kept this out of the press, but Reagan was terribly, deeply opposed to nuclear weapons—he thought they were immoral."
[…]
At their face-to-face summit of October 1986 in Reykjavik, Reagan went far beyond Gorbachev's proposal of a 50 percent strategic-arms cut. To the alarm of some aides, who were not let in on the discussion, he suggested that the two sides get rid of nuclear weapons altogether and jointly build an SDI system to guard against a nuclear revival. Gorbachev initially dismissed the idea. "I do not take your idea of sharing SDI seriously," the minutes (which were declassified by the Soviets 12 years ago) show him saying. "You don't want to share even petroleum equipment, automatic machine tools, or equipment for dairies, while sharing SDI would be a second American revolution—and revolutions do not occur all that often." Reagan replied, "If I thought that SDI could not be shared, I would have rejected it myself."[
[…]
Gorbachev wasn't the only decisive presence. If Reagan hadn't been president—if Jimmy Carter or Walter Mondale had defeated him or if Reagan had died and George H.W. Bush taken his place—Gorbachev almost certainly would not have received the push or reinforcement that he needed. Those other politicians would have been too traditional, too cautious, to push such radical proposals (zero nukes and SDI) or to take Gorbachev's radicalism at face value. (There's no need to speculate on this point. When Bush Sr. succeeded Reagan in 1989, U.S.-Soviet relations took a huge step backward; it took nearly a year for Bush and his advisers to realize that Gorby was for real.)
The goal seems to be keeping down the unemployment which in turn implies that less people change jobs and thus less structural change. In other words, if people spend more, it lets some companies on the border between surviving and failure survive.
Yes capitalism saved the USA in the Great Depression, but not laissez-faire capitalism. Government intervention in the form of the New Deal saved capitalism in the Great Depression, just look at the stronger recovery of the USA in the mid-to-late 1930's, compared to the UK, which didn't implement such policies.
What strong recovery? The US' commercial sector didn't fully recover until after the war.
Yes it didn't fully recover, however considering that the Great Depression hit the USA much harder than the UK, I think the fact that by 1941 the USA had substantially recovered whereas the UK didn't much at all until 1939, means that the New Deal must have had something to do with it. Despite the UK having more of a welfare state at the time, it didn't in the 1930's engage in the full Keynesianism that was a significant part of the New Deal.
I think nowadays too many people and certainly some on this thread are too willing to discount the positive effects on government intervention (ie the New Deal) and Keynesianism in particular. While I agree that it certainly was taken was taken well and truly beyond its sensible limits in the late 60's and into the 70's, it is true that during the Long Boom or Les Trente Glorieuses as the French call it, these policies did provide the best standard of living in human history before or arguably since.
The US had seemingly recovered because it was mobilizing for a damned war! The economy was still on the ropes, especially after everything fell apart again in '38.
And they all came crashing down in the 70's. Not because anything was 'taken too far', but because the market is stronger than regulations put on it. It's why we're in the situation we're in right now, and why Western economies stagnated during the 70's. The Long Boom may have been nice, but we paid the piper when stagflation hit.
Yes, but I don't think it can be disputed that the USA did put in place a lot of policies which could be described as broadly Keynesian well before the UK. Also, yes the USA was preparing for war, but what is Keynesian if not massive mobilisation of the military (albeit indirect Keynesianism).
Clearly you don't believe in the benefits of government intervention at all, which obviously is a valid school of thought.
As someone who class themselves as a social democrat I do (I wouldn't class myself as strongly left-wing, in fact my views are very similar to 'wet' Tory views in the UK, which were quite compatible with government intervention).
I do find it interesting though that left-wingers like myself tend to idolise the economic policies of the 1950's and right-wingers tend to idolise the social/moral policies of the 1950's.
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Awesome for you. I don't ascribe to left-right scales, because I blatantly don't fit on them.
we tried that with "Everyone in America should have affordable housing" policies