Maybe if he sped it up. As it was it was too little too late. Lifting the price controls on gas and oil in 1977 would have done wonders by 1980.
Reagan’s reputation on economic issues if no assassination attempt?
- Thread starter GeographyDude
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Maybe if he sped it up. As it was it was too little too late. Lifting the price controls on gas and oil in 1977 would have done wonders by 1980.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
The idea of a one-two punch of lifting price controls + a windfall profits tax was put forward at least as early as Pres. Ford’s Jan. 1975 State of the Union address.
Maybe if Congress has acted earlier. But not only did we have an inexperienced president, in Jan. ‘77, we also had a first-time Speaker of the House in Thomas “Tip” O’Neill.
What's the point of lifting price controls if you have a windfall profits tax? You want profits to go up when a commodity is scarce so that more money is invested in obtaining them.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
Nancy Reagan, former U.S. first lady, dead at 94
Former first lady Nancy Reagan, who joined her husband on a storybook journey from Hollywood to the White House, died Sunday. She was 94.
cnnphilippines.com
Yeah, he’s a pretty likeable guy.
It’s hard enough to criticize his policies, constructively or otherwise, to begin with. And then the guy basically gets elevated to the status of hero-slash-saint.
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GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
All depends on how much the tax, right?
And at the end of the day, Congress is pro-business although sometimes they’re clumsy about it. I think you may have previously talked about barriers to entry?
And I tend to agree. If it’s expensive leases on federal land just for exploratory drilling, that’s only a medium deal for the big guy but a pretty big deal to the little guy. And same for environmental impact statements which involve expensive legal fees.
But if it’s taxes after the fact. Let’s say it’s even a 45% windfall tax which is quite a bit higher than normal corporate taxes, well, you only pay it if you make the money. Yeah, I think I’d rather make the money and pay the tax.
And if we make a threshold — such as all profit about $50 million, for example — that would benefit the mid-sized producer, pretty much at the expense of the big dog.
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marathag
Banned
RR had to say 'yes' for every other spending item that Tip O'Neil wanted to get the Military, tax reform and deregulation he wanted,thru the House
The problem is that it reduces incentives. Yeah, you only pay the tax if you make a profit, but that doesn't make up for all the dry holes you might have drilled. This discourages more "risky" drilling. Let them keep the profit. I don't give a damn how much the oil companies make on it. Once enough of them are pumping oil, the price will go down again.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
Labor force participation: what has happened since the peak? : Monthly Labor Review: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
After steadily increasing for more than three decades, the overall labor force participation rate peaked in early 2000 and subsequently trended down through mid-2016.
www.bls.gov
So, in general, unemployment numbers during the later Reagan years should be viewed as almost 3% less (lesser change for his earlier years).
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GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
Not if it’s an oligopoly situation. And it needn’t even be active collusion. It can just be an unstated understanding on the part of the major producers, don’t rock the boat. And, I won’t rock the boat if you don’t.
Now, as far as my approach . . . it’s kind of like you’re a Republican Senator and I’m a centrist Democrat . . .
Are you sure I can’t talk you into even a pretty high threshold before windfall profits tax kicks in?
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
I think the Reagan administration had a pretty good working coalition with the southern Democrats, also known as “Dixiecrats.”
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raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
Oh, even avowed Communists too - the PRC, the Khmer Rouge. I was disappointed Deng Xiaoping didn't make it onto my late 1980s edition of "Friendly Dictators Trading Cards" by Marvel (New Mutants) and Eclipse Comics artist Bill Sienkiewicz. Of course if you stretch out American history over a longer period you could add Joseph Stalin to the list.
Friendly Dictators: 36 Of Americas Most Embarrassing Allies/Trading Cards: Bernstein, Sienkiewicz: 9781560600435: Amazon.com: Books
Friendly Dictators: 36 Of Americas Most Embarrassing Allies/Trading Cards [Bernstein, Sienkiewicz] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Friendly Dictators: 36 Of Americas Most Embarrassing Allies/Trading Cards
www.amazon.com
Friendly Dictators: 36 Of Americas Most Embarrassing Allies/Trading Cards: Bernstein, Sienkiewicz: 9781560600435: Amazon.com: Books
Friendly Dictators: 36 Of Americas Most Embarrassing Allies/Trading Cards [Bernstein, Sienkiewicz] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Friendly Dictators: 36 Of Americas Most Embarrassing Allies/Trading Cards
www.amazon.com
Dictators: 36 Of Americas Most Embarrassing Allies/Trading Cards Paperback – June 1, 1991
Even in an oligopoly. You don't make the most money by charging the highest price, even in an oligopoly. You make it at the price you make the most profit which is a lower price if more people buy it. If the price is very high people are less likely to go on vacations or go to a park far from home. They are more likely to buy a smaller car etc.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
We supported the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia post-genocide, and I want to be clear about that.
Vietnam invaded Cambodia on Christmas Day 1978 and over ran the country in a few short weeks, and stopped the genocide. In fact, this is probably the second best example of straight-up military action stopping genocide in the 20th century, second only to the Allies defeating the Nazis in WWII.
And sometime thereafter, we began funneling weapons through Thailand to Khmer Rouge remnants. It looks like the main reason was to deny a clear victory to the Vietnamese.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
On foreign policy, we need to find positive examples in spite of everything.
For example, George W. Bush in favor of significant health money to Africa, Clinton putting his weight behind a peace deal in Ireland. Imperfect as these may be, and after the cold war.
So, positive examples even if not typical. Or else you get written off as knee jerk anti-American and that’s no way to convince people that things didn’t need to be that way.
For example, George W. Bush in favor of significant health money to Africa, Clinton putting his weight behind a peace deal in Ireland. Imperfect as these may be, and after the cold war.
So, positive examples even if not typical. Or else you get written off as knee jerk anti-American and that’s no way to convince people that things didn’t need to be that way.
Wait, the Khmer Rouge were Communist, right? If we were so anti-Communist back then, why the f**k would we have supported the Khmer Rouge, especially after they had committed one of the worst atrocities of the century (or any century, really).
The Khmer Rouge were (nominally, they were too crazy to be really constructively useful) part of the Chinese sphere of influence. Pol Pot described himself as a radical maoist and thought he was doing a better, purer cultural revolution. Vietnam, while communist, was in the Soviet sphere and also embarrassed the USA a few years prior. As a result the Kissingerian realpolitik response is to condemn the Vietnamese intervention (which came out of the Khmer Rouge fighting a years long undeclared border war/genocide campaign against all Viet people) to get brownie points with China and simultaneously get revenge on Vietnam.
Neither were the main cause of the deficit increase (although both obviously contributed). The main cause was the quick ending of inflation. in 1980-1981, most economists expected it to take at least 10 years to stamp out inflation. It took 2. The result of this was that budgets in Reagan's first term were made expecting much larger increases in revenue due to inflation that simply didn't happen. The tax cuts were a part of the deficit, as was military spending, but they were minor contributors compared to the inability to accurately predict inflation figures.
National Debt as % of GDP
This is kind of “the book” on Reagan — that he talked about balanced budgets during the campaign, but instead ran deficits. And that criticism is generally true.
Voodoo Economics, and the National Debt Takes off Again
Watch G H W Bush call Reagan's supply-side economics "Voodoo" then deny it when he's Reagan's VP.zfacts.com
Next issue, I’d like to see how much of Reagan’s deficits came from continuing and in fact expanding on Carter’s military build up, and how much of it came from tax cuts.