Reaganomics verses Supply Side Economics.

there is a huge difference between supply side economics and whatever it was that Reagan did. Had Reagan cut taxes on the wealthy, reduced government spending to sub deficit levels, ensured that established companies were not legally propped up by legislation that discouraged competition and initiated a mostly hands off policy towards business regulation, (monitoring, investigating and prosecuting fraud, human exploitation, insider dealing and anti-trust shenanigans being the exceptions), it would have been interesting indeed to see where we would be right now. The problem is that he cut taxes on the rich and then did the exact opposite on everything else. To add insult to that offense, he also hijacked the ‘Supply Side Economics’ label and applied it to that bastard step child that he created.

Now it is a question of semantics. This irrational push from the right towards the outright political canonization of Ronald Reagan has only allowed that mislabeled, whatever of a policy he created to stick as supply side economics. Whenever there is any attempt to have a rational conversation about SSE, you are dealing with 2 fundamentally different perceptions. Are you talking about SSE in the ideal sense that has in practice, never been applied in today’s modern world or are you talking SSE in the context of what RR recklessly unleashed upon this society? Unfortunately, when you try to discuss SSE with one of the apparent legions of the Reagan corpse riders, you will get little to no rational discourse from them because any questioning of SSE is perceived as an attack on the very legacy of RR.

SSE – Little or no taxes on business. Little to no interference by the government except as listed above. In theory, that would allow for companies to honestly compete against each other. Those that were managed strategically would grow, create more jobs, those newly employed people would spend their money by pumping it back into that capitalistic engine, and up, up, up and away we would go. To me, the realistic side of me is leery of that because it does not place a check on greed and the devastating consequences that greed can inflict upon a society. Industrialized Briton and America way back when to me are good examples of the dangers of that. Their legal structure at the time was not mature enough to keep up with that industrialization. There was a lot of collateral damage from that and the working class overall was adversely exploited due to that.

Reaganonomics – Cut taxes. Rationalize/market those tax cuts and corresponding INCREASE in deficit spending by saying that as SSE promises to pump more money into the economy, in addition to creating more jobs, it will also put more money back into government coffers to pay down that deficit spending. As a way to appease the very Wall Street overlords who already should have been sated enough, cozy up to them. Allow them to expand a budding lobbying industry in order to legally facilitate and control the transfer money from the public sector to the legislative sector under the guise of “campaign contributions.” The best way to have that money continue to flow? Glad you asked. Write into law legislation favorable to them even if by doing that, it legally mitigates the little things like an honest and pesky approach to things like honest competition and reasonable labor laws.

I personally think the most understated but most remarkable thing the Republican Party has been able to do these past 30 years has been to cobble enough of a political coalition and keep it together for as long as they have for them to have remained in power and still be relevant in today’s world. Divide and conquer. They took hot button issues that mean a tremendous amount to many people on an emotional level, yet are fundamental personal choice issues that an open and free government has no business being on either side of, figured out which side would give them the most popular support and embraced those issues as their own.

Think about it. If a political party told you they were going to give favorable tax consideration to the very rich. They were going to stiff your kids with an oppressive debt. They were going to create a system where some of that money was going to be funneled back to them so they could keep on spreading their message in order to keep their political jobs. They were also going to foster a non competitive market with adverse conditions towards any new competition and as a consequence, have it so tilted towards the status quo that things like boom and bust cycles, increasing demands on individual productivity, recessions and market corrections would pretty much ensure that the purchasing power of the middle class and the relative number of available jobs to them would at best stay flat, they would be lucky to be pulling Green Party numbers at the polls right now.

The genius of the Republican Party was that they had the foresight to exploit those political hot button emotional issues in order to stay in power. “Hate flag burners? Guess what, so do we. Come join us. Does abortion make you want to cry inside at just the thought of it? Me too sweetie, me too. Come join us and we will fight it together. Hey Jethro, did you know those filthy hippies want to take away your guns? That’s fucked up! Come join us and you can keep them. What? Little Bubba can’t say one little prayer in school? WTF! Join us and we will fight that.” And on and on. The very people that they throw to the wolves on a continuing basis under the banner of "Reaganonimics" to the very corrupt market that they encouraged through Reganomics on an almost cyclical basis are the very ones who think that the Republican Party is all that stands between them and whatever. Masterful indeed!

Bonus irony: Not one of those issues has been resolved favorably to the Republican side! That leads me to believe that the last thing the Republican Party would ever want is for all guns and school prayer to be legal and flag burning and abortion to be outlawed. Think about that for a minute. In the past 30 years, not one of their major hot button mass issues has been resolved? Has anyone asked why that is? IMO, if that were to happen, people then might start questioning, “Hey, wait a minute, where did all of our money/jobs/productivity go?”

Maintaining the status quo is their meal ticket and I seriously doubt they will allow anything to ever threaten that. Including allowing a favorable resolution of those core issues for their constituents. Divide/conquer and fear mongering seem to be their favored tactic towards staying in power. I think that was in clear evidence during this recent HC debate. Honestly, I don’t think any core Republican looks at that loss as anything other than an outright political win. In my eyes, this to them is a win because the more of their base they keep on their side of the isle, to keep on “fighting for them”, the longer they get to keep on being relevant and enrich themselves as they keep on enriching already very rich people.

Think about that for a second. They were able to get huge numbers of people actually and seriously pissed off at having a better deal as far as their own health care coverage goes! Is anyone going to tell me that was not the most genius stroke of political manipulation of this generation? A good portion of members in our society are going to ultimately benefit from that. And around half of them are still going to feel liked they got fucked in the ass! Want proof? Look no further than the comments from the right side of that debate. GENIUS!

Agree with me or not. Split hairs on specific issues I brought up and tear me up on them to your heart’s content. But I defy anyone to look overall at what I said objectively and then honestly tell me I am wrong. Many may disagree with me philosophically and that is fine. But there is absolutely nothing you or anyone else can say to refute my underlying belief that RR fucked us all royally and that the Republican Party is the party of exploitation.

Seriously, can the Republican Party be anymore full of it?

I guess their new strategy is to conveniently have everyone forget what they did in practice and still market the ideals that they suckered people with into granting them power the last go around.

They are like a cheating husband who had his way with any woman he that could charm the panties off of when he was married and now that he got kicked out of the house, he swears he won’t do it again. Sorry, but past performance is the most accurate predictor of future behavior. They financially raped, pillaged and screwed over 90% of the workers in this country. Now they are trying to sell themselves as friends to those very same people.

They did not cut a dime in taxes. Every “tax cut” they enacted was paid for by tacking it on to the deficit which will have to be paid back with, you guessed it, more taxes.

They are not “for” small government if you measure the size of government by spending. Bush 2.0 signed the first 2 trillion dollar budget and he signed the first 3 trillion dollar budget.

Ronald Reagan started the whole, ‘pay for government by deficit spending’ course that we are on now. The only President in the last 29 years to have a balanced budget was a Democrat. It’s sadly Ironic that the first 10 trillion in debt was perfectly OK in the eyes of the Republican party, yet Obama’s 2 trillion on top of that, money spent to pay for the economic shambles that the Republicans left in their wake I might add, is now considered an economic crisis in the eyes of the Republicans.

(Here is another FYI: That whole, “tax cuts and deficit spending will pay for its self in the form of more revenues later on” thing was a pack of lies. The average American worker got suckered into that corporate transfer of wealth, BIG TIME!)

If they had any desire for market based health care reform, they would have done it sometime between 2001 and 2007. Their Medicare overhaul was proof positive that the only people they care about are the ones at the top of big business, not the average worker.

They did nothing about energy reform. Seriously, what is different from what we had in 2001 and what we have right now? Pretty much nothing except higher energy prices. Republicans have never submitted a coherent energy policy for today and have utterly no plan for our future energy needs. If you look at what they did objectively, it seems their only plan was to ensure that more American money was put into the hands of OPEC nations. If that was indeed the case, their strategy was a roaring success.

They don’t support workers rights at all which was made very clear when they revised the Fair Labor Standards Act. They made sure that fewer American workers could unionize and they made sure that fewer Americans are even eligible for overtime. (A Registered Nurse is now considered exempt which means that it is illegal for them to form new unions and they are not legally required to be paid overtime.) That section alone did not benefit workers, it benefited business. Our Republican friends working for us, the average worker!!!

It’s funny how they talk about illegal immigrant amnesty. The Republican “God”, Ronald Reagan in 1986, signed into law the Simpson-Mazzoli act which, you guessed it, granted amnesty to illegal immigrants. What was the Republican solution to illegal immigration when they had control? They wanted to build a wall. And that is not close to being even half way done. But I’m not worried, that 1000+ mile fence at a cost of 2 million+/mile I am sure will work just fine.

They have no idea how to win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If they did, both wars would have lasted less time than WWII. Now that they are on the outside looking in, all of a sudden they now know what to do? Ha! Here is a thought, neither war is in any way winnable. Let’s just get the hell out of both places.

The containment of Iran and North Korea worked wonders over the past administration. Those sanctions and tough talking did great! They went from being threats to submitting to international pressure and being closer to joining a peaceful world society. Oh wait…

Thank God gays won’t be able to get married. As a strait, heterosexual male, I can honestly say that me not being able to marry another man is my deepest concern. That is, it would be if I wanted to be pandered too with irrational fear mongering scare tactics. I am so glad that is among your top 10 priorities. Go Republicans!!!

So now they support the lives of vulnerable people in the form of opposing health care rationing and public funding for abortions. Where was that altruistic support when the lives of vulnerable people were being ripped a financial new one by our Wall Street overlords? Oh right, it was their fault. It was the poor decisions by the average worker that ensured that they would work more for less, all in the name of productivity. It was the poor decisions by the average worker that saw their retirement savings decline when they put that money into Wall Street in the form of pensions and 401k’s. Those ignorant and irresponsible American workers.

Here is a news flash. No one is going to take your guns. But keep up with the scare tactics. I hear the NRA is planning a new membership drive.

The only thing the Republican Party cares about is power. They lost it and now they crave it back. It seems the only thing they can think of to gain it back is to recycle their already proven pack of lies. To the detriment of everyone, I hope at some point during the long future of viewing an effective one party rule from the sidelines, they can figure it out.

Idiots.

The thing is, the Republicans had a glorious chance. If they had done what they say they stand for, they would still be in power today and the end of that rein would be a long time off. They would have had no reason to pander to special interests and the Christian right because the majority of American workers would have been fine with their fiscal practices and supported them.

For that matter, I would still be a Republican.