From: E7L8ALL@TOWSONVX.BITNET (Andrew Allen)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.politics
Subject: buffing out the primer...pt.3 of 3, whew
Date: 12 Nov 92 19:32:23 GMT
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Bite 3:

>>Before Reagan, my neighborhood was a safer place. Before Reagan when I
>>went downtown I would see a few (very few and infrequently) homeless
>>individuals, now there are homeless people in abundance downtown and
>>in my neighborhood as well. There is just no denying that under
>>Reagan (and his supply-side philosophy) poverty increased and became
>>more profound and unemployment increased significantly, not just
>>among factory workers either, I know engineers and scientists, highly
>>skilled people who are either unemployed or underemployed.

>       I disagree.  Some numbers?

The rise of the homeless population is a difficult thing to quantify
since the government tends not to document facts that embarrass it.

According to my personal librarian and occasional savior (to whom
I have submitted an official information grovel application for
the particulars here) there was no attempt made to count the
homeless population in the 1980 Census; in 1990 they did attempt
to do a count, but the figures are not yet available.

This of course does not leave us entirely out in the cold, however,
one can find a huge number of reports in the media during the
Reagan years documenting that the homeless population was growing
by leaps and bounds, well beyond the capacity of the shelters
and charitable organizations ability to cope with the burgeoning
population of homeless. There were also numerous reports of
a change in the composition of the homeless population, with a
significant rise in the numbers of homeless families.

I am certain that these people were not just indulging in a new
urban outdoor camping fad.

The growth of this group of people, your figures indicating that
they made 19% more income during these years notwithstanding, indicates
that there was a signifcant growth in the size and depth of poverty
in the Reagan era.

When my local as-close-to-omniscient-as-a-guy-with-a-lot-of-books-can-be
libertarian librarian points me toward the venerable tome that contains
accurate figures on this, rest assured, I will post them. B)


>>>       I'd be more than glad to give up the extra cars and TVs if it means
>>>Mexican workers are earning enough to buy GM cars and Zenith TVs.
>
>>Being in the upper tax bracket you would likely not be called upon to make
>>that sacrifice, at least not until hundreds of thousands of other people
>>were asked to give up little comforts like food, clothing and shelter.

>       I fail to see how you arrive at such a statement.  People would not
>lack for those things in a thriving economy.

You provide the thriving economy and we'll talk. B) Depends on what you call
a thriving economy; the economy under Reagan was not thriving by my standards.
The loss of those high wage jobs in industry and the accelerated failure
of farms and small businesses do not indicate "thriving" to me. It seems
to me that exporting more of these jobs to places that pay less without
having a plan to create more high wage jobs here is a bad idea.


>>       Supply side did not bring us those things.  It brought jobs, decreasing
>>deficits (as a % of GNP), etc.  The only social stratification I have seen is
>>by those promoting class warfare (ie, progressive income taxes).
>
>Well feel free to pop by sometime, I can arrange a tour for you...B)
>
>About this "warfare" thing, I am not interested in penalizing the wealthy,
>only in having them carry their fair share of the load.

>       Okay, define "fair".

You might start with my comment in a previous post in this series regarding
economic activities paying a fair price for the resources (physical and human)
that they exploit to make profit.

No doubt we could have fun arguing this by itself... B)

>Brett'

-other Andy
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