From: mpolen@gelato.mips.com (Michael Polen)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: I loved Bush ...
Date: 21 Jul 92 19:47:47 GMT
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: gelato.mips.com

Patrick J. McGuinness) writes:
|> Michael Polen) writes:
|> >Patrick J. McGuinness writes:
|> >|> >Michael Polen writes:
|> >|> >>What?  He [Bush] has done everything he promised.  He has continued the Reagan plan to
|> >|> >>move our resources to the wealthy, he has scuttled the Supreme Court, he has
|> >|> >>ignored the environment, he has abondoned our public education system, and he
|> >|> >>has significantly reduced support for social program.
|> >|> 
|> >|> Elements of the poverty of politics:
|> >|> 1. The use of rhetoric and propoganda to displace rational analysis.
|> >|> e.g.  When supposedly intelligent politically-active people engage in false,
|> >|> charged rhetoric in order to score 'debating' points or cause an emotional reaction.
|> >
|> >I am apparently a novice.  As a response to my rhetoric and propoganda, Patrick
|> >has chosen to use false and misleading statistics to accomplish the same task.
|> 
|> My statistics are 'misleading' because they contradict your claims.
|> That doesn't make them false.  Can you present, in budgetary numbers, any
|> evidence to support the claim that social spending was sigificantly
|> cut under Bush? That education spending, directly or indirectly, was reduced? 
|> 
|> >|> "He has continued the Reagan plan to move our resources to the wealthy"
|> >|> That was no-ones plan, and it did not happen. Under Reagan the economy
|> >|> grew 40%, exports doubled, and 20 million new jobs were created. The economy
|> >|> created *new* wealth, so their was no 'movement' of resources.
|> >
|> >The new jobs were lower paying.
|> 
|> This is not true. Both median and average incomes advanced significantly from 1981
|> to 1990, and, as has been posted by others, gains came to all income groups.
|> 
|> From an article by Steven Fordyce:
|> --------------
|> [1] All major groups became better off during the Reagan years.  From page
|> 447 of "Statistical Abstract of the United States 1990", mean after-tax
|> household income in constant (1986) Dollars:
|> 
|>                         1980    1982    1983    1984    1985    1986
|> All households          21,652  21,499  22,173  22,763  23,082  23,683
|> Whites                  22,424  22,293  23,011  23,614  23,936  24,570
|> Blacks                  15,236  14,723  15,113  15,622  16,094  16,398
|> Hispanic                18,030  17,371  17,660  18,324  18,265  18,817
|> 
This chart says that there was little real growth in family income between
1980 and 1986 (Reagans best years) but that White household incomes grew more
rapidly than Blacks and Hispanics.

But the real impact is washed over by this chart (how to lie with statistics).
Family income is a meaninless measure.  It is individual income that counts.
If Black/Hispanic/Poor White families had to have a second person go to work
to maintain their income, this would be hidden by your statistic.  Your second
chart however shows the real difference.

|> And this general increase in income continued through 1990.  In general,
|> incomes peaked in 1978 (although the tables I have didn't include '73, so
|> it's possible that was the peak -- in fact I think it was) and then
|> declined rapidly through 1982.  Because of the delay in economic effects,
|> those are the Carter years.
|> 
|> And the economic improvement was broad.  That is wasn't is a myth
|> perpetrated by a media fundamentally opposed to Reagan and his policies.
|> >From the Census Bureau:
|> 
|>                      Average Real Income (1989 Dollars)
|> 
|>                      Poorest 20%             Richest 20%
|>         1978           $6,769                  $71,793
|>         1980            6,494                   70,056
|>         1983            6,291                   71,983
|>         1985            6,470                   76,466
|>         1988            6,777                   82,554
|>         1989            6,994                   85,529
|> 
|> -------- (end of excerpt)
|> 
|> >The new wealth was limited to those who began with positions of economic (and
|> >therefore, political) control.  Also, much of the wealth was moved out of the
|> >US.
|> 
This chart shows that from 1978 to 1989, the Poorest 20% had a real income 
growth of 3.3% (0.2% annually) while the Richest 20% had a real income
growth of 19% (1.6% annually).  That shows the wealthy accumulated rate,
as families, at a rate 5.4 times that of the poor.  This discounts the
impact of second and third incomes in the families of the working poor.
Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:36187 alt.individualism:4640 alt.activism:13586