SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - View Single Post - The failure which was Reagan...in chart form!!

Skybird · 06-19-10, 03:45 AM

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.

06-19-10, 03:45 AM	#4
Skybird Soaring Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: the mental asylum named Germany Posts: 42,810 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	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. __________________ If you feel nuts, consult an expert.