Barack Obama’s Osawatomie Speech was certainly one of the worst given by a U.S. president in modern American history. This bit was particularly egregious:
Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes — especially for the wealthy — our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.
Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ‘50s and ‘60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.
The gross simplifications and distortions aside, is Obama right? Has cutting taxes and regulation really “never worked”? From 1966-1982, the U.S. economy grew at an average annual rate of 2.7 percent — a figure which smooths over four recessions (including two horrific ones) — as inflation and unemployment and taxes and regulation skyrocketed. In nominal terms, the stock market was flat over the period. In real terms, it collapsed. But hey, at least incomes were more equal in a “misery loves company” sort of way. Obama’s brand of Keynesian economics was considered a dead issue, and Malaise America feared what coming decades would bring.
But starting in the late 1970s, the U.S. economy began to deregulate, while taxes were cut sharply and indexed for inflation. The U.S. economy grew at an average pace of 3.3 percent from 1983-2007, inflation — the scourge of the 1970s — was slayed, and the stock market rose by 1,400 percent. Median middle-class incomes rose by roughly 50 percent. Reaganomics worked. But Obama acts as if that generation of steady growth — driven by tax cuts and deregulation — never happened since it doesn’t fit into his disingenuous narrative.
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Your post is horribly pernicious and pathetic. It doesn’t say anything unexpected to find that the sponsor is a crackpot conservative think tank founded by an asbestos leader who conspired to deceive people on its health risks, so that he could make more money.
The last post talks about the problem with America’s economy now, and yours tries to shunt that fact aside and engage in class warfare on behalf of the rich and powerful. Good for you. Hope you are enjoying your goodies; conservatives pay well, but surely don’t act swell.
I came of age during Reaganimics. In 1980 I got my first apartment $200 month. Two years later, same apt, $350 month. My income went from $135 week min wage to $150 weekly.
The prices of everything skyrocketed. If I hadn’t married I would have had to move back with my parents.
Reaganimics nearly bankrupted the common man.
The liberals and the press have been trying to re-write the history of Reaganomics since the first Bush administration. Reducing gov. spending and the rate of taxation ALWAYS spurs growth in the private sector-creating more jobs, more tax revenue and sustanable and growing middle class. All one has to do to see the result of big gov and an entitlment society on steroids -is observe the collapse of the European wellfare state, not to mention the imploded soviet system in the 90′s. To those who would disagree- please point to any nation that has embraced socialism in the last century (or even the last 4 or 5 decades) and look at their present rate of un-employement, quality of health care, growth of gdp, defecits, etc, etc….
James,
Great post — I just have one question. When you say “starting in the late 1970s, the U.S. economy began to deregulate” what is your metric? I ask this because I was just discussing this question with a liberal friend who pointed out this recent David Brooks column which made the case that business regulation under Obama hasn’t been that much worse than it was under Bush. That got me poking around the internet for measures of regulation and I wound up at George Mason’s Mercatus Center and pulled up their latest report on regulatory agency spending which you can check out here:
http://mercatus.org/sites/default/files/publication/1-regulatoryagency20080807_wc-regulators_budget_09.pdf
If you go to pages 7 and 8 you’ll see steady and increasing spending on regulatory agencies with some small dips in the early 80s and mid 90s. In other words, it seems hard to “measure” in a real quantifiable way deregulation.
The decade prior to the great depression was called the roaring 20′s for a reason
Why pay attention to what he says anymore? Lets just talk about what to do when we have a new senate and white house. The more we talk about what we will do instead of what O says the better.