Rick. This is one of your better diatribes. Absolutely agree with most. You need to go back further in time to start your evaluation though. Ronald Regan (aka Ray-Gun) started this all with the concept of “Supply Side Economics”. He got a lot of credit for taming inflation in the early 80s , despite Paul Volker, and maybe deserved a little bit. Opening up markets to foreign competition and breaking unions were his big contributions, but the tax breaks to the wealthy were his lasting impact. The changes in tax structure were probably deserved at the time, but piling on under both Bush administrations and twice under Trump have just gone overboard to the detriment of the national deficit. I’m not sure why he is so revered, but we need to go back and analyze this deflection in economic and political thinking. Over the past 45 years, this is probably the biggest contributor of today’s K shaped economy.
My only pushback on this would be that the 1990s were a great time in the US economy. Maybe some of that was pull-forward productivity once the internet hit, which might explain the 2000 dot-com bust. But manufacturing jobs were still in place, growth was broad and we had balanced budgets! Maybe we’re saying the same thing. Could have just been a lag before the Reagan unraveling hit …
We may be both guilty of over simplifying this. Regan’s cuts were not egregious. The impact of opening up global trade was more impactful over the long run. Ross Perot had a great one liner during the 92 debates about NAFTA. “That sucking sound you hear are all of your jobs going out the door to Mexico under NAFTA.” It certainly helped with inflation, but it was an inflection point.
The consumer driven economy of the 90s, to me, was more about the baby boomers entering the economy for the first time. Nothing about anything any particular president did.
I only remember Regan as starting it. Each Republican President since has added on their own little contribution, but Trump’s tax cuts and policies have just pushed things off a cliff.
I certainly thought your article hit it out of the park.At my age i do not worry for myself but my family . I just hate to see so many people left behind because it does not take a genius to figure out were that lead's.If our government think that thirty percent of the public can effectively the other seventy percent then though wrong.There will be another American Revolution.So like you said Rick we need some thinker's out there to work this out.
Rick. This is one of your better diatribes. Absolutely agree with most. You need to go back further in time to start your evaluation though. Ronald Regan (aka Ray-Gun) started this all with the concept of “Supply Side Economics”. He got a lot of credit for taming inflation in the early 80s , despite Paul Volker, and maybe deserved a little bit. Opening up markets to foreign competition and breaking unions were his big contributions, but the tax breaks to the wealthy were his lasting impact. The changes in tax structure were probably deserved at the time, but piling on under both Bush administrations and twice under Trump have just gone overboard to the detriment of the national deficit. I’m not sure why he is so revered, but we need to go back and analyze this deflection in economic and political thinking. Over the past 45 years, this is probably the biggest contributor of today’s K shaped economy.
My only pushback on this would be that the 1990s were a great time in the US economy. Maybe some of that was pull-forward productivity once the internet hit, which might explain the 2000 dot-com bust. But manufacturing jobs were still in place, growth was broad and we had balanced budgets! Maybe we’re saying the same thing. Could have just been a lag before the Reagan unraveling hit …
We may be both guilty of over simplifying this. Regan’s cuts were not egregious. The impact of opening up global trade was more impactful over the long run. Ross Perot had a great one liner during the 92 debates about NAFTA. “That sucking sound you hear are all of your jobs going out the door to Mexico under NAFTA.” It certainly helped with inflation, but it was an inflection point.
The consumer driven economy of the 90s, to me, was more about the baby boomers entering the economy for the first time. Nothing about anything any particular president did.
I only remember Regan as starting it. Each Republican President since has added on their own little contribution, but Trump’s tax cuts and policies have just pushed things off a cliff.
I certainly thought your article hit it out of the park.At my age i do not worry for myself but my family . I just hate to see so many people left behind because it does not take a genius to figure out were that lead's.If our government think that thirty percent of the public can effectively the other seventy percent then though wrong.There will be another American Revolution.So like you said Rick we need some thinker's out there to work this out.