At 7:17 PM +0000 1/9/03, olympus-digest wrote:
>Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2003 09:52:33 -0800
>From: Jan Steinman <Jan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [OM] Re: Revisionist history of the 70s economy
>
> >From: Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@xxxxxxxxx>
> >
> >Not to mention some tax&spend Democrats who liked the idea very much.
>
>I'm confused. After 8 years of Democratic leadership, we had a budget surplus,
>and were paying down our national debt.
>
>After just 2 years of Republican leadership, we are back to deficit spending,
>adding to our national debt.
>
>(Granted, the economy has a lot to do with that, but still...)
Seriously, the argument is not so much on how much to spend as what to spend it
on. Regan wanted more guns and less butter, Democrats wanted the opposite.
Nothing new under the Sun.
>I don't really want to start a political flame war here, but it seems
>labelling situations only make one look silly.
I live in Massachussetts, where liberal-baiting is a blood sport for the few
diehard Republicans that grimly hang on, trying to even the odds. Republicans
win in Massachussetts only when the Democrats can't let go of each others'
throats. Actually, all politics is a blood sport.
>One thing I'll say for the Republicans: they've been very good at managing
>"labelling" like that. With his huge defense build-up, Regan was a much bigger
>spender than latter presidents, yet somehow the Dems got stuck with the image
>of spending.
The strategy was to force the Soviet Union into a spending contest that their
ramshackle economy hadn't a prayer of winning. It seems to have worked.
It happened time and time again, amid talk of this dim-bulb actor who took naps
and depended on 3x5 cards. Some issue would arise. There would be all this
talk that he could do A or B (both ineffectual) or C (efffective, but claimed
to be impossible), with all subsequent discussion focusing on A versus B. Then
Regan would wake up, do C, and go back to sleep.
Underestimating Regan seems to have been a common blunder.
>The biggest difference I see between "tax and spend" politicians and "tax-cut
>and spend" politicians (like Regan and Dubya) is that the latter put us
>further in debt faster.
Yes, but the real argument is over priorities; there isn't enough money to do
both.
And it would appear that people have also underestimated Dubya.
>But what do I know; I'm just a "liberal," and "everyone knows" that's
>somewhere between an earthworm and a terrorist in the grand scheme of
>things... :-)
Nah. Prey.
Joe Gwinn
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