Posted on 08/12/2006 12:46:58 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Twenty-five years ago this weekend, Ronald Reagan signed the Economic Recovery Tax Act. The bill cut personal income tax rates by 25% across the board, indexed tax brackets for inflation and reduced the corporate income tax rate. The anniversary is worth commemorating as a seminal moment that continues to influence policy for the better in the U.S., and around the globe.
The achievement of Reaganomics can only be fully understood by recalling the miserable state of affairs a quarter-century ago. Newsweek summarized the national mood when it wrote in 1981 that Reagan "inherits the most dangerous economic crisis since Franklin Roosevelt took office 48 years ago."
That was no exaggeration. The economy was enduring a cycle of rising inflation with growing levels of unemployment. Remember 20% mortgage interest rates? Terms like "stagflation" and "misery index" entered the popular vocabulary, and declinists of various kinds were in the saddle. The perception of American economic weakness encouraged the Soviet empire to ever bolder adventures, as reflected by Soviet tanks in Kabul and Communists on the march in Nicaragua and Africa.
The reigning Keynesian policy consensus had no answer for this predicament, and so a new group of economic ideas came to the fore. Actually, they were old, classical economic ideas that were rediscovered via the likes of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School, Arthur Laffer, Robert Mundell, and such policy activists in Washington as Norman Ture and Jack Kemp, among others. These humble columns under our late editor, Robert Bartley, led the parade.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
ping
"Voo-doo" Economics at 25 too. (Bush I PWN3D!)
Unemploment %
1981 7.6
1982 9.7
No wonder I enlisted....Unemployment rates were even worse in Mi....
That should be unemployment %!
One Freepers name says it all for me - LongsForReagan.
How dearly I miss that great, great man.
I know you're invoking hyperbole to make your point, but you really don't want 0% unemployment. People would riot with frustration.
Reaganomics is across-the-board tax cuts, not only top-rate cuts exclusively which would be "supply side" only.
Maybe we should propose an amendment to limit the maximum tax rate (lots of folks would advocate a limit of zero, in favor of a national sales tax).
I'll read this later.
Right now I am suffering from malaise.
Some Reagan jokes:
"It is said that Castro was making a speech to a large assembly. And he was going on at great length and then a voice out in the crowd said, 'peanuts, popcorn, crackerjacks.' and he went on speaking and again the voice said, 'peanuts, popcorn, crackerjacks,'" Mr. Reagan said. "And about the fourth time this happened, he stopped in his regular speech and he said, "the next time," he said, "I'm going to find out who that is and kick him all the way to Miami.' And everybody in the crowd said, "peanuts, popcorn, crackerjacks.'"
A commissar in the Soviet Union went out to one of those state collective farms, grabbed the first worker he came to and said, 'Comrade, how are the crops?' "'Oh,' he said, 'Comrade Commissar, if we could put the potatoes in one pile, they would reach the foot of God.'" "And the commissar said, 'This is the Soviet Union. There is no God.' and he said, 'That's all right, there are no potatoes.'
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