XPost: alt.christnet.second-coming.real-soon-now, alt.flame.rednecks   
   From: arthures@mv.com   
      
   Hey Video....see below..   
      
   =======================   
      
   On Tue, 31 Aug 2010, Travis wrote:   
      
   > In the section titled "Politics and Economics" Sowell writes about   
   > Roosevelt in the Great Depression, and says that right wing revisionist   
   > lying pinheads like me are wrong to blame the great depression and the   
   > great Bush recession on leftists who had nothing to do with it, when the   
   > evidence points to failed right wing supply side economic principals that   
   > historically have never worked and always created massive debt,   
   > unemployment and economic slumps.   
   >   
   > As you know by now, I never read any of the books I talk of here because   
   > I'm just an old right wing fool who spent his entire life as a unionized   
   > Canadian civil servant and am now retired, relying on the tax payer funded   
   > social safety net to survive while posting rubbish here as my sole source   
   > of entertainment because I don't have the money for more interesting   
   > past times.  I'm nothing more than an elderly protoFascist and lowly   
   > amateur propagandist.   
   >   
   > ---   
   >   
   >   
   > Keynes is still the foundation of Economics.  Supply Side   
   > economics has NEVER been the foundation of anything except   
   > the Reagan political campaign.   
   >   
   >  "The supply-side idea is a simple one, and makes a   
   >  popular political message. However, it is interesting   
   >  to note that mainstream economists -- even   
   >  conservative ones -- almost universally reject   
   >  supply-side theory. In the early 80s, the influential   
   >  and multi-partisan American Economics Association had   
   >  18,000 members. Only 12 called themselves supply-side   
   >  economists.1 In American universities, there is no   
   >  major department that could be called "supply-side,"   
   >  and there is no supply-side economist at any major   
   >  department.2 This is significant, because academia in   
   >  the 70s was dominated by conservative economic theory,   
   >  and conservative economists normally welcome any ideas   
   >  that make the case against government intervention.   
   >  The fact that they scrutinized supply-side theory and   
   >  rejected it wholesale gives eloquent testimony to the   
   >  theory's bankruptcy. When candidate George Bush called   
   >  it "voodoo economics" in the 1980 presidential   
   >  campaign, he was doing so with the full backing of   
   >  America's economic community. "   
   >   
   > The second coming of supply-side economics is more dangerous than the   
   > first.   
   >   
   > The supply-side theory popularized by Ronald Reagan held that cutting   
   > taxes would lead to a great thrust of economic energy - and a rush of   
   > revenue into federal accounts that would replace the drain from the tax   
   > cuts themselves. It was, in the 1980s, called "voodoo economics" and a   
   > "Trojan horse." And that's just what some Republicans said.   
   >   
   > By the 1990s other words would describe supply-side economics. Like fiscal   
   > failure.   
   >   
   > No geyser of revenue rose up from the Reagan tax cuts. Federal revenues   
   > diminished in the aftermath of the 1981 tax cut, according to the White   
   > House Office of Management and Budget. Revenues as a percentage of the   
   > nation's gross domestic product declined from 19.6 percent when Reagan was   
   > inaugurated to 18.3 percent when he left Washington, even after a robust   
   > economic revival. They would drop further during the recession of the   
   > early 1990s.   
   >   
   > Spending reductions never materialized. Not, anyway, until implementation   
   > of deficit-reduction packages - forged at enormous political cost by the   
   > first President George Bush and then President Bill Clinton.   
   >   
   > Federal spending as a share of the economy was about the same when Reagan   
   > left the Oval Office as it was when he moved in. It did not begin a   
   > steady, downward path until 1992 - the year Bush was defeated for   
   > re-election, in part because a rift opened up in his party after he'd gone   
   > soft and raised taxes.   
   >   
   > And what of Republican predictions that the Clinton tax hike included in   
   > the 1993 deficit-reduction package would bring on economic Armageddon? It   
   > would seem that the 21 million jobs added to payrolls during the Clinton   
   > era speak truth to slogan.   
   >   
   > Nonetheless, we are mired now in another deficit inspired by the true   
   > supply-side believers, led by a most certain adherent, President George W.   
   > Bush. His deficit is about as large, as the share of the economy, as the   
   > budget gap was before his father became convinced of its danger.   
   >   
   > But we are at no risk of losing the current president to the politics of   
   > doing the right thing.   
   >   
   > He would like instead more tax cuts that go on forever and ever, an   
   > unstoppable force in the face of war and terror and any other historical   
   > inconvenience. This president cannot be persuaded to pragmatism.   
   >   
   > And that is what makes his deficits more dangerous than Reagan's. We   
   > haven't the political leadership we had the first time around. There is a   
   > dire shortage of men and women who are willing to speak up.   
   >   
   > Beginning immediately after the 1981 tax cut, Republican pragmatists   
   > within the Reagan White House and on Capitol Hill - people like Bob Dole   
   > and Howard Baker and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), the budget committee   
   > chairman - insisted that some measure of discipline be restored. They won   
   > a series of incomplete victories.   
   >   
   > Now, apostles of prudence are hooted down; their honor questioned. Just   
   > weeks ago, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was attacked by the speaker of the   
   > House for stating that sacrifice for the Iraq war is not widely shared, in   
   > part because Congress keeps passing tax cuts and spending money wildly   
   > instead of paying now for the military effort. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert   
   > (R-Ill.) suggested McCain - who nearly died of war wounds while imprisoned   
   > in Vietnam - doesn't understand the meaning of sacrifice.   
   >   
   > Washington is mesmerized by this mentality. The idea is that deficits   
   > don't matter. And maybe they don't if it also does not matter that 10   
   > cents of every tax dollar would, by the end of a second Bush term, be   
   > spent to just to pay interest. Maybe it does not matter that both liberal   
   > and conservative plans to revise Social Security - dependent, as they   
   > were, on the quaint old "lock box" of surplus money we used to have -   
   > cannot now be discussed. Maybe it doesn't matter that we can't pay what's   
   > necessary to secure against terror at home.   
   >   
   > In the spirit of Reagan, we can always hope for the best. But this triumph   
   > of faith over fact did not work the first time. So why would it now?   
   >   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)