Ronald Reagan was a better President than Barack Obama

I’m going to layoff round 5 for the most part to keep the debate fair (except for a few things), because I misunderstood what to do in round 4 (I explain this more later). I will primarily respond to round 4.Framework:To win this debate, I do not need to prove Barack Obama is a better president than Ronald Reagan was. I just have to prove that Reagan was not better than Obama. R1-Reagan’s Economic Policy: Pro rebuts my point that Reagan also raised taxes as well by providing a definition of Reaganomics. The definition doesn’t even rebut what I’m saying though because the definition suggests it’s only talking about income taxes (“across the board tax” suggests it’s talking about income levels). Also, Pro never directly mentions taxes on thing such as social security or gas being increased (which I continually mention), nor these stats (I sourced this earlier in the debate): “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”. I brought these up every round, yet all Pro addressed from what I mentioned was Capital Gains and TEFRA. He said that TEFRA (although not by name) mainly raised deductions (which still means more people are being taxed more). However, it was the largest tax increase in American history, so obviously people were being taxed more. (1) Now I’ll address the part about how the tax cuts raised government revenue. He first mentions how the 70% and 91% tax rates didn’t maximize government revenue, but the 28% under Reagan had the economy “skyrocket”. However, the economy grew faster throughout most of the 50s’ and 60s’ when the tax rates was really high (while Reagan’s administration only rivaled that after the Fed dropped interest rates and the economy recovered) (2, 3): Then to quote part of Laffer’s statement, “GDP doubled and tax revenues went up by 75%—both because of the tax cut” However, the GDP growth and tax revenue increase (if more money is being made, people are paying more taxes), were primarily due to the Fed dropping the interest rates. I’ve mentioned this before (and I’ll bring it up again later), but I’ll have Nobel Prize Winning economist Paul Krugman explain it (4): “Serious analyses of the Reagan-era business cycle place very little weight on Reagan, and emphasize instead the role of the Federal Reserve, which sets monetary policy and is largely independent of the political process. At the beginning of the 1980s, the Fed, under the leadership of Paul Volcker, was determined to bring inflation down, even at a heavy price; it tightened policy, sending interest rates sky high, with mortgage rates going above 18 percent. What followed was a severe recession that drove unemployment to double digits but also broke the wage-price spiral. Then the Fed decided that America had suffered enough. It loosened the reins, sending interest rates plummeting and housing starts soaring. And the economy bounced back. Reagan got the political credit for “morning in America,” but Mr. Volcker was actually responsible for both the slump and the boom. So the whole premise of Laffer’s’ (and Pro’s argument) is flawed, as the Fed was a large part of the 80s boom. Now to address spending. Pro has still failed to explain why domestic spending cuts would help the economy even though I raised the issue in round 4 and he could have responded in round 5. All that was ever said was, “to balance the budget through domestic spending restraint”, which still doesn’t explain why it’d help the economy and I proved earlier that the budget wasn’t balanced under Reagan and in fact at some points was worse than it had ever been since WWII. I’ll address the necessity of Cold War spending later. Pro then asks, “If spending was so good for the economy, then why didn't Carter's domestic spending growth of 3.5% annually not work better than Reagan's only 1% growth annually?” That simply ignores the 1973 and 1979 oil crisis, which hurt the American economy for years after and led to high inflation. (5) Also to further answer the question, high spending helps the economy, because it increases aggregate demand (while the opposite decreases it) and with more demand, people will buy more. This is because there’s demand for weapons in this case, which means they can hire more workers and those workers can spend their money on other businesses. Now to address Obama’s protection of the Fed, I’ll once again show Krugman explain it (4) (since he mentioned lack of quotes): The Fed “has at least made an effort to boost the economy — and it has done so despite ferocious attacks from conservatives, who have accused it again and again of “debasing the dollar” and setting the stage for runaway inflation. Without Mr. Obama to shield its independence, the Fed might well have been bullied into raising interest rates, which would have been disastrous.” Finally, Pro is caught up in the semantics of “baby boomers”. Once again showing the population pyramid: As can clearly be seen at the beginning of the decade most of the workers were just set to join the workforce, so that obviously played a large role. Since he had no other rebuttal it clearly was a large factor in the growth of the 80s’. To conclude, many other factors such as the Fed lowering the rates and the population boom would have been the primary cause of Reagan’s economic growth. The tax cuts were marginal as shown through stats, while Reagan drove up spending in his administration, which although may have provided some growth, led to high deficits. R2-Obama’s Economic Policy: Even if the White House’s numbers were off, it definitely did help the economy as explained in previous rounds, and you can read this round how it increased spending helps. To sum it up, the Fed had its interest rates as low as they could go and the economy wasn’t improving, so obviously the aggregate demand needed some boost, and Obama provided it. Pro then mentions how the peak unemployment rate was higher under Reagan, so the drop was larger under Reagan. However, that is completely unfair comparison because as explained above the Fed caused both the slump and the recovery, while the whole housing bubble bursted under Obama, and the Fed dropped the rates as low as they could go. For this reason also, the consistent growth in household income under Reagan is less significant because his recession was a lot easier to tackle. Plus, overall unemployment rate dropped lower under Obama in the same amount of time. As for monetary offset, the quote admits that the fiscal stimulus would speed up the recovery. Also, the Fed had lowered interest rates, but the unemployment rate was still going up, so overall his whole argument is insignificant in this case, because the Fed couldn’t do much else. He also says Obama should drop taxes, but he did for 98% of working people. (10) If he did it too much on business and rich people they could just use their breaks and invest in other countries, a problem Reagan didn’t face. I mentioned this, but Pro never responded to it. R3-Foreign Policy: Pro has yet to disprove my point that declining communism elsewhere would have a large effect, so the question is, did spending accelerate the collapse? Comparing spending (7): As can be seen the USSR spent pretty much the same they had been spending previously, until the 90s, so there was no response to American spending. In fact, Gorbachev said. “The Cold War ended despite President Reagan's arms buildup, not because of it”. (8) As for ISIS, I have already mentioned Obama did more to them to Reagan did the USSR. Pro says Obama doesn’t have a strategy, but he recently introduced one. (9) Clarifications: Pro accuses me of lying about the healthcare stat. However, if you go back to Pro’s R3 healthcare point you can see the sources 7 & 8 were here. Neither of these had multiple pages, nor that stat: http://usat.ly...http://herit.ag... So, either Pro’s lying or he didn’t cite it (which still means he’s stating it without proof). He also accuses me of not using round 4 enough, but I was under the impression it was only suppose to respond to round 3 and I only decided to use facts and quotes for the Foreign Policy part this round or just restated things to prevent it from being a big issue. Also he mentions me using Wikpedia, but it was only for minor things and I used many reputable News articles otherwise, often written by economists. Conclusion: To conclude, I have shown that Obama took necessary actions in order to help expand the US economy in times of trouble, because the Fed had already dropped the rates low and if he cut taxes too much on the wealthy that money might end up being invested elsewhere and that Reagan was greatly assisted by the Fed lowering the rates and the natural population boom. Plus, despite Obama’s tough situation, he still has a lower unemployment rate than Reagan did in the same amount of time. Plus, Obama has made more of an effort to cut the deficit, while Reagan raised it. Also, Reagan’s attempt to end the USSR just led to a higher national debt and strengthening new enemies (e.g. Bin Ladden & Hussein), while not even having a big factor. Meanwhile, Obama has been engaging in combat with terrorism and has a new plan to face ISIS. For this reason Ronald Reagan was not a better president than Barack Obama and you should vote Con.Sources:1-https://mises.org...2-http://bit.ly...3-http://www.hussmanfunds.com...4-http://nyti.ms...5-https://en.wikipedia.org...6-http://bit.ly... 7-http://i.imgur.com...8-https://www.theatlantic.com...9-http://abcn.ws...10-http://www.ctj.org...