Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Date: Sunday, 15 Nov 1992 12:05:38 PST
From: <DURRETT@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU>
Newsgroups: alt.fan.dan-quayle
Subject: Re: the real Reagan record
 <92317.211208KEL111@psuvm.psu.edu> <BxrHru.JCs@math.uwaterloo.ca>


In article <BxrHru.JCs@math.uwaterloo.ca>, shallit@graceland.uwaterloo.ca
(Jeffrey Shallit) says:
>
>In article <92317.211208KEL111@psuvm.psu.edu> Kurt Ludwick
><KEL111@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>>
>>The truth is,
>>people in -all- income brackets, as a whole, did better in the 80s because
>>of supply-side economics.
>
>Not according to Kevin Phillips, the *conservative* political commentator.
>His book, The Politics of Rich and Poor, is a devastating critique of
>the Reagan-Bush economic legacy.  Table I, on page 17, reveals that
>average family income, in *constant dollars*, *decreased* for the bottom
>8 of the ten deciles from 1977 to 1988.  Only for the top 10% of Americans
>was there any significant increase, and that increase was highly
>concentrated in the top 1%.
>
>Jeff Shallit

Look, I'm as ready as anyone to bash the heads of state for the last n
years(where n is a large number), but if you wish me to agree that this
statistic in anyway reflects the performance of the economy, especially
how the performance of the economy affected people with various income
levels differentially, under what we are assuming is the ReaganBush
Philosophy(tm), then you're out to lunch. From 1977-1980, inclusive,
Jimmy Carter was in office! At the very least, I would think we would
agree that Carter had a different philosophy in this regard than Reagan.
This is very likely a good example of lying with statistics. What we
really need to address the issue properly is the same statistic for the
period 1982-19<latest available>. This number will demonstrate
conclusively the validity of this sort of argument(though I would argue
that more complete statistics, including a breakdown by quintile or
decile would be preferable). Personally, though, I don't *care* if the
rich got richer, so long as everyone gained in real terms. My suspicion
is that the perceived failure(whether real or not) of so-called
trickle-down economics is due largely to the fact that we financed it
by running up the debt, thus sucking much of the money which should
have financed investment in productive jobs at low overhead(i.e., more
goods/jobs/services per dollar invested) into $600 toilet seats,
(what I perceive to be needless) research into SDI, and other weapons
development. It was a wasted opportunity, and now we will pay for it.
When Reagan took office, the US debt was (just) under $1T, and increasing
at a rate of 5-10%/year. Now it's $4T, and increasing at 10%/year. I
don't know by how much the GNP grew, but I suspect it wasn't 300%.

What clearly happened was that the ReaganBush administrations didn't
believe in supply-side economics, because if they did, they didn't
practice it. It's kind of like believing in safe sex, but dying of AIDS
because you couldn't be bothered to use a condom. *We* may get lucky,
though. We might be able to bail ourselves out of it. But I'm not
holding my breath.

Roo-Dog Rip

Roo-Dog Rip is:                  <>SLAC, Stanford, the DOE and the
Derrell Durrett                  <>University of Colorado neither claim
D_DURRETT@COLOPHYS.BITNET        <>responsibility nor accept liability
D_DURRETT%KAOS@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU <>for my opinions. Gee- what a surprise.
Newsgroups: alt.fan.dan-quayle