My phrasing there really sucked. What I am trying to ask is something along the lines of: If we assume that the economy was frozen in the state it was in before the tax cuts (or assume that it grew by the amount it had been growing), how much would we have expected these cuts to reduce revenues (in real terms)? If this could be estimated with some accuracy (and I would imagine it should be possible), then one could compare that to what actually happened and get some estimate of how much of a stimulation effect there was from the tax cut.
As I recall it, the average worker lost much more during 1977-1980, during the Carter regime and its double-digit inflation, that is to say, “stagflation” and “great malaise”.
I posit:
Reagan did nothing to speed the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was already on the brink in 1980. Brezhnev had expanded the military industrial complex while neglecting the agricultural and manufacturing sectors throughout the mid 1970s. Reagan did not start this buildup, and his increased defense spending did nothing to increase it. It may have even served to delay the eventual reforms that brought down the Soviet Union.
In fact, Reagan’s hawkish attitude caused a reactionary change in Soviet politics – after Brezhnev died in 1982, the Politburo went with the old hammer-fisted ex-KGB chief Yuri Andropov. After 15 months with Andropov, he keeled over and the USSR sought another dying old-school Communist in Konstantin Chernenko for replacement. He only lasted 11 months before he croaked in March 1985. Only then could a younger, more reform-minded Gorbachev step in. Glasnost and perestroika only came in 1987.
By 1985, Reagan’s second term had started. He could abandon his hard-line attitudes towards the Soviet Union and start making amends to build his legacy. Seems to have worked, mind you.
Debunk or support.
I am glad my rather innocuous op has started a great discussion here on the “merits” of Mr. Reagan, of which I, personally, see None.
Anyone still believing in the farsighted wisdom, approaching a miracle, of Supply Side Economics ought to read David Stockman’s book. It makes clear how that was a cover story under which the people around the, um, “disengaged” Reagan put forth their own narrower agendas for their own narrower constituents. Just to be clear, that’s Reagan’s own Budget Director saying that even he knew it was a sham at the time. Poppy Bush was right to call the concept that government could simultaneously slash taxes, increase spending, and reduce debt “voodoo economics”, at least up to the point where he put his integrity in a blind trust, declared new-found beliefs in Supply Side Economics as well as Anti-Abortion, and accepted the VP nomination.
Meanwhile, here’s your homework assignment: Explain how the national debt tripled under Reagan’s watch, and how that’s consistent with what he said would happen.
There are still True Believers in that “philosophy”, even today, and even on this board, but maybe that shouldn’t be surprising. It’s making a comeback even today in the Bush tax proposals. But then for comparison, there are still True Believers in Scientology even though L. Ron Hubbard admitted inventing it just to win a bar bet. That doesn’t make it any less sad, though.
Just out of curiousity, is there a cite for this? Not that I’m a Hubbard (or Reagan) fan by any means, but I hadn’t heard of any evidence demonstrating that Hubbard admitted to inventing Scientology to settle a bar bet; I’d love to see it.
Well, let’s see what you did say.
And in another post:
My memory’s not what it once was, but I thought I remembered you saying these things: Reagan’s tax cuts caused Federal revenues to grow, and Congress’ domestic spending was the prime cause of the Reagan-era deficits. We’ve put both of those notions to rest.
You did also mention the growth in Social Security and Medicare costs, but again, my point is that if you’ve already got $75B annual deficits, and you know that Social Security costs are going to increase rapidly, and you’re going to embark on a major military buildup, dont’cha think that cutting tax revenues on top of all that is a bit irresponsible?
Of course Reagan didn’t create the economic circumstances of America as of January 20, 1981. I never claimed he did. It’s his response to those circumstances that I question. And I question how much of the recovery was due to his tax cuts, anyway. My recollection of 1981-83 is that there was great uncertainty on the part of Wall Street as to the wisdom and effect of Reagan’s economic policies, and that they held back to see what would happen. IOW, the short-term effect of the Reagan tax cut may have been to exacerbate the recession.
As an example of a Reagan tax cut that probably did little to spur the economy, I offer you the cut of the 70% tax rate (and all other rates above 50%) down to 50%.
You probably don’t remember that these rates only applied to unearned income, i.e. income that was coming in, regardless of whether you got out of bed in the morning: dividends, interest, rents, that sort of thing. They applied only to rich people who had to park their money somewhere, and would have wanted the best return on it, regardless.
Also, the estate tax exemption was increased from $147K (IIRC) to $600K. If anyone can demonstrate that estate tax cuts stimulate the economy, I’ve missed it.
I guess I just dealt with this.
At any rate, I don’t buy the notion that Reagan’s tax cuts got us out of the economic doldrums; first, we got over the effects of the 1979-80 oil price increases, and then in Reagan’s second term, energy prices plummeted. On the whole, the tax cuts certainly stimulated the economy a bit, and there was some compensatory increase in revenue. But much of the Reagan tax cut of 1981 represents money that the rich got to keep, without affecting Federal revenues more than incidentally. Put that revenue stream back in, and watch the economy grow as it would have grown in the absence of any tax code changes (other than the inevitable Social Security bailout), and my belief is that we never see a single $200B deficit. Since we’ll never know for sure, YMMV.
The alt.folklore.urban FAQ page has it classified as “believed true but not conclusively proven”. They also add that the bet was with Robert Heinlein (who seems just the sort, if you ask me). Snopes is silent on the subject, for some reason.
The alt.folklore.urban FAQ page has it classified as “believed true but not conclusively proven”. They also add that the bet was with Robert Heinlein (who seems just the sort, if you ask me). Snopes is silent on the subject, for some reason.
Looks like a GQ to me. Coming up.
Achmed: nice of you to drop by. Wanna read the thread? I’m sure I’ve discussed the different economic challenges that Carter, Reagan, and other recent Presidents have had to face, somewhere along in here.
edwino: I don’t have a cite for this - only my feeble recollection - but that recollection is of Andropov as, quite surprisingly, somewhat of a reformer. And my recollection is also that Gorby was promoted by Andropov from the provinces to the inner councils; without Yuri, Gorbachev would never have been in a position to be considered as Chernenko’s replacement.
vanilla: geez, even I think Reagan had some redeeming characteristics as President. They’re the exceptions, I admit, but still.
Why thank you, RTFirefly. I believe I have read through it. However, jshore may wish to take these things into account rather than blindly saying:
In fact, to respond strictly to jshore’s remark, the last time I saw a graph (rather than Dukakis’ blind weighting of only two points in the continuum during his 1988 campaign, which the American left seems to have taken as its gospel – understandable, since they can’t understand more complex concepts like honest graphs), the lower half of the population began to recover under Reagan after their incomes were hammered under Carter.
This is not to say that Reagan was or is Allah (sacrilege, and vanilla should tread lightly lest a cleric take offense and issue a fatwah against him!). In point of fact, his escalation of the War on Drugs has been terrible for civil liberties in America, not to mention how it’s driven up the price of a good doobie. Nevertheless, he was the best President whom America has had during my existence on this planet.
According to Harlan Ellison, that’s pretty much true, except that I’ve never heard of Hubbard actually admitting it. On this year-old thread, I linked to the interview wherein Ellison tells the story. Unfortunately, that link doesn’t seem to work any more (I get a 404 notice). Apparently, Hubbard, Ellison, Alfred Bester, Cyril Kornbluth and Lester del Rey were having dinner or drinks (Ellison doesn’t drink alcohol, though; it makes him violently ill) and Hubbard was complaining about how hard it was to make a living as a writer. Jokingly, one or two of the other writers suggested he start his own religion because there’s plenty of money in that.
Hubbard took the suggestion seriously and the rest is history.
Another version of the story has Hubbard making a bet with Ray Bradbury that he could start his own religion, but Bradbury has denied this.
RTFirefly: I’m sorry, I never really meant to suggest that the tax cuts would have increased revenue beyond what they were before, but simply that they DO increase growth, which increases revenue. Over a long period of time (years, decades), a low-tax environment will lead to much more growth and consequently larger tax receipts. That’s what I said when I meant that Reagan claimed he would grow the economy out of the recession - not that his tax cuts would instantly be offset by matching revenue gains, but that low taxes set the stage for the eventual growth that will. I think I already mentioned this.
The Laffer curve is not wrong, it’s just hard to tell which side of it we’re on. Clearly, if we taxed everyone revenue would be zero, because we’d have no economic output. If we had no taxes, it would be zero as well. So we’ve established a curve that will start at zero, rise to some maxima (or several of them), and then start to fall again as you continue to increase taxes. I have little doubt that we are on the bottom end of that curve now - tax cuts will increase growth, but not enough to pay for the cuts. Back in 1981 it was closer, but how close we really were I have no idea.
If Reagan’s tax cuts had absolutely no offsetting revenue gains, they would have cost the U.S. government something like 71 billion dollars per year in the first couple of years of the cuts. The actual cost to the government was certainly lower than that, say somewhere between zero and 50 billion. Oh, and don’t forget the easing of regulation under Reagan - this is one of the huge uncounted drags on the economy, and Reagan managed to cut the Federal Register by a pretty good chunk in his first term. I remember seeing an economic analysis of what this was worth in terms of GDP growth, but I can’t remember the numbers now. It was fairly substantial, though. On the order of a hundred billion or more.
And of course, it was nuts to think that a tax cut would raise revenue so much that it would pay for itself, PLUS the military increase, PLUS the current deficit. I suspect that the Reagan administration knew it too, but it was their way of being able to promise the moon and get away with it.
BTW, I’m a big fan of Stockman’s book - I’ve read it a couple of times, but not for a few years now. Stockman’s main gripe with Reagan was that he was too nice - he refused to cut government spending when he was shown the people it would hurt. Claude Pepper and the AARP had him wrapped around their finger for that reason.
And I did mention the growth of domestic spending as being the true problem, and I stand by that. I didn’t make a distinction between entitlements and discretionary spending, but both of them took a sharp turn upwards. The military expansion had a major effect as well.
But the bottom line is that by Reagan’s second term the economy was roaring. I’ve given Bill Clinton the credit for the roaring economy of the last four years (mainly through doing nothing, which is exactly what I want a government to do).
I was looking into this one, and it does seem to be true, but with the following important caveats: The $4000 figure measures from the low of the low to the high of the high. As noted, most of that was then lost in Bush’s term…In fact, the loss was $3000 of it by the next low point (1993). Then, under Clinton it turned up; Unfortunately, the graph I have only goes til '94, although I am pretty sure it has generally continued up, certainly the last few years. Measuring from the bottom of a recession to the peak before the next recession is always going to make things look pretty good. People can try to pin the drop after Reagan on Bush’s hike of taxes but I don’t think the timing is quite right; I think it’s better with the timing of the recession; and then there doesn’t seem to be a similar problem after Clinton’s tax increase.
Also, these figures are all for median family income. Apparently if you look at “real median per capita wages,” they dropped sharply during the Reagan years, as this cite explains (unfortunately it doesn’t give the actual data): http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2000/08/04/1.html So, why did family incomes go up while wages went down? The explanation given is that there was a sharp increase in the number of married women working!
Sam, as for your latest exposition on the Laffer curve stuff, I pretty much agree with most of your analysis. However, I would argue, as I said before, that where we were on the Laffer curve back then was clearly not where they thought we were and it seems still to the “left” of the maximum. Also, as I pointed out, a one-dimensional curve is a fallacy. It may be we could increase some types of taxes (or some brackets) and gain lots of revenue and increase others and gain considerably less.