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

[Torvald Von Mansee]

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/...e-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]

Originally Posted by SteamWake

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.

Originally Posted by tater

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]

[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.

[gimpy117]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

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.

[CaptainHaplo]

Originally Posted by gimpy117

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?

Originally Posted by 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"!

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.

[GoldenRivet]

Originally Posted by gimpy117

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.

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

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."