From: nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu (Nathan Engle)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: The price of freedom
Date: 28 Jul 92 14:50:04 GMT
Organization: Psych Department, Indiana University

best@anasazi.com (Mike Best) writes:
>nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu (Nathan Engle) writes:
>>Reagon's deregulation of the S&L's created a really neato short-term 
>>economic growth pattern which made Reagon's statistics look better as
>>he left office ("Golden Parachute"?), but I hope we would agree that 
>>the deregulation of the S&L's was not one of Reagon's most successful
>>policies?

>Sorry to jump in the middle but...  Deregulation is not the major cause
>behind the S&L problem.  The devaluation of real estate due to the 1986
>federal tax law changes is the instigating and sustaining cause.  The
>S&Ls, like ordinary citizens, saw real estate as a good investment for
>a myriad of reasons.

    In retrospect, I can only wonder whether that "myriad" of reasons was 
actually based on sound, "conservative" investment strategies.

>Unfortunately, the Democrats saw people succeding and put an end to that.

   Yep, I guess it was just those evil Democrats. They convinced people 
that real estate was over-valued, and prevented those S&L managers from 
using unoccupied, uncompleted properties to balance their books. Those
evil Democrats.

>If you are claiming that the huge rise in economic prosperity is due to
>government spending then I think you've come to an illogical conclusion.

    No, the "selling out" to which I was referring was not based 
exclusively on government spending. Part of it involved standing by while
the likes of Michael Milkin raided company after company, converting their
solvent retirement funds into suitcases full of junk bonds. Another part of 
it involved cutting loose S&L managers to infuse money into the economy any
old how regardless of the long term prospects for the investments.

    I believe that my basic point is that Reagan's "huge rise in economic
prosperity" was primarily fueled by a collection of short term fixes and 
statistical/bookkeeping hocus pocus.

>First of all, more than 2/3rds of the deficit spending is on entitlements
>and interest on the debt.  Did entitlements fuel the economy?

    Well, I'm sorry, but I am in favor of at least some of the entitlement
programs our government sponsors. For instance, I believe that veterans of
our armed forces and their families should be entitled to be supported
by such programs. There is certainly room for debate on just which 
entitlement programs are good and justifiable, however I think that it's 
a mistake to try to use the term "entitlement program" as just another 
code word for Democratic policies.

    Thus, in answer to your question, I would say "Yes, to a certain
extent money spent on entitlement programs helped to fuel the economy."
It continues to fuel the economy today. However, I would say that in at
least some cases the money we spend on "entitlements" is partial-repayment
for services rendered, and it would be crass and short-sighted to imply 
that people receiving government benefits are unjustified in doing so.

--
Nathan Engle                        Software Juggler
Psychology Department               Indiana University
nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu      nengle@copper.ucs.indiana.edu
Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh