# Reagan dies! Let's debate his legacy! **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 5, 2004, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850 "2004-06-05T21:01:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2004, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/121 "2004-06-06T23:58:55Z")
> [@](#): > > Okay, fair enough…I am willing to admit that it was a complicated piece of legislation. However, its net effect was to increase revenues from personal and corporate income taxes for a given fixed amount of GDP. In that sense, it was a repudiation of the previous notions of supply-side economics whereby one was trying to increase revenues by decreasing the amount of taxes paid for a given amount of GDP but hoping that the GDP rise that you produced by doing this would outpace the decrease in the tax rate so that you still got more revenues. I think you misunderstand ‘supply side economics’. The claim is that by lowering tax _rates_, you increase tax _revenues_. No one ever claimed that you could increase revenue by lowering the aggregate amount of money collected in taxes - that’s a fundamental contradiction. The supply-side argument is that if you lower rates, you give people more incentive to work harder and invest more. This in turn will increase economic output, which means that even though they are paying lower marginal rates, they’ll eventually pay more in tax, simply because they are now making more money. It seems to me that the data you presented actually corroborates this. Reagan lowered marginal rates from 70% to 28%, and by the end of his eight years overall tax receipts were up, and the percentage of overall taxes paid by the wealthy was up. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/122 "2004-06-07T00:01:52Z")
Oh, I missed the part where you said ‘for a fixed amount of GDP’. We’ll have to dig deeper. ---
**Author:** ![Seven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Seven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seven)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/123 "2004-06-07T00:07:41Z")
> [@This Year's Model](#): > > Heh, I come from a generation in which hiding under one’s school desk was the prescribed method of escaping the effects of a nuclear weapon. Didn’t they still have school desks in your day? My grade school still did “duck and cover” drills until I was in 5th grade. I think what worried us most when we reached middle and high school – the desks were then made of metal. Like a metal desk is supposed to save you in a nuclear blast? HA! Even Bert the Turtle knows you need good solid **wood** desk for that. We were no longer safe and we knew it. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Zagadka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zagadka/32/7272_2.png) [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/124 "2004-06-07T00:10:13Z")
We’ve gone this whole thread, and I haven’t seen much discussion about, I dunno, f\*ing social security without lube, or piling up the dead corpses from AIDS and setting them ablaze, or illegal wars across half the world, or making fun of the starving, or fighting against unions… ---
**Author:** ![Seven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Seven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seven)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/125 "2004-06-07T00:11:15Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > He was right that if you pushed the Soviet Union hard enough, it would collapse. The left was too scared to make the attempt, and prefered a status-quo in which the most evil dictatorship on the planet would be allowed to continue on being evil for as long as it liked, as long as was willing to agree to certain security demands. > > Actually, the more radical fringes of the left didn’t even want to maintain detente. They wanted unilateral disarmament. They wanted the U.S. to dismantle its nuclear weapons and roll back the military unilaterally. Remember? I think most people (and many are here) realize the USSR was on it’s way out anyway. I think any method the US decided to take would have led to their collapse. If Ronnie had pushed the USSR to up their Jelly Bean production THAT would have toppled them as well. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/126 "2004-06-07T00:21:12Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > He was right that if you pushed the Soviet Union hard enough, it would collapse. The left was too scared to make the attempt, and prefered a status-quo in which the most evil dictatorship on the planet would be allowed to continue on being evil for as long as it liked, as long as was willing to agree to certain security demands. > > Actually, the more radical fringes of the left didn’t even want to maintain detente. They wanted unilateral disarmament. They wanted the U.S. to dismantle its nuclear weapons and roll back the military unilaterally. Remember? Detente was Nixon’s baby. Nixon, that big liberal pinko. :rolleyes: I think the whole idea of “The Russians are just like us” was an attempt to point out that the Russian people were not monsters, but human beings just like us, and they were NOT evil. Yeah, the Soviet heads were a bunch of assholes (with some exceptions.) But the Russians weren’t the boogyman. They were JUST as afraid of us as we were of them. And there’s nothing wrong with Russian culture. In other words, it was to stop xenophobia and jingoism. It wasn’t about the left kissing Soviet ass. ---
**Author:** ![Zagadka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zagadka/32/7272_2.png) [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/127 "2004-06-07T00:21:22Z")
> [@Seven](#): > > I think most people (and many are here) realize the USSR was on it’s way out anyway. I think any method the US decided to take would have led to their collapse. Actually, one of the working theories is that the USSR was on its way to collapse in the '70s, and through continued detente and cooperation, we could have eased them into democracy, but Reagan’s administration wiped that off the table and replaced it with military escalation. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/128 "2004-06-07T00:35:14Z")
Read the book _**[Reaganism and the Death of Representative Democracy](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0878401474/qid=1086547086/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-3462073-6784145?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)**_ by Walter Williams for an account of how seriously this country was damaged by that guy. His real “legacy.” From the dust jacket: \*\*Reagan and his foremost disciple George W. Bush have created a plutocracy where the United States is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but is ruled by the wealthiest individuals and corporate America. Williams urges Americans to move from political apathy and draw aside the power curtain to see the politicians and the corporations lurking there—and to see the dangers they represent to the American way of life. \*\* ---
**Author:** ![pervert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbe5ce/32.png) [@pervert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pervert)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/129 "2004-06-07T00:36:55Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > It seems to me that the data you presented actually corroborates this. Reagan lowered marginal rates from 70% to 28%, and by the end of his eight years overall tax receipts were up, and the percentage of overall taxes paid by the wealthy was up. No, I’m afraid the situation is simply much more complex than this. The lowering of the rates certainly helped increase revenue, but it is also disengenuous to say that the expansion of the the tax base was not a tax increase. If I complain when **jshore** calls it _simply_ a tax increase, I have to at least mention some objection when you ignore it and imply that the legislation in question was only a tax decrease. ---
**Author:** ![pervert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbe5ce/32.png) [@pervert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pervert)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/130 "2004-06-07T00:39:57Z")
> [@Zagadka](#): > > We’ve gone this whole thread, and I haven’t seen much discussion about, I dunno, f\*ing social security without lube I’m not sure what you are refering to here (it is very difficult to tell through your snipes). But my understanding was that Reagan increased the payroll taxes which pay for Social Security. The system is at a surplus now and for the last decade or more because of what he did. Were you reffering to something else? ---
**Author:** ![pervert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbe5ce/32.png) [@pervert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pervert)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/131 "2004-06-07T00:41:50Z")
Oops. I should have worded that differently. I should have said “because of what happened under his administration”, instead of “what he did”. I did not mean to suggest that he alone raised payroll taxes. \< **jshore** feel free to insert your obligatory remark about how these increases fooled conservatives into thinking revenue increases were due to supply side economics. ;)\> ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/132 "2004-06-07T01:21:43Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > And what’s “OSP”? It stands for “Office of Special Plans”. See here for details: [http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Office\_of\_Special\_Plans](http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Office_of_Special_Plans) [http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8725](http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8725) > **[Special investigation: The spies who pushed for war on Iraq](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jul/17/iraq.usa)** > > Julian Borger reports on the shadow rightwing intelligence network set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force. ---
**Author:** ![spectrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc29f/32.png) [@spectrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spectrum)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/133 "2004-06-07T01:30:39Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > Actually, the more radical fringes of the left didn’t even want to maintain detente. They wanted unilateral disarmament. They wanted the U.S. to dismantle its nuclear weapons and roll back the military unilaterally. Remember? And there were some on the right who wanted to stop talking and just start shooting, to strike first and fast, to hit them has hard as possible, no matter the consequences, and hold onto our hats. Are we really going to judge the left/right divide by holding up for consideration the least representative segments? ---
**Author:** ![pervert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbe5ce/32.png) [@pervert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pervert)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/134 "2004-06-07T01:54:17Z")
> [@spectrum](#): > > And there were some on the right who wanted to stop talking and just start shooting Can you cite this for me? I remember many claims that Reagan was trigger happy, but I never once remember him ever seriously suggesting that we should start shooting. I don’t remember any serious conservative actually suggest war. I do remember many serious liberals suggest disarmament. Are you now saying that the only liberals suggesting disarmament were nuts? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/135 "2004-06-07T01:55:16Z")
You’d have a point if it was really that small a fringe. But the disarmament movement was huge. Over a million people protested in Washington against Reagan deploying the Tomahawk in Europe. The nuclear freeze movement was gigantic. Granted many of the people in the freeze movement did not want unilateral disarmament, but a big percentage wanted a unilateral freeze. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/136 "2004-06-07T01:56:15Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > Oh, I missed the part where you said ‘for a fixed amount of GDP’. We’ll have to dig deeper. Right. And, the thing about lowering nominal tax rates is a different issue. Because the lowering of the rates was more dramatic than the actual lowering of those people’s taxes because my understanding is that when the rate was 70%, there were so many loopholes that very few people really paid anything like that…at least on any reasonable fraction of their income that nominally fell into that bracket. > [@pervert](#): > > Also, all taxes taken together seem to have only risen from 17.5 to 18.4 percent of GDP from 1986 to 1987. If the 1986 tax bill resulted in strictly a tax increase, it seems that the percentage of GDP should have gone up more. That is hardly an insignificant rise over a one-year period. The revenues as a percent of GDP is not one of those numbers that fluctuates wildly. > [@](#): > > I guess, that the short answer would be to say simply that the deficit reductions (you know the thing that started this whole hijack in the first place) were the result of spending restrictions (not reductions, certainly, but restrictions on growth), economic growth, and changes in the tax code. Yes, this is true. In an attempt to put some hard numbers on this, one can ask the following question: What would the deficit as a percentage of GDP have done if the personal and corporate income tax revenues had risen at the same rate as the social security revenues rose between 1986 and 1987? This, one could argue, would give us an idea of at least roughly what would have happened in the absence of the changes in the tax code due to the 1986 act. (The fact that the rise in social security revenues is, I believe, at least roughly equal to the GDP rise in real terms + the inflation rate gives me some further confidence that this is a good baseline.) The answer is that the deficit as a percent of GDP would have dropped from 5.0% to 4.0% instead of 5.0% to 3.2%. So, in other words, the “anomalous” increase in personal and corporate income tax revenues that we are attributing to that tax act can account for a little under half of the observed decrease in the deficit as a percent of GDP. My guess is that much of the rest of this can be accounted for by the fact that outlays actually decreased by a bit in real terms between 1986 and 1987, rather than growing at the rate that GDP grew. One factor in this is that the growth in military spending, which had gone up rapidly, slowed…It increased less than $9 billion after going up roughly $20-30 billion in the previous years of the Reagan Administration. (It would be better to report these numbers in percentage terms…but I’m too lazy to calculate this right now and, at any rate, it would only serve to make the point even more dramatic. Converting to real terms [i.e., constant dollars] might have a little effect the other way, but I doubt would change the basic qualitative story.) ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/137 "2004-06-07T02:07:58Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > The nuclear freeze movement was gigantic. Granted many of the people in the freeze movement did not want unilateral disarmament, but a big percentage wanted a unilateral freeze. This is a big “granted”. The distinction between a freeze and disarmament is huge. Also, calling it “unilateral” seems like a misnomer based upon a post on [this](http://hnn.us/readcomment.php?id=16816) site: > [@](#): > > The Nuclear Freeze proposal that galvanized a U.S. mass movement in the early 1980s called for a bilaterally-negotiated halt to the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons. Thus, it applied to Soviet missiles as well as to American missiles. It was a simple and fair proposal and, not surprisingly, it was backed by virtually every major church body, union, and professional association in the United States. Polls showed that it consistently had the support of from 70 to 80 percent of the American public. Dismissing the Freeze campaign as a dangerously leftwing, pro-Soviet, and pacifist venture seems, at best, based on ignorance. There is some debate on this issue, as another poster claimed: > [@](#): > > At that point (1982-83), the key battle ground was over intermediate range missiles. And at that point, the Soviets had already deployed their SS-20s, whereas the U.S. had not deployed its counter to these. Hence, at that point, the freeze proposal was, in effect, a proposal to freeze the Soviet missiles in place and freeze out the U.S. missiles meant to counter them. I repeat my view, the freeze movement was utterly unconcerned about the Soviet threat these uncountered missiles posed. However, we would clearly need a more comprehensive assessment of the relative deployments at that time. I find it hard to believe that the U.S. did not have an effective deterrent, especially in the form of their submarine launched missiles. Also, if this really was a problem, the fact that it called for a “bilaterally negotiated halt” suggests there was room for embracing the freeze idea while still endorsing that such negotiations in some way address this SS-20 issue if it were really a problem. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/138 "2004-06-07T02:28:41Z")
The thing is, as the second poster mentioned, the ‘freeze’ movement opposed virtually all new U.S. weapons systems. Take the cruise missile - it wasn’t even necessarily a nuclear weapon, but it was protested around the world. How many times have you heard someone say, “We have enough missiles to blow up the world \ times over! How many more do we need?” The logic behind that statement is a _unilateral_ freeze. We’ve got enough weapons, so no matter what the Soviets do, we don’t have to build any more. But of course, matching the Soviet SS-20’s in Europe was a lot more complex an issue than just saying, “We’ve got enough!” Reagan’s point was to show the Soviets that the U.S. would ALWAYS match them, missile for missile, man for man. It was part of the campaign to break the will of the Soviet Union. Whether those missiles were strictly needed in a strategic sense was an entirely separate debate. But the nuclear freeze movement wouldn’t even entertain the first argument, and their answer to the second was, “We don’t need them.” And the absolute pro-Soviet, unilateral disarmament movement was huge. Look at international A.N.S.W.E.R today. They are Marxists. They were not peace lovers, they were cheerleaders for the Soviet Union. And groups like them were far bigger in the cold war than they are today, and they carried much more influence. ---
**Author:** ![pervert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbe5ce/32.png) [@pervert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pervert)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/139 "2004-06-07T02:43:45Z")
> [@jshore](#): > > Yes, this is true. In an attempt to put some hard numbers on this, one can ask the following question: What would the deficit as a percentage of GDP have done if the personal and corporate income tax revenues had risen at the same rate as the social security revenues rose between 1986 and 1987? This, one could argue, would give us an idea of at least roughly what would have happened in the absence of the changes in the tax code due to the 1986 act. (The fact that the rise in social security revenues is, I believe, at least roughly equal to the GDP rise in real terms + the inflation rate gives me some further confidence that this is a good baseline.) I like the general idea. But I’m not sure this gives the answer we are looking for. Wouldn’t this be biased towards salary income? That is, wouldn’t it assume that increases in capital gains (the infamous “unearned income”) and other non salary sources did not factor in? If I’m not mistaken the payroll tax revenue should be tied directly to the tax rate and the employment numbers of the time in question. Or am I thinking of this all wrong? ---
**Author:** ![iamme99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/57b2e6/32.png) [@iamme99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamme99)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/140 "2004-06-07T03:21:47Z")
Well, on the positive side, he was a good public speaker and did tell a good joke. 😃 OTOH, here are some excerpts from an opinion article which brought back a few memories: [Article link](http://www.counterpunch.org/gaspar06062004.html) > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Ronald Reagan, 1911-2004 > > Goodbye and Good Riddance > > By PHIL GASPER > > > > Ronald Reagan has finally died at age 93. Predictably, politicians from both major parties have issued gushing tributes to this venal and vicious man, who was happy to slash workers’ wages, see families thrown onto the street, support sadistic death squads and bomb other countries, if this was in the interests of the American ruling class. > > > [@](#): > > > > While The Reagans was undoubtedly a monumental example of third-rate TV schlock, examples cited by conservatives of substantial inaccuracies didn’t hold up. One complaint was that the movie showed Reagan ignoring the AIDS crisis because of its association with gay sex, and telling his wife, “They that live in sin shall die in sin.” > > > > But in real life, Reagan refused to mention AIDS publicly for six years, under-funded federal programs dealing with the disease and, according to his authorized biography, said, “Maybe the Lord brought down this plague,” because “illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments.” > > > [@](#): > > > > In the movie, Nancy insists, “Ketchup is a vegetable! It is not a meat, right? So it is a vegetable.” In real life, Reagan directed the Department of Agriculture to classify ketchup as a vegetable in September 1981 in an attempt to slash $1.5 billion from the federal school lunch program. > > > [@](#): > > > > But Reagan’s economic policies were a disaster for working-class Americans. Reagan presided over the worst recession since the 1930s, and economic growth in the 1980s was lower than in the 1970s, despite the stimulus of military Keynesian policies, which created massive federal budget deficits and tripled the federal debt. By the end of the decade, real wages were down and the poverty rate had increased by 20 percent. > > > [@](#): > > > > Reagan was many things, but “gifted” was not one of them. “Poor dear,” remarked British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, his closest international ally, “there’s nothing between his ears.” As for a “moral man,” Reagan’s morality included union busting–beginning with his dismissal of striking air traffic controllers in 1981–an unprecedented war on the poor, opposition to civil rights and support for apartheid South Africa. The “moral” Reagan trained and supported terrorists, including the Nicaraguan contras (“the moral equal of our Founding Fathers”) who killed over 30,000 people, and Islamic radicals in Afghanistan who later formed the al-Qaeda network. > > > [@](#): > > > > The man whose administration spearheaded class warfare on behalf of the rich, dragged American politics to the right, and rebuilt US imperialism after the Vietnam debacle, is dead. Good riddance. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850.md?page=8)