Ronald Reagan was a better President than Barack Obama

This round I will only address Pro’s opening arguments as per the rules. Definitions Monetary Policy: The actions of a central bank, currency board or other regulatory committee that determine the size and rate of growth of the money supply, which in turn affects interest rates. (1)Economic Stagnation: a prolonged period of slow economic growth (traditionally measured in terms of the GDP growth), usually accompanied by high unemployment. (9) R1-Reagan’s Economic Policy I discussed this last round, but I’ll make the point here. Reagan is not primarily responsible for the economic growth under his administration. One of the most important parts of Supply Side Economics theory is that taxes need to be cut. Restating my argument from last round (because it applies here), ”Reagan did cut income taxes; however, he eliminated many tax breaks, introduced the largest peacetime tax increase (TEFRA), and increased taxes on Social Security, gasoline, capital gains, among other things. Overall, federal tax receipts under his presidency were 18.2% of GDP, barely any different than under the previous administration and were 24.7% of the national income by the end of his presidency (barley lower from the 25.1% it had been at).” Also, Reagan never really cut spending, as demonstrated last round. A large part of the spending increases were due to foreign aid & military, which although aren’t domestic spending, are still the government spending a lot of money. However, Reagan increased domestic spending in many areas such as the Department of Energy & Education, Social Security, Medicare, federal entitlements, and farm programs. (2) In fact, Reagan increased long term debt, due to continuous deficits. This part I wrote last round, but didn’t put in my argument (sources are linked in the previous round): “This did help increase the growth rate at the time, as it acted as a stimulus. (6) However, it led to a huge debt increase, and saw the US go from the world’s largest creditor to the world’s largest debtor. (7). This may have been fine for the time, but in the long run debt can be a major burden on future generations. (8)” Finally, for the restrictive monetary policy. It is true, that the inflation rate was generally low during Reagan’s years. So in this case, SSE may have had a factor. However, the president has no control on the money supply. That is completely under the control of the Fed, which acts independently of the government. So why did the economy grow so much? As already discussed, the relatively low interest rates by the Fed were a factor. There was also Reagan’s large spending, which not only puts money into the hands of people (which boosts consumption and investment), but is also a direct part of GDP: However, another really important factor, was that many of the Baby Boomers were set to join workforce. As can be seen with this American population pyramid in 1980, the largest ages groups in the US were the 15-19 year olds & 20-24 year olds. This means the largest age groups were people finishing/finished high school & college and set to enter the workforce. (3) With a net gain in workers joining the workforce and earning their own money, the economy is naturally going to boom, leading to increases in GDP, household income, etc. Therefore, Reagan does not deserve most of the credit for the economic boom that occurred, as the workforce was naturally set to expand and many of the responsibility was in the hands of the Fed. R2-Obama’s Economic Policy I touched upon this last round, but Obama has had to do a lot more than Reagan ever did to induce growth and inherited a much worse situation, and has had really good results. Pro’s first claim is that the stimulus package was a failure and this economic recovery was a failure compared to Reagan’s. This argument I wrote last round, but I forgot to copy and paste it into my argument (see sources in the last round): “Now, if we compared the unemployment rate under Obama in the May of this year, to Reagan’s in the May of 87’ we can see from the chart above that the unemployment rate dropped from 7.8% to 5.5% (2.3%) compared to a 1.2% drop under Reagan. However, Reagan was able to see large growth after the Fed dropped interest rates. However, because Obama was coming in during the burst of the housing bubble and 2008 Recession, the Fed had already dropped interest rates to close to 0% with no prevail. Obama then enacted much needed relief programs, such as his stimulus bill, which most economists agree was helpful. (9) He also gave much needed bailouts to many companies, most notably American car companies. This helped cause the economy to finally begin to recover, as noted by the unemployment rate drop. However, one thing Obama has managed to do is begin cutting deficits. Examining the above chart we can see that although the deficit increased due to the recession and recovery programs, it has been dropping ever since and is soon going to become lower than the average deficit rate since 1974.” When you consider Reagan had large deficits throughout much of his presidency and Obama has seen a larger net unemployment rate droppage while cutting back on the deficits, I’d say the stimulus package has on balance been a success, and hasn’t even been a long term burden on the deficit. Plus, Reagan’s recovery was not even nearly as hard Obama’s. Reagan’s whole recovery had to be done because the Fed had to temporarily raise interest rates to combat inflation. Obama’s recovery saw the whole housing bubble burst and economy crash. Pro also points out that Reagan has added more jobs. However, this is a useless statistic, when you consider Obama has seen a larger drop in unemployment rate since entering office. Also, as already pointed out Reagan had several Baby Boomers entering the job force. Examining this population pyramid of the US from 2010 we can see that the amount of new generation set to enter the workforce is smaller than Reagan’s was. (4) Pro then points out that median household income hasn’t grown much under Obama. While that is true, while the economy had to recover from the disaster it is, a lot of the recovery had to do with simply getting people back to work. Now, as unemployment rate is dropping faster, the household income is rising faster and the economy is almost fully recovered, with a huge thanks going to President Obama. (5) Similar thing with GDP. Although Reagan has seen a larger increase in GDP, Obama has also spent less than the Bush administration did, compared to Reagan and the Carter administration, and as shown earlier government spending is a part of GDP. Also, like mentioned, Obama had to help revive the whole economy, which meant a lot of people had to focus more on paying back debts and simply working jobs. However, since 2013 the GDP has seen a real growth rate a lot closer to those under Reagan.(6) Finally, Pro critiques Obama for using high taxes on the wealthy. As shown above the economic recovery has done well even so, high taxes on the wealthy are a different beast than they used to be. In the 80s’ Americans believed that business should be done in America. However, nowadays many of America’s largest companies such as Apple & Walmart act greatly outside the US. (7) Overall, Obama deserves much more responsibility for economic recovery than Reagan and has had amazing results considering how bad the Recession was. For this reason, Obama is economically better than Reagan. R3-Foreign Policy Pro asserts Reagan helped end the USSR. However, the USSR was doomed to fail way before Reagan took office. Pro’s main points are essentially that the battles against communists around the world & the massive military buildup led to the fall of the USSR. I will first assess these two claims. The idea that the declining influence of communism in other countries which the USSR wasn’t involved in led to its collapse holds no weight, since Pro doesn’t explain why it would. Although, the USSR was a part of the war in Afghanistan. However, that war started during the Carter Administration and there is no reason to assume the USSR would have won had the US not began funding the opposition (which didn’t even start until the mid 80s’). (8) Pro also fails to adequately explain why Reagan’s increased military spending led to the collapse of the USSR. His main assertion to back this up are the battles against communism (which I already discussed) and the USSR, which I discussed in the above paragraph. So why did the USSR collapse? It went through stagnation, most notably economic stagnation all due to its failed system. Although Pro touches upon this calling the it a, “inefficient command-directed communist economic system”, but it had that system well before Reagan took office. Soviet saw its economic growth rapidly declining starting in the 60s’ and also saw things such as low worker productivity, as they became more and more communist. (10) So to sum up, Reagan did little to defeat the USSR. Pro then criticizes Obama for not doing enough to stop ISIS. Of course, I just proved Reagan didn’t really do much to stop the USSR either. Under Reagan’s whole administration the military did nothing against the USSR directly, yet under Obama the military has been launching attacks against terrorist groups, such as ISIS. (11)Therefore, Pro’s claim that Reagan’s foreign policy is better than Obama’s is untrue.Conclusion:Since I demonstrated that Obama stepped up during the economic crisis, Reagan had unecessary deficit raises, and that Obama is doing more to terror groups than Reagan did to the USSR, I have succecsfuly rebuted Pro's claims and therefore proved that Reagan is not a better president than Obama. Sources:1-http://bit.ly...2-http://bit.ly...3-http://bit.ly...4-http://bit.ly...5-http://bit.ly...6-http://bit.ly...7-http://onforb.es...8-http://bit.ly...9-http://bit.ly...10-http://bit.ly...11-http://bit.ly...;