So here is the challenge: come up with the best idea generally conceived and embraced by the Republican party. This can’t be something that some minor official thought of, but rather an idea that many in the mainstream Republican Party favored and was opposed by many in the mainstream Democratic Party. But in hindsight, it was the right thing. Oh, and to prevent answers like “The abolition of slavery” lets say it should be within the last 50 years.
Also, can you come up with something generally favored by the mainstream Democratic Party within the last 50 years, that in hindsight was actually a really bad idea?
I guess I should do an equivalent challenge for Republicans, but there aren’t too many of them around here.
I’d say the welfare reform of the 90s for the GOP. I was against it but retroactively it was clear that there were jobs out there for everyone in the economy at the time. If they tried it now it would not be as successful.
Don’t know if mainstream Democrats are against nuclear power, but if so, that would count as a pretty bad idea (versus coal fired plants.)
Hm… so not current ideas but ideas they actually implemented?
I think I’ll go with the Earned Income Tax Credit - signed in by Ford and expanded by Reagan. It provides a refundable tax credit to low-income working families, sort of a negative income tax at the extreme low end of the scale.
Bad Democratic ideas? I think the CLASS provisions of Obamacare were pretty quickly shown to be unworkable (and have since been jettisoned). I disagree with a lot of current and recent-past Democratic positions on education (and support some of the GOP-supported alternatives - although none seem to have been enacted and tested yet).
50 years gives us a lot to work with. Controlling pollutants through market mechanisms such as cap-and-trade used to be a Republican idea, while the Dems wanted regulations limiting the output of pollutants from every smokestack. In hindsight, we Dems have come around to realizing the wisdom of cap-and-trade, but of course the GOP has repudiated it.
Similarly, Obamacare started off in life as the GOP alternative to Dem approaches (Hillarycare, universal Medicare, etc.), and was of course implemented in Massachusetts by then-Gov. Romney, who is now the GOP Presidential nominee. Unlike cap-and-trade which is now regarded by most Dems as a way of realizing Dem goals with minimum economic impact, Obamacare is regarded as simply the most politically feasible path to near-universal health care, when ‘politically feasible’ means ‘not going for a solution (e.g. Medicare for all) that would wipe out a huge industry.’ But it’s satisfactory, so we Dems are largely happy to settle for it.
So of course, once again, the GOP has repudiated this idea.
If you think political choice is about tallying up how many “good ideas” versus “bad ideas” each side has, you really don’t understand what politics is about. This is based on the same set of assumptions behind inanities like “Why don’t we just take take the best ideas of each party?” (And if you don’t know why that is seriously stupid, on multiple levels, then I despair for you.)
I tend to spend more of my time focused on foreign affairs issues, and the two Republican initiatives that stand out to me are Nixon’s opening to China in the early 1970s, and the nuclear limitations and reductions treaties spearheaded by Nixon and Reagan in the 1970s and 1980s. Yeah, they are not particularly partisan issues, but very, very important. (Note: I have concerns with China, and I certainly have strong objections to the inept and corrosive governmental system that they maintain, but having contentious relations with China is far better than maintaining a Cuba-like fantasy that we can pretend that the nation simply does not exist.)
Domestically, I think the idea of phasing out, or at least down, agricultural subsidies, which has been advocated by some non-farm state Republicans, is probably a pretty good idea. There’s a small part of me that kind of agrees that having the Department of Education as a pass-through for local education dollars is just a not very efficient thing to do, but I’m not quite to the point of thinking the DoEd should be abolished.
As far as Democratic ideas I’m not terribly fond of, I have a nuanced view of the stimulus: I totally believe that it saved millions of jobs and was the right thing to do. I also believe that Democratic politics made it a hodge-podge of incoherent programs, including some stupid ideas, that made it far less effective than it should have been.
Are corporations people for these purposes? If so, I could get behind something like this. I’m not sure $25k is the right number. Romneycare, now Obamacare is a good idea in the sense that it makes the best of a bad situation.
Bad ideas from the Dems in the last 50 years? A guaranteed minimum income was at one time a Dem idea, never got traction.
I thought squirreling away a small portion of social security withholdings into individual accounts that we could control ourselves was an interesting idea. I think one plan was 4 or 7% of what was withheld for SS, which isn’t much, individually.
Of course this became the ‘privatizing social security’ fight that I think was handled very poorly by the Bush administration.
I wouldn’t say it was the ‘right’ thing to do because it came with a ridiculous price tag, among other things.
[OT, more of an ATMB comment] About 4 years ago XM radio started a POTUS channel. After the election the “P” changed from standing for “President” to “Politics”. It seems that this is going on here too. Will the “Elections” forum will become the place for all political talk? [/OT]
I’ve always said that Democrats don’t know shit about economics. Republicans didn’t either until recently, but they’re getting better. For one thing, it’s true that government doesn’t create jobs. For every job “created” by the government, there’s at least one job that disappears in the real world.
Cap and trade. The establishment of the EPA. The Clean Air Act. Establishment of Earth Day. Opposing racial discrimination and supporting the Civil Rights Legislation. The Mandate in Health Care Reform. The Negative Income Tax and Earned Income Tax Credit. 1986 Tax Reform (with an assist by Bill Bradley (D)). Establishment of the Consumer Protection Agency. Nixon: extending greater self-determination to Native Americans. Nixon goes to China. Infrastructure investment during the 1950s. 1950s energy policy: drain the rest of the world of oil first. The Space Program, accelerated by Eisenhower. Arms control. Creation of OSHA. Title IX for women’s sports. Adding cost of living adjustments for social security. Food stamps.
Bad Democratic Ideas:
Supporting racial segregation during the 1930s-1950s and into the 1960s. Escalated the Vietnam War. Decision not prosecute GWBush admin for war crimes.
Your post conflicts with introductory and intermediate economics textbooks. During a recession, the government can in fact create jobs. Hiring a person to build a road during recession tends to increase employment by greater than one person, due to the multiplier effect. In general, I would say that Democratic economic policy is far more grounded on reality, at least after 1976.