The failure which was Reagan...in chart form!!

[Torvald Von Mansee]

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010062415/reagan-revolution-home-roost-charts

[SteamWake]

"Campaign for america's future"... yea...

I dont know how to break this to you but the liberals are in power now.

Now is your chance to make it better.

So why is it all going to hell?

[Takeda Shingen]

Taking a shot at the patron saint of the political right? This could get colorful.

[August]

Shhh nobody tell Torvald to check and see which party controlled Congress during those years. It might upset his blame game.

[tater]

Yawn.

Things like personal savings are a function of individual choice. What happened was that people decided to start "living large," even if that meant debt. Borrowing, of course, was bound to skyrocket after the Carter years ("malaise" and stagflation) pushing us into double-digit mortgage interest rates. For the average person, mortgage debt utterly dominates their lifetime debt, the rest is noise. from the late 70s into the mid 80s, no one could afford to buy much of a house with interest rates that would quadruple the price of the home they bought—and massively increase monthly payments. Mortgage rates come down, and people start borrowing. Note that the principal they borrow increases, but the total amount actually paid is pretty much the same. Same payments, but you borrow more (hence larger debt graph).

You could also likely have a graph that showed the square footage per person in an average house in the US, and it would also start increasing.

Some of the other stuff, like the top 10% share of wealth is meaningless. Wealth is not zero-sum, the top 10% doesn't get that money by taking it from someone, wealth expands, but they got a larger share.

Creditor vs debtor nation? Same thing (though you can see the down trend starting well before Reagan). When money was too expensive to borrow, we lent money, but Americans at large didn't borrow much—it was literally at rates like current "payday loans," after all (virtual usury, lol). Once rates came down, Americans at large started borrowing. Again, the largest loans average people get are mortgages, by a wide margin. If the bulk of average Americans owns a decent home, it requires huge debt. Again, the total debt is the principal, so for the exact same monthly payments, you borrow more at lower rates. Note the switch from positive to negative is 1985-86. The Prime Rate in the early 80s was as high as 20.50%! It broke 10% heading down in mid 1985. Americans started borrowing more.

100 grand at 21% is $1750/mo for 30 years.
100 grand at 8% is $733/mo. for 30 years.
The same $1750 payment gets you ~$240,000 at 8%. So assuming people keep the same payments they had been making, all of a sudden they could be in debt 240k instead of 100k.

The graphs will have the leftists nodding in agreement, and the right showing that the people making the graphs "don't get it."

[gimpy117]

So why is it all going to hell?

because were fresh off your party screwing America for 8 years....


yeah Regan was the only president was the worst "best" president for America. Most of the turning points that sealed the doom of the middle class started when Regan was in office. The only reason that Regan is loved by the GOP is because he lowered taxes for the rich and made it easier for them to make sickening amounts of money at the people's expense.

Yawn.


Some of the other stuff, like the top 10% share of wealth is meaningless. Wealth is not zero-sum, the top 10% doesn't get that money by taking it from someone, wealth expands, but they got a larger share.



read the chart. its percent income going to the top 10%

[CaptainHaplo]

As compared to one of the Worst "worst" Presidents we have seen. I mean - for god sake - the man started refering to Jimmy Carter the other night - which if you lefties were alive back then, you might remember as the peanut farmer that was chased by the "swimming communist assassin rabbit"!

Lets compare O to some great presidents - shall we?

Abraham Lincoln - "freed" the slaves (or so claims history).
Barack Obama - Freeing americans from jobs everywhere.

Franklin D. Roosevelt - Acted to reverse the Great Depression (though many scholars feel the New Deal actually exacerbated the matter)
Barack Obama - Acting to insure that America goes through another Depression

Oh - want to bring in Ronald Reagan? Ok....

Ronald Reagan wrote many of his own speeches
Barack Obama can't even memorize what is written for him - as the failing teleprompter has shown us all....

So far the left has done nothing to help this country in any meaningful ways.

The borders are still not secure.
We are another 12 Trillion in debt.
The wars that the Chosen One was going to end - haven't.
Gitmo is still open.
How many days has oil been going into the gulf and Obama has done nothing but castigate big business and ask "whose ass should I kick".....
Oh - and use this as a way to push for cap and trade energy taxes.....
Unemployment is running at or near double digits (which it will be well over once they adjust for seasonal).

Sorry - you've had 2 years - and you have accomplished nothing of note. Your time is drawing to a close. Its June - you have less than 5 months before your thrown out of office.

[nikimcbee]

http://777denny.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/obama_oil_large_obamaprompter.jpg

[gimpy117]

Oh - want to bring in Ronald Reagan? Ok....

Ronald Reagan wrote many of his own speeches
Barack Obama can't even memorize what is written for him - as the failing teleprompter has shown us all....

So far the left has done nothing to help this country in any meaningful ways.


Sorry - you've had 2 years - and you have accomplished nothing of note. Your time is drawing to a close. Its June - you have less than 5 months before your thrown out of office.

Oh im glad Regan could write his own speeches while he screwed over our country and sold out the working class.

And what has the GOP done that is worthwhile for America? NOTHING!
they sat idly by while our economy melted down, Got us into 2 wars, destroyed our public image, ran the deficit up, Let our schools go all to hell, Passed laws limiting our civil liberties. and so on.

Sorry if it's taking to long to fix all the GOP mistakes. It would be easier with some cooperation from the people who did all this.

[OneToughHerring]

As compared to one of the Worst "worst" Presidents we have seen. I mean - for god sake - the man started refering to Jimmy Carter the other night - which if you lefties were alive back then, you might remember as the peanut farmer that was chased by the "swimming communist assassin rabbit"!

Jimmy Carter rabbit incident (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_rabbit_incident)

Never heard of that, funny stuff. Btw, it wasn't a harmless little bunny, it was a mean swamp rabbit making an amphibious assault.

[UnderseaLcpl]

I like that analysis. It's a pretty good example of how you can make statistics say anything you want. I haven't been a fan of the Reagan administration since I divorced myself from the Republican party some years ago, but even I know that some of the conclusions demonstrated there are false. The problem stems from putting unrelated data together or assuming that two things are related when there may be other factors involved.

For instance, I find it hard to believe that the decrease in US personal savings of 6.2% can be attributed solely to a 5.5% increase of concentration of wealth at the top betwen 1982 and 1992 when US median income rose by only .94% while inflation devalued money at an average rate of 5% per year in the same time period. Seems to me like maybe the fact that rich people can edure inflation more handily than average households, but again we are missing too much data. We'd need to know a lot of other things, including how much the GDP varied (it was positive) and what percentage of that was due to government spending and a million other things before we could find the real correalations, and even people who spend their lives doing that still disagree.

I try to put my faith in simpler equations, without politics, where less can go wrong, such as in the corelation between inflation, government spending, and economic growth. That decision is what made me leave the Reps. They're just as bad as the Dems when it comes to that kind of stuff, and worse during recent wars.

Economics and blame games aside, this was my favorite part of the submission, though the "needed changes" part gives me the willies. You'll tell me what I need? I think not.

But entrenched interests use their wealth and power to keep us from making needed changes

Sure they do, but who gave them that power? I didn't give it to them when I chose not to buy Shell gasoline because the Exxon across the street was cheaper. Exxon didn't entrench itself or abuse its wealth all on its own. Big companies have the power to entrench themselves because the state gave it to them through its own misguided intentions. I'll spare everyone the details of how that works, since I never shutup about the subject.

Speaking of subjects, as in same, what entity is more entrenched, powerful, and wealthy than the state? People have been complaining about government doing everything wrong on both sides of the aisle since time immemorial, and yet we are farther from changing it now than we have ever been. Too bad we can't make a quantified overlay graph about that. We might quit alternating blame between the horse's mouth and the horse's butt.

[krashkart]

Speaking of subjects, as in same, what entity is more entrenched, powerful, and wealthy than the state? People have been complaining about government doing everything wrong on both sides of the aisle since time immemorial, and yet we are farther from changing it now than we have ever been. Too bad we can't make a quantified overlay graph about that. We might quit alternating blame between the horse's mouth and the horse's butt.

Touche. :dead:

[thorn69]

Jesus! Now they're blaming Reagan?! :nope:

What happened? Did you realize that you were playing the, "It's Bush's fault" card too much?

[Skybird]

The author argues by setting up a correlation, so to speak, between "who held the presidency" and several trends in fiscal, economic, social developements. But a causal link can only be established if one also examines what political body (president/government, congre´ss) made what decisions at that time.

He must not be wrong (in fact I think by direction he isn pointing at he is not), but his argument is vulnerable if he leaves it to just looking at who was president and ignores what happened in congress - what party dominated it, and what they did agree to and what did they reject.

As I see it, congress and president were (and are) sometimes partners in crime, sometimes went on on different ways which both were hurtful to the nation and thus hacked away at it from two independent positions at the same time, in a case of coincidence.

A general, underlying typical cultural climate (in case of America for example excessive spending, no private saving of households, taking low price oil for granted, not to mention weapons possession), are long-term factors that are robustly anchored in a people's mentality and hardly are to be affected by just one or two presidential terms or congress periodes. such things do not change from one day to the next, but need decades if not generations to change. As long as they have not changed, new laws and legislation enforcing changes of such "paradigms" of ways of living will be challenged by many people, mostly over "guts' feeling" and irratitional motives and a basic human resistence to changes of known living conditions one has become familiar with, but sometimes over correctly pointing out flaws in the new laws' design and their implication. Man is a creature of habit.

Change is hard to be brought to people. Obama currently learns that lesson. Let people feel pain from deciding wrong. when it becomes more than they can bear, they change all by themselves, and quickly.

It's just that then so very often it already is too late.

We are too many damn people on this planet.

[GoldenRivet]

because were fresh off your party screwing America for 8 years....

The thing that must be understood with American Politics is that they display an inherent Negative Dynamic Stability over time.

What i mean by this is that you start with a fairly unified America politically speaking.

As time goes on, each candidate becomes exponentially more right or left leaning than the last.

eventually the lean reaches an extreme.

In the last president, perhaps we say an extreme of the right?

In the current president, an extreme of the left.

in the mean time, the majority of the Americans are in the center... some ever so slightly to the right, others ever so slightly to the left.

the only choice they have is to vote for the most right or left aligned candidate.

the question which is to be answered - does the political stability reset to neutral or does it shatter the system into oblivion?








also, i have been drinking.

[thorn69]

The thing that must be understood with American Politics is that they display an inherent Negative Dynamic Stability over time.

What i mean by this is that you start with a fairly unified America politically speaking.

As time goes on, each candidate becomes exponentially more right or left leaning than the last.

eventually the lean reaches an extreme.

In the last president, perhaps we say an extreme of the right?

In the current president, an extreme of the left.

in the mean time, the majority of the Americans are in the center... some ever so slightly to the right, others ever so slightly to the left.

the only choice they have is to vote for the most right or left aligned candidate.

the question which is to be answered - does the political stability reset to neutral or does it shatter the system into oblivion?








also, i have been drinking.


The US downfall will be due to its founding forefathers who wrote up a very vague constitution that leaves more questions than answers and is full of loopholes that every race, gender, and religion tries to take advantage of for self benefit.

[Skybird]

They put it quite well - one only has to understand that no human being, not them back then and not us today, is able to think beyiond the concepts and contexts of the time he lives in. When one refers to the founding fathers back then to conclude on what their relevance is for today, one has to consider that time gap as well, and spend extra care for deciding what parts of their words reflected the special circumstances of their time, so that these words maybe need shifts in interpretation to make them correctly reflecting the chnaged circumstances today.

It's like that with almost every example of what usually gets called "holy books", isn't it. the founding father lived in a world that was different to the one we have now, and they hardly have forseen or imagined the conditions and charcteristic of the present world. Not taking that into account means to judge the present by categories that were valid in a far away past, as if no time has gone by and nothing has chnaged at all.

Some things change fast from deacde to decade, some things change so slow that even from one man's life to the next you almost miss the difference - but changing all and everything does. Many conflicts between people arise where this is not understood, or ignored, which obviously is especially relevant for example for the field of theistic religions' dogmas and commandements. but often, laws and constitutions are affected by this to. Did you know that there is one German federal state where they still have the death penalty available and it is still not beign abandoned!? :) It's true. It's just that it is not made use of - but the legal basis to sentence people to death is still there - valid and fully legal. there are many other such relics from ancient times as well. Parts of the German pension'S regulations - date back to the wilhelminian republic, other parts of German laws being used today were invented by - the Nazis. So, what has become of age, may lose relevance and context (death penalty), others old things may prevail (social security laws, first introduced by Bismarck), and some older things may be of value today although they had been introduced by the perceived wrong people (laws from theNazi era still in use today).

Panta Rhei. Therefore, "only a Sith deals in absolutes." :D

[gimpy117]

In the last president, perhaps we say an extreme of the right?

In the current president, an extreme of the left.

also, i have been drinking.

I guess U really have been hitting the bottle.. Our president is failing to pass laws that would have been considered moderate 20 years ago. Look at social security...Imagine trying to set that up today? Or the New deal? FDR would have been called a communist by all the tabaggers.
And compare us to Europe!!! Im sure half of them would say even our most liberal politicians are quite conservative.

[Tchocky]

Comprehensive health insurance is an idea whose time has come in America.

There has long been a need to assure every American financial access to high quality health care. As medical costs go up, that need grows more pressing.

Now, for the first time, we have not just the need but the will to get this job done. There is widespread support in the Congress and in the Nation for some form of comprehensive health insurance.

Surely if we have the will, 1974 should also be the year that we find the way.

Nixon

[gimpy117]

Quote:
Comprehensive health insurance is an idea whose time has come in America.

There has long been a need to assure every American financial access to high quality health care. As medical costs go up, that need grows more pressing.

Now, for the first time, we have not just the need but the will to get this job done. There is widespread support in the Congress and in the Nation for some form of comprehensive health insurance.

Surely if we have the will, 1974 should also be the year that we find the way.
Nixon

See what I mean. that was republicans in 1974. Now they're advocating privatizing EVERYTHING. :nope:

[UnderseaLcpl]

The US downfall will be due to its founding forefathers who wrote up a very vague constitution that leaves more questions than answers and is full of loopholes that every race, gender, and religion tries to take advantage of for self benefit.

That's true with any law. As Sky points out, it is impossible to craft a perfect system that will last forever, which is why we were warned that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and given a legitimate system of changing the constitution should the need arise.

It took less than three quarters of a century for the original Constitution to start falling apart, as evidenced by the Confederate Constitution, which is effectively the same document but much more specific and limiting. It, too would have eventually fallen apart, but the stronger the bulwark built against the state is the longer it will take to break down. In the absence of damnyankees, that is:O:


See what I mean. that was republicans in 1974. Now they're advocating privatizing EVERYTHING. :nope:
That kind of reversal is not unique to Republicans. Whenever one side takes up an issue in a two-party system, the other side must necessarily take the opposite tack if it wishes to secure the greatest number of voters. The Republicans also used to be the party of peace, while Dems were warhawks, and vice-versa before that. It isn't about the parties themselves so much as it is about the system in which they must operate.

My solution to this nonsense, as always, is to limit the power of the state to create new legislation so severely (i.e. supermajority required for everything) that noone in their right mind would even waste time trying to co-opt it. On top of that, make it extremely answerable for its proper tasks so that it cannot grow complacent or abusive. To further keep it from growing complacent or abusive, privatize certain sectors of it via a contractual system with elections held every fiscal year to allow people to replace the privatized sector in question with a new contractor.

Even that system, however, comes with an expiration date. I don't know how or when, but somebody, somewhere, will find a way around or through, hence the need for the tree of liberty to be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots. The goal is not to build a permanent system, but to preserve the forward march of progress until such safeguards are no longer necessary.

[krashkart]

The US downfall will be due to its founding forefathers who wrote up a very vague constitution that leaves more questions than answers and is full of loopholes that every race, gender, and religion tries to take advantage of for self benefit.

Nah, it's not the founding fathers' fault. They're dead, they can do about as much to fix our mistakes as we will be able to do to fix our great-great-grandchildren's mistakes.

[CaptainHaplo]

Oh im glad Regan could write his own speeches while he screwed over our country and sold out the working class.

And what has the GOP done that is worthwhile for America? NOTHING!
they sat idly by while our economy melted down, Got us into 2 wars, destroyed our public image, ran the deficit up, Let our schools go all to hell, Passed laws limiting our civil liberties. and so on.

Sorry if it's taking to long to fix all the GOP mistakes. It would be easier with some cooperation from the people who did all this.

Nice - throw mud at the other guy, while ignoring the reality that the Dems have failed by the following:
The borders are still not secure.
We are another 12 Trillion in debt.
The wars that the Chosen One was going to end - haven't.
Gitmo is still open.
How many days has oil been going into the gulf and Obama has done nothing but castigate big business and ask "whose ass should I kick".....
Oh - and use this as a way to push for cap and trade energy taxes.....
Unemployment is running at or near double digits (which it will be well over once they adjust for seasonal).

Remember that second "bailout" - it was going to keep unemployment under 8% - total failure.....
Though I do need to correct it - its not 12 Trillion in new debt. Its more like 2.5 Trillion.
Gitmo - still open.
Wars - still going.
Oil - still spilling.
Borders - still not secure.
Unemployment - still too high.

So ok - lets rephrase the question....

In the nearly 2 years the Dems have had power in BOTH Congress and the presidency - what have you actually accomplished?

A health care bill the majority of Americans don't support (note that O is STILL pitching it in speeches) and is likely to get heavily modified if not overturned next Congress.

That's it. That's your "one big accomplishment" - something most people didn't want to start with.

Well, unless of course you want to say blaming Bush is an accomplishment.....

So I will ask again :

In the nearly 2 years the Dems have had power in BOTH Congress and the presidency - what have you actually accomplished that demonstrates to the American people they should re-elect you and keep you in power?

[August]

Nice - throw mud at the other guy, while ignoring the reality that the Dems have failed by the following:
The borders are still not secure.
We are another 12 Trillion in debt.
The wars that the Chosen One was going to end - haven't.
Gitmo is still open.
How many days has oil been going into the gulf and Obama has done nothing but castigate big business and ask "whose ass should I kick".....
Oh - and use this as a way to push for cap and trade energy taxes.....
Unemployment is running at or near double digits (which it will be well over once they adjust for seasonal).

Remember that second "bailout" - it was going to keep unemployment under 8% - total failure.....
Though I do need to correct it - its not 12 Trillion in new debt. Its more like 2.5 Trillion.
Gitmo - still open.
Wars - still going.
Oil - still spilling.
Borders - still not secure.
Unemployment - still too high.

So ok - lets rephrase the question....

In the nearly 2 years the Dems have had power in BOTH Congress and the presidency - what have you actually accomplished?

A health care bill the majority of Americans don't support (note that O is STILL pitching it in speeches) and is likely to get heavily modified if not overturned next Congress.

That's it. That's your "one big accomplishment" - something most people didn't want to start with.

Well, unless of course you want to say blaming Bush is an accomplishment.....

So I will ask again :

In the nearly 2 years the Dems have had power in BOTH Congress and the presidency - what have you actually accomplished that demonstrates to the American people they should re-elect you and keep you in power?

Apparently they don't have much of an answer to your post Hap.

[thorn69]

See what I mean. that was republicans in 1974. Now they're advocating privatizing EVERYTHING. :nope:

Wrong! That was SOME republicans in 1974 and as you see, it didn't get passed back then. Let's not forget the fact that most Dems didn't agree with health care reform back then but now they do under Obama. Why though? Oh that's right - Because they could get it passed despite not having a single republican vote in favor of it and using some under the table/shady tactics to get it passed and forced down America's throat regardless!

And look what it did to your party! It's broken you up quite a bit! Why? Because the American public doesn't appreciate the throat raping Obama and Pelosi imposed on the American people that were predominantly against this health care reform package. Then the knucklehead of a president had the audacity to tell America they needed this bill to pass despite having not read the damn thing. How can Americans trust a reckless president like this? The answer: They can't!

NObama 2012!