So the only "compromise" being made is of one's own morals and values, in order to prolong the dysfunction.
Not at all. It's politics. It's why they do it and I don't. I could never make it as a politician because I'd never get elected. I doubt you could either.
Are you going to credit Clinton too? What about the busts in between now and then? Is that the fault of Reagan too or do you only credit him with the wins but not the losses? Sorry, but as I pointed out, the results of voodoo economics did not pan out as promised.
Hypothetical scenario: You have a business that employs 100 people to manufacture "widgets". You manufacture, sell and deliver about 1000 widgets a year. Let's say the economy takes a downturn and fewer people are buying your product, so you only sell 900 widgets a year... losing 10% of your sales may force you to terminate a proportionate percentage of your workforce... That'd be 10 fewer employees making money (10 fewer consumers on the market buying widgets and other related consumer products), so the self-defeating cycle begins... If the government hands you a fat check, your business would still only be selling 900 widgets a year, and this would still mean laying off 10% of your workforce... but now you get to give yourself a fat bonus and/or raise for "steering the company successfully through these trying times". If the government divides that fat check into smaller amounts and distributes it among the working class, each of them will have financial concerns lessened, which will allow more of them to buy widgets, which means you may not have a 10% reduction in sales, which protects your workers' jobs... Trickle down economics makes rich people richer and screws the economy. That's why we now have greater income disparity than China or Iran.
Reaganomics has no significant effect on the US economy other than to inaugurate the shift in assets, wealth and earnings away from the middle class. Two years after Reagan's 1981 tax cuts, unemployment was highter than it had been, economic growth was very slow and inflation had only come down slightly. The following spring, Saudi Arabia announced that it would no longer cut production to prop up the OPEC posted price of oil in the light of continual quota cheating by Iraq and Nigeria. The price of oil immediately collapsed, from over $40 per barrel to less than $30. That's when the real recovery began.
You are misreading my post if you think I'm bashing Reagan or praising Clinton. I'm curious if you are misreading it deliberately or for some other reason. Yes, the free market is boom and bust. Often despite who is President or which Party controls Congress. IMO, the economy often does best when our government is balanced; meaning ineffective except in the most extreme circumstances when they all agree on an action.
Yes you are. That's often the problem with those who are so partisan they can't see anything except what is directly in front of them. Trickle down economics is a failure. The "Peace through Strength" initiative rebuilt our military after the Democrats ripped it apart following Vietnam and was the key factor in pushing the Soviets into economic collapse trying to keep up. http://blog.heritage.org/2013/04/01/reagans-inspiring-words-on-defense-peace-through-strength/
Reagan's economic policy was to let the earners keep more of what they earn because they are wiser stewards of the money than government is. Because of that policy we experienced an economic expansion ion unparalleled before or since. Reagan's policies were a success.
Like the Soviet Union beginning to collapse and that we could see almost fifty years of Cold War coming to an end? No ironic at all. http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/7398 http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/ronnie-turns-one-hundred-4829
Oh, quit whining about having to pay your fair share. Taxes are not the government simply taking people's money. When you pay taxes, you are paying for all the services the government provides that benefits everyone. Yes, yes, I realize that someone as exemplary as yourself could never possibly lose their job, or have their house burn down, or lose their money in a stock market debacle, or be the victim of a natural disaster, or get sick, or have to retire, or need police protection, or the services of the courts, or rescue on the high seas or in the wilderness. After all, those things only happen to bad people who are lazy or immoral or in some way generally inferior, and those people bring their misfortunes entirely upon themselves, right? And virtuous people such as yourself are completely and solely responsible for their success, since they achieved it without the help of anyone else and are entirely in control of everything that could possibly happen to them. However, for us mere mortals who live in the real world and maintain the infrastructure that allows you to live in your happy little fantasy, those sorts of services are important.
like cutting and running from lebanon after the deaths of 241 american servicemen even though reagan said we wouldn't be deterred by or negotiate with terrorists
History is complicated, and any attempt to boil it down to a bumper sticker is going to wind up being seriously wrong. Reagan certainly made major contributions to ending the Cold War, and it would be wrong to deny him the credit he's due. It would be equally wrong to fail to acknowledge that Reagan was largely following a blueprint that had been initially laid down by Harry Truman and added to by all the Presidents in between. The Cold War was a long term, generational conflict, and it was the long term policy of containment, carried out by Democrats and Republicans alike, that ultimately led to victory. And Reagan's own policies that brought down the curtain cannot adequately be summarized as, "We maintain peace through our strength; weakness only invites aggression." It's certainly true that Reagan's military build up helped make the cost of continued confrontation too heavy for the Soviet Union to bear. But Reagan also offered them a viable alternative of de-escalation and diplomacy. You need the carrot and the stick. Reagan was also extremely lucky to have a counterpart like Gorbachev to work with. Ultimately it was Gorbachev's decision to sacrifice his own personal political fortunes for the good of his country and the good of the world that led to the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War. Had Reagan followed his initially confrontational policies with a leader in the Kremlin who was more militant, hardline, or egocentric - a Stalin or a Brezhnev - that could easily have led to full scale war. I don't know whether to credit that to Reagan's shrewd assessment of the Soviet leadership, or to Reagan's good luck (and he certainly had plenty of that.) That may not be an answerable question at all.
I have no problem with your statement. There is no such thing as the indespensable man (or woman). In history, things often happen because their time has come. Some can happen sooner rather than later because of certain people, but those things often would come in time. Reagan facilitated the end of the Soviet Union. Without him, the Cold War could have dragged on another 10-30 years, but I agree that it the end was inevitable.
Well, isn't the real question whether or not it was a good idea to have the Marines in Beirut in the first place? Pulling out of a no win situation is a sign of wisdom, not of weakness. Remember that what Reagan said is that it's our strength that keeps the peace, not the appearance of strength. Policy needs to be guided by enlightened self interest, not by worrying about saving face or looking tough. To quote another great Republican President, "Walk softly and carry a big stick." We're pretty good at the carrying a big stick bit, but I think we could work some more on the walking softly bit. True strength doesn't need to be boasted about or talked up. It speaks for itself. On the Cold War, I really don't like using the word "inevitable" when talking about history. Things could always have turned out differently. For a lot of the Cold War, the US was basically trying to walk a tight rope between being resolute enough to keep the USSR in check and not being confrontational enough to lead to war. A misstep at any point could have led to full scale nuclear war, and that sort of war doesn't have any winners. JFK was always mindful of the events of 1914 - none of the great powers really wanted to go to war, it wasn't in any of their interests to go to war, and yet, through a series of missteps and miscalculations, Europe was engulfed by a real cataclysm. What Reagan really did was to hit exactly the right balance at exactly the right time under exactly the right circumstances to push events over a tipping point, and in a good direction. Of course there are plenty of other possible outcomes. There's no guarantee that the USSR couldn't have won. The Soviets made a lot of very bad decisions about their economy (aside from the whole ideology of the superiority of capitalism over communism blah blah blah) and had they made better decisions, things could have turned out a lot differently. The USSR and China together had a huge amount of resources at their disposal: human, natural, technological and economic. If they had worked together more effectively and made better choices, there could have been a completely different outcome. The flip side of that is that the West could have lost. There are all sorts of things that could have happened to knock us down. There could have been a massive natural catastrophe - a pandemic plague, the Yellowstone supervolcano going off, the Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands could set off a megatsunami that would wipe out the Atlantic coasts of Europe, Africa, and the Americas, etc. Or there could have been a self inflicted catastrophe. It's worth remembering that a lot of the important members of NATO did not have very good histories of cooperation when the Cold War began. The alliance could have come apart at the seams. Or the US itself could have come apart at the seems; it's a minor miracle that the social unrest of the 50's through 70's didn't lead to much more bloodshed and chaos then it did. And our internal politics were not in the best shape, either. Reagan was the first President since Eisenhower to serve two full terms, and when Reagan entered office there was a real feeling that the country was simply becoming ungovernable. In fact, I think that Reagan's greatest achievement in office was simply proving that to be wrong. America's spirit was in a very dark place in 1980, and I think that Reagan deserves a lot of credit for restoring our self confidence.
