XPost: alt.politics.howard-dean, alt.flame.rednecks, alt.bullshit   
   From: okamuraj005@hawaii.rr.com   
      
   It is a simple question.  What policies are the best policies for the vast   
   majority of the people in any country?   
      
   "Dr. N. Soong"  wrote in message   
   news:Xns9E16DEFDC713A555@194.177.98.144...   
   > Recently, House Republican leader John Boehner played out the role of   
   > Jude Wanniski on NBC's "Meet The Press."   
   >   
   > Odds are you've never heard of Jude, but without him Reagan never would   
   > have become a "successful" president, Republicans never would have taken   
   > control of the House or Senate, Bill Clinton never would have been   
   > impeached, and neither George Bush would have been president.   
   >   
   > When Barry Goldwater went down to ignominious defeat in 1964, most   
   > Republicans felt doomed (among them the then-28-year-old Wanniski).   
   > Goldwater himself, although uncomfortable with the rising religious right   
   > within his own party and the calls for more intrusion in people's   
   > bedrooms, was a diehard fan of Herbert Hoover's economic worldview.   
   >   
   > In Hoover's world (and virtually all the Republicans since reconstruction   
   > with the exception of Teddy Roosevelt), market fundamentalism was a   
   > virtual religion. Economists from Ludwig von Mises to Friedrich Hayek to   
   > Milton Friedman had preached that government could only make a mess of   
   > things economic, and the world of finance should be left to the Big Boys -   
   > the Masters of the Universe, as they sometimes called themselves - who   
   > ruled Wall Street and international finance.   
   >   
   > Hoover enthusiastically followed the advice of his Treasury Secretary,   
   > multimillionaire Andrew Mellon, who said in 1931: "Liquidate labor,   
   > liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. Purge the   
   > rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will   
   > come down... enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less   
   > competent people."   
   >   
   > Thus, the Republican mantra was: "Lower taxes, reduce the size of   
   > government, and balance the budget."   
   >   
   > The only problem with this ideology from the Hooverite perspective was   
   > that the Democrats always seemed like the bestowers of gifts, while the   
   > Republicans were seen by the American people as the stingy Scrooges, bent   
   > on making the lives of working people harder all the while making richer   
   > the very richest. This, Republican strategists since 1930 knew, was no way   
   > to win elections.   
   >   
   > Which was why the most successful Republican of the 20th century up to   
   > that time, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had been quite happy with a top income   
   > tax rate on millionaires of 91 percent. As he wrote to his brother Edgar   
   > Eisenhower in a personal letter on November 8, 1954:   
   >   
   > "[T]o attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government   
   > cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people   
   > firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our   
   > country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort,   
   > we will lose everything--even to a possible and drastic change in the   
   > Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon   
   > 'moderation' in government.   
   >   
   > "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security,   
   > unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you   
   > would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a   
   > tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things.   
   > Among them are H. L. Hunt [you possibly know his background], a few other   
   > Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from   
   > other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."   
   >   
   > Goldwater, however, rejected the "liberalism" of Eisenhower, Rockefeller,   
   > and other "moderates" within his own party. Extremism in defense of   
   > liberty was no vice, he famously told the 1964 nominating convention, and   
   > moderation was no virtue. And it doomed him and his party.   
   >   
   > And so after Goldwater's defeat, the Republicans were again lost in the   
   > wilderness just as after Hoover's disastrous presidency. Even four years   
   > later when Richard Nixon beat LBJ in 1968, Nixon wasn't willing to embrace   
   > the economic conservatism of Goldwater and the economic true believers in   
   > the Republican Party. And Jerry Ford wasn't, in their opinions, much   
   > better. If Nixon and Ford believed in economic conservatism, they were   
   > afraid to practice it for fear of dooming their party to another forty   
   > years in the electoral wilderness.   
   >   
   > By 1974, Jude Wanniski had had enough. The Democrats got to play Santa   
   > Claus when they passed out Social Security and Unemployment checks - both   
   > programs of the New Deal - as well as when their "big government" projects   
   > like roads, bridges, and highways were built giving a healthy union   
   > paycheck to construction workers. They kept raising taxes on businesses   
   > and rich people to pay for things, which didn't seem to have much effect   
   > at all on working people (wages were steadily going up, in fact), and that   
   > made them seem like a party of Robin Hoods, taking from the rich to fund   
   > programs for the poor and the working class. Americans loved it. And every   
   > time Republicans railed against these programs, they lost elections.   
   >   
   > Everybody understood at the time that economies are driven by demand.   
   > People with good jobs have money in their pockets, and want to use it to   
   > buy things. The job of the business community is to either determine or   
   > drive that demand to their particular goods, and when they're successful   
   > at meeting the demand then factories get built, more people become   
   > employed to make more products, and those newly-employed people have a   
   > paycheck that further increases demand.   
   >   
   > Wanniski decided to turn the classical world of economics - which had   
   > operated on this simple demand-driven equation for seven thousand years -   
   > on its head. In 1974 he invented a new phrase - "supply side economics" -   
   > and suggested that the reason economies grew wasn't because people had   
   > money and wanted to buy things with it but, instead, because things were   
   > available for sale, thus tantalizing people to part with their money. The   
   > more things there were, the faster the economy would grow.   
   >   
   > At the same time, Arthur Laffer was taking that equation a step further.   
   > Not only was supply-side a rational concept, Laffer suggested, but as   
   > taxes went down, revenue to the government would go up!   
   >   
   > Neither concept made any sense - and time has proven both to be colossal   
   > idiocies - but together they offered the Republican Party a way out of the   
   > wilderness.   
   >   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)