From: Dr. Norman J. LaFave <lafave@ial4.jsc.nasa.gov>
Subject: Re: Macroeconomics 101
X-Xxdate: Tue, 22 Dec 92 14:39:02 GMT
Organization: Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Company
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d12
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 20:42:41 GMT

In article <geturner.725050365@aer.com> George Turner, geturner@aer.com.
writes:
>I think Bill Clinton was elected mostly because the press created such
>a negative view of George Bush. Every problem in the United States has
>been blamed on the Republicans.  I think George Bush has done a great
>job managing the US economy during a world wide recession.  He has done
>all the right things, he has opened our borders and not created barriers
>to trade.

Although I agree that Bush cannot be blamed for natural economic
cycling, I disagree that he did a good job managing the economy.
The president can only be blamed or congratulated on presenting
or implementing policy which effects future long-term economic
health. In this, Bush and Reagan have been abject failures for the
following reasons:

1.) Failure to submit balanced budgets. The largest deficits in
history have been yielded in the past 12 years and these are smaller
than the ones which were in the original budgets of Bush and Reagan.
Congress is partially to blame, but the fact that the budgets that
were passed are smaller than those submitted by R/B lets them off
the hook to a limited extent. The mania with fighting of the "Red
Menace", an enemy that was falling under its own weight without
our help (read recent reports by former Soviet officials, including
Gorbachev), has left us with a much larger public debt and a
huge defense infrastructure to wean.

2.) Lack of a comprehensive national energy policy. This country is
the Saudi Arabia of natural gas, yet we have allowed ourselves to
be played like a violin by the Middle East. This has had several
detrimental effects: a.) Placed us in a dependency situation to a
highly volatile part of the world which has forced us into at least
one war. b.) Increased our air pollution since natural gas is much
cleaner to burn. c.) Contributed significantly to our trade deficit.

Furthermore, research on alternate energy has been cut back or
systematically weakened until recently when California took
the leadership role the Federal government would not. Note that
congress has made several attempts at legislation, all of which
were made veto fodder under the guise that it would hurt the
economy.

3.) Research and development. Long-term civilian
research and development
has suffered greatly in the past 12 years due to huge cuts in NSF
and DOE grant programs and an unwillingness of corporations to
invest in anything but research yielding quick returns (the
quarterly report effect). This has severely damaged our competitive
stance by negating much of our technology lead, weakening our
universities, turning away many of our best young
scientists and engineers
from doing R&D, and decreasing the rate of breakthrough discoveries.
Reagan can be blamed directly for the grant cuts, and R/B provided no
leadership in reversing this trend despite numerous warnings from
economists. Recently, even short-term 
corporate R&D has begun to suffer.

4.) Welfare reform. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have provided
any leadership to enact the reforms which have been clearly
necessary for years. Reagan and Bush are guilty of spewing rhetoric
pertaining to job creation and training, but taking no action. Bill
Clinton is the first presidential candidate in quite a while to
make workfare and job (re)trainining part of his comprehensive
program.

5.) Health care. Despite warnings coming from economists and health
care experts for many years, Bush waited until 3 1/2 years into his
term to submit a health care proposal which amounted to 
noncomprehensive window
dressing. Health care has become a vulture which, along with the
debt, is eating away at our economic health. It is one of the
most important crises of our time. Bush dropped the ball.

6.) Free Trade. Bush keeps talking about the importance of free
trade, but has allowed the Japanese to weaken our position through
the enacting of significant trade barriers to our products
and through the hiding of their U.S.-made profits from taxation. In
turn, the Japanese have mocked us for our lack of retaliation.

I could go on (S&L fiasco, corporate raiding, ....), but I think this
is enough to see Bush out the door.

Norman

Dr. Norman J. LaFave
Senior Engineer
Lockheed Engineering and Sciences Company




When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro
                               Hunter Thompson
Xref: sparky alt.politics.clinton:19178 alt.rush-limbaugh:12402 alt.president.clinton:1288