I can’t begin to tell you how disgusted I am by the “Reagasm” that seemed to go on all weekend, in honor of his 100th birthday. Yes, I know, lefties; his policies would be seen as “too liberal” by the teabaggers spewing forth these days, and yes, he had the veneer of a “nice guy,” which makes him “better,” on some level, than Caribou Barbie. But frankly, I would be a better president than either Palin or Reagan, and I in no way feel qualified for the position.
Can we get real here? Three of the last four presidencies before President Obama were absolute disasters, and if being the best of a bad lot redeems Reagan somehow, then I suggest we need new standards. Yes, he was slightly more competent than either of the two Bushes, in some ways. But without Ronald Reagan, the combination of the Taft wing of the Republican Party and the old Dixiecrats would never have taken over one of our two political parties, and created the nightmare that has resulted from thirty years of neocon rule. Reagan was a disaster, and it's time we exploded some myths. If you want some ammo to throw at the Ronnie worshippers, well, here you go...
Ronald Reagan did NOT cut taxes for most people -- Reality is, Reagan reduced taxes greatly on the very rich, but raised them on the rest of us. When Reagan took office, the top tax rate was 50%. When he left office, the top tax rate was 28%. That’s a 40% decrease, just for making a lot of money. The rest of us got a reduction, at first, but it wasn't anywhere close to 40%.
Our decrease didn't last long, in any case. Payroll taxes went up significantly, when Social Security and Medicare were overhauled beginning in 1983, and when the income tax system was “simplified” in the Tax “Reform” Act of 1986, a lot of deductions that people in the middle class had depended upon up to that point went away, in favor of the “standard deduction.”
According to the Congressional Budget Office ("Congressional Study: Tax Progressivity and Income Distribution," 26 March 1990. CIS#H782-11), while the effective tax rate for the rich went down, the tax rate for everyone else went up. This is how taxes for various families changed during the Reagan years.
|
Quintile |
1980 |
1985 |
1990 |
% Change - 1980-1990 |
|
Lowest 20% |
8.4 |
10.6 |
9.7 |
16.1 |
|
Second 20% |
15.7 |
16.1 |
16.7 |
6 |
|
Third 20% |
20 |
19.3 |
20.3 |
1.2 |
|
Fourth 20% |
23 |
21.7 |
22.5 |
-2.2 |
|
Highest 20% |
27.3 |
24 |
25.8 |
-5.5 |
|
Top 1% |
31.8 |
24.9 |
27.2 |
-14.4 |
That’s right; numbers don’t lie. Taxes for the rich went down under Reagan, and taxes for the poor and middle class went up.
Getting back to the Tax “Reform” Act of 1986. Everyone’s income taxes went down a bit with that one, but it didn’t even come close to covering the increase in payroll taxes that the non-rich had experienced just a year or two earlier. The initial intent of this reform, which was led by Rep. Bill Bradley, a true progressive in many ways, was to overhaul the tax code and make it simpler and more fair. We got the "simpler," but the "more fair" was lacking in the end. This is the effective income (NOT payroll) tax rate, when Reagan oversaw tax “reform:”
|
Numbers do not lie; your taxes went up under Ronald Reagan, not down, unless you’re one of those lucky folks who just happen to be rich.
To his credit, Reagan did expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, which helped the very poor escape taxes, but it left out the middle class, for the most part.
I would also point out that Reagan himself proved that tax cuts do not increase tax revenues. If they had, why did he raise taxes on so many people? And that leads us to another Reagan myth:
Supply-side economics did NOT increase tax revenues under Ronald Reagan – Reagan cut taxes for the rich drastically in the early 1980s, based on the idiotic concept of “supply-side economics.” Basically, under this theory, the less tax everyone pays, the more they produce with the money they save, because they will create jobs and more income opportunities for everyone else.
Unfortunately, this only works when it comes to people with little or no disposable income. The family in the chart above making $30-40,000 per year was likely to use that $467 to make a mortgage payment, or perhaps put a down payment on a car, or pay some utility bills. But the millionaire family saving $281,033 isn’t likely to do much with that money, and they’re certainly not likely to go out and “create jobs” with it.
This isn’t just a theory, folks; we have numbers. This is how much money our Treasury took in during each year of the Reagan era (The “Constant” figures are 1987 dollars):
|
FY |
Actual |
Constant |
|
1980 |
517.1 |
728.1 |
|
1981 |
599.3 |
766.6 |
|
1982 |
617.8 |
738.2 |
|
1983 |
600.6 |
684.3 |
|
1984 |
666.6 |
730.4 |
|
1985 |
734.1 |
776.6 |
|
1986 |
169.1 |
790 |
|
1987 |
854.1 |
854.1 |
|
1988 |
909 |
877.3 |
|
1989 |
990.7 |
916.2 |
|
1990 |
1031.3 |
914.1 |
As you can see, in inflation-adjusted dollars, revenues didn’t increase significantly until Reagan RAISED TAXES on most of us. Note the first significant increase in revenue isn't until 1987.
As I’ve pointed out, the best way to wipe out a deficit is not to cut spending, but increase income. In the case of your personal finances, you wouldn’t turn off your furnace, shut off the electricity and walk ten miles to work every day to save gas, you’d get a second job. When talking about an entire country, the way to increase tax revenues is to invest in the country and its infrastructure and create more taxpayers. And that leads us to another Reagan myth:
The economy did NOT boom under Ronald Reagan – This one should be a no-brainer, but the phrase “second-longest peacetime economic expansion in history” has been repeated so much that I’m not surprised that so many bought this ridiculous notion.
The fact of the matter is, there was no economic boom under Reagan. The average unemployment rate in 1980 was 7.2%. It went as high as 11% (yes, folks, higher than it’s been under Bush/Obama) in 1982 and the average unemployment rates for 1982 and 1983 (AFTER the huge tax cuts for the rich) were 9.7% and 9.6%, respectively. In fact, the unemployment rate when he was reelected in a landslide in 1984 was 7.6%, and it didn’t even go below 7% until AFTER (are you sitting down, right wingers?) he raised taxes for most people. The lowest unemployment rate of his presidency was 5.2% in January 1989, as he was leaving office. Not bad, but not exactly something to write home to mother about. The Republicans at the time even tried to suggest that 5% was as low as the rate could go, and that 5% constituted "full employment," which flies in the face of every economic theory out there.
I know it’s popular to give Reagan the credit for getting a handle on inflation, but it was the high interest rates that Carter allowed to be implemented by Paul Volcker that finally took care of inflation, and Volcker was hired by Jimmy Carter, not Reagan. In fact, Reagan essentially "fired" Volcker, by denying him a third term, and put Alan Greenspan in charge. Ahem.
And when you talk about growth rates, Reagan’s don’t come close to even Obama’s during his short tenure, let alone Clinton’s. In fact, the GDP growth rate of 4.1% under Clinton in 1994, the year he lost Congress, was higher than any GDP growth rate during Ronald Reagan’s entire presidency.
When it comes to job creation, Reagan ranks as the third-worst among all post-war presidents, just ahead of the two Bushes. The number of jobs grew by 2.1% per year under Reagan; about half the job growth rate under Eisenhower, just over half the rate under Johnson and Clinton, and a full percentage point BELOW (yes, folks, this is true) Jimmy Carter.
Yes, folks, Jimmy Carter created more jobs than Ronald Reagan did during what he considered a "boom."
And for those who think Reagan was great for business, let’s burst another bubble for you. According to figures by Dun & Bradstreet, the number of failed businesses soared under Reagan; in fact, the number of failed businesses seen during most of the Reagan years was more than FOUR TIMES anything seen while Carter was president. Check these out (the “rate” column is the number of failed per 10,000 businesses):
|
Year |
# Failures |
Rate |
|
1970 |
10,748 |
44 |
|
1975 |
11,432 |
43 |
|
1980 |
11,742 |
42 |
|
1981 |
16,794 |
61 |
|
1982 |
24,908 |
88 |
|
1983 |
31,334 |
110 |
|
1984 |
52,078 |
107 |
|
1985 |
57,078 |
115 |
|
1986 |
61,116 |
120 |
|
1987 |
61,111 |
102 |
|
1988 |
57,098 |
98 |
|
1989 |
50,361 |
65 |
|
1990 |
60,747 |
74 |
Okay, so we have historically high unemployment, moderate growth, job creation numbers that are only slightly better than both Bushes, and a record number of business failures.
If that sounds like a "boom" to anyone, then you have no standards.
Ronald Reagan did NOT reduce the size of government – Oh, sure, he slashed and burned just about any program designed to help the poor and working class that he could get his hands on, but his enormous increases in “Defense” spending more than offset those cuts. The fact of the matter is, the government was a about 25% larger when he left office in 1989 than it was when he took office in 1981. The civilian federal workforce actually grew from 2.8 million to 3 million during the Reagan years. And when you remove the bloated “defense” budget from the equation, that number still increased.
With all of the big talk about “limited government,” under Reagan, government spending as a percentage of GDP went from 33.8% in FY 1981, Carter’s last budget, to 34.9% in 1989, Reagan’s last, and topped 35% of GDP five times. Overall, government spending under Reagan increased by 80%, even though inflation was under control by then.
Ronald Reagan, not the “Democratic Congress,” is responsible for the “culture of debt” mentality that engulfed Washington – First off, the budget comes from the Executive Branch, not Congress. Another fact you should know is that Republicans controlled the Senate for six of eight years that Reagan was in charge. The president submits a budget, and Congress hashes it out, amends it and molds it into what will eventually become law. Since it can’t become law unless the president signs it, they have to send back something the president will sign, or the government shuts down. If the “Democratic Congress” sent Reagan a proposed budget that slashed 20% from “Defense,” for example, Reagan would have vetoed it and make them go back to the drawing board. Therefore, the president, for better or worse, has the bulk of the responsibility for any budget. You should also know that, in six out of eight years, the “Democratic Congress” sent budgets to Reagan to sign that were smaller than the Reagan Administration proposed in the first place.
From 1946 through 1981, as Democrats and moderate Republicans ran the show, the national debt shrunk from 120% of GDP after the war, to just under 33% of GDP. During the Reagan years, that debt tripled in raw numbers, and constituted 56% of GDP by the time he left office. Keep in mind; this is while they were bragging about a “boom,” calling for “smaller government,” and claiming that cutting taxes increases revenues.
Reagan was NOT a “nice guy” when he was president – This one makes me crazy, because even libs say it as if it’s a fact. Perhaps it’s a “don’t speak ill of the dead” thing. And I want to make clear; I never knew the man; perhaps he was a wonderful friend. I’m talking about his record as president here, not his personal relationships.
Based on his record as president, he was downright mean to the poor and working classes. He slashed most government job training programs, including the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, or CETA, which had been an essential part of preparing workers for jobs by training them through infrastructure projects since it began as the "Works Progress Administration" as part of the "New Deal." Entire programs were dumped or gutted financially.
During the Reagan years, AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) payments were cut severely, meaning single mothers with several small children were forced to figure out how to keep their children healthy on less money. In constant 1987 dollars, the average AFDC payment per family dropped from $367 in 1981 to $276 in 1989. The average Food Stamp benefit per person stayed flat; it was $45 per person in 1981 and $46 in 1989. Those of you who were around then know that, even back then, no one was living well on $367 per month; to reduce that even more was just plain cruel.
And he was cutting all of these programs, even as the poverty level soared. The poverty rate was 12.7% when Reagan took office, topped 15% by 1983, and never went below 13% while Reagan was in office, despite the supposed “boom” he and his acolytes always brag about. The levels of poverty seen during the Reagan years had not been seen since the 1950s, and certainly not since the War on Poverty programs had taken effect in the 1960s. By way of comparison, the poverty rate in 2009 was 14.3% in 2009, which matched the average poverty rate during the Reagan years. (Again; where was this boom?)
For the first time in the post-war era, under Reagan, the minimum wage actually dropped in real (inflation-adjusted) dollars, and when asked about it
His treatment of Air Traffic Controllers set the stage for a wholesale dismantling of trade unions during the 1980s than continues to this day, resulting in depressed wages for most people. In fact, Reagan, who was, ironically, a former union leader, went far beyond PATCO when it came to undermining unions in this country. His nominees to the NLRB were so bad that a House subcommittee found that they had abandoned their oversight responsibilities in what they referred to as "a betrayal of American workers." In eight years, Reagan's NLRB settled half as many complaints as Carter's had in four, and they sided with employers in three-quarters of cases. By comparison, even Nixon's NRLB only sided with employers a third of the time.
It was also during the so-called Reagan “boom” that we began to lose the middle class. Income inequality is bad now, but the trend was started under Reagan. As a “nice guy,” he could easily have adjusted his policies to stop the trend, but he chose not to. Thus, we’re left with numbers like these. Note the brakes “nice guy” Reagan put on income growth for most of the American people. The following chart demonstrates how much incomes grew during the post-war period, and how much they grew after Reagan took over:
|
Quintile |
1950-1978 |
1979-1993 |
|
Lowest 20% |
138% |
-15% |
|
Second 20% |
98 |
-7 |
|
Third 20% |
106 |
-3 |
|
Fourth 20% |
111 |
5 |
|
Highest 20% |
99 |
18 |
Of course, the second time period is half the length of the first. But during a "boom," shouldn’t we be seeing numbers that are at least positive for most folks? I'll have more on this in the future, too; notice that, when taxes were higher and the government was spending on infrastructue, everyone did well. With Reagan (and Bush) in charge, only the very rich do well. So much for that rising tide, huh?
In 1980, the average CEO made 30 times the amount of his lowest paid workers; by 1990, that number was up to 130 times. As a share of corporate profits, executive compensation went from just under 28% in 1980 to 61% in 1989. The wages of those making less than $50,000 – which at the time constituted 85% of the population – went up by an average of 2% per year, which was far less than the rate of inflation. At the same time, wages of millionaires shot up by 243%. Even as the poverty rate was higher than at any time since the 1950s, the number of millionaires increased from 648,000 in 1980 to 1.5 million in 1989. Families in the bottom 60% of earners saw their real (inflation adjusted) earnings drop by more than 4% between 1979 and 1990, while those in the top 10% saw their real earnings rise by about 20%. The top 5% saw a 25% increase and the top 1% saw a 45% increase.
Now, would a “nice guy” in charge of the country allow such a thing to stand, without even attempting to do anything about it? I'm a nice guy; when I see someone drowning, I would go in to save them, or at least get them a life raft. The "Nice" Mr. Reagan was throwing them lead weights.
Reagan did NOT cause the collapse of the Soviet Union – If anything, Reagan brought us closer to the collapse of our own economy than anything. Before he took office, the “Defense” budget was beginning to reflect the fact that we weren’t at war. Also, there were already signs that the Soviet economy was collapsing from within. When they invaded Afghanistan, they did themselves in, financially; it simply wasn’t possible to throw as much money down that rathole as they were, and continue to stay fiscally sound. In the meantime, we were throwing hundreds of billions of dollars into weapons systems that we didn’t need, and training troops for a war that was never going to happen.
Just FYI, I wrote a paper when I was in high school, at age 17, predicting the end of the Soviet Union by the end of the century, because their economy couldn't operate with as much debt as it was piling up. And I'm no genius.
Reagan did not “support and defend the Constitution"; he undermined it – There has been a trend during the last 30 years to put government power ahead of individual liberty, and for that mindset, you can thank Ronald Reagan. Reagan didn’t give a damn about your personal freedoms, and it showed.
The “Drug War,” for example, accelerated greatly under Reagan. Yes, drugs are a problem. But more of a problem is the circumvention of individual rights in order to try to keep drugs out of the hands of bad people. Making drugs illegal, and using draconian means to find them, has created a major boom in the illegal drug trade, making criminals filthy rich and turning average people with a weakness into criminals. Reagan oversaw mandatory sentencing laws that put innocent drug users in jail, while doing little to nothing about those who actually import and sell the drugs and make billions from it.
It was under Reagan that profiling proliferated. Black men who were happily driving their luxury cars on major highways were being stopped because they were assumed to be drug dealers. Meanwhile, the clean-cut white kid in the buzz cut and the old, beat-up Honda drove by with a few hundred pounds hidden under the back seat.
It was under Reagan that police were encouraged to become corrupt. Basically, if they “suspected” someone of being a drug dealer, they got to keep whatever cash they confiscated, and it was up to the accused to go to court and demand his money back. Under Reagan, anyone who paid cash for an airline ticket, or who attempted to carry cash onto a plane, was considered guilty until proven innocent. As a result of the “drug war” that Reagan really started, we now have more people incarcerated in our prisons than anyone on earth, as a percentage of our population.
You know that I-9 form you have to fill out every time you take a job? Reagan. Yeah, thanks to Reagan, you now have to prove you’re NOT here illegally in order to get a job.
Ronald Reagan's energy policies did not keep gasoline prices low -- When Reagan took office, we had energy policies in place that were designed to reduce our personal fossil fuel use by 5% per year, even as our population increased, meaning a net decrease, and the eventual elimination of oour dependence on foreign oil. And those policies were working great. In addition, there was massive investment in alternative fuels and clean energy.
In 1982, Reagan ditched all of it. The short term effects were to drive gasoline prices to record lows for a couple of years. But the long term effects were to encourage the use of gas guzzlers and to all but abandon our research into oil replacements, even though everyone knew the Chinese and Indian markets were about to see significant growth over the coming century.
In other words, if you want to know why you're filling a 10 miles-per-gallon hog with $3 per gallon gasoline, you can thank Ronald Reagan. If we had continued down the path we were on, that hog would be getting at least 25 miles per gallon (the technology exists, folks), and it's quite possible it would be running on a combination of gasoline and biofuel, or a bio-fuel.electric hybrid. That means you could be spending 12 cents per mile to drive your hog, rather than the 30-40 cents you're paying now. Or you could be using the electric engine for short trips, at 3 cents per mile.
Ronald Reagan is at least partly responsible for why we're still using way too much OPEC oil, and why soldiers, like my son, are having to fight at the moment.
That’s enough for now. I also have enough for a follow up, like the millions who died of AIDS while he sat on his hands and pretended there wasn't a problem. But honestly, isn’t this enough to prove, once and for all, that Ronald Reagan was one of our worst president? No matter how many buildings and roadways the right wingers name after him, he’ll never be good enough.
He was a disaster as a president. Period. That he was better than Bush, Jr. only mitigates that to a small degree.
