Ronald Reagan began the process of creating 1%ers

The last great Republican President Dwight D Eisenhower reputedly warned of the dangers of a Militiary Industrial Complex. Ronald Reagan was acclaimed for ending the cold war but promoted the expansion of the Military Industrial Complex and led the way to the die off of the Middle Class. Up to then Americans led the world in most things. Since then and now America has gradually created a small minority of Super Rich and a large population that grows ever poorer by the day.

But the Milititary Industrial complex survives and grows stronger by the day, as we move relentlessly towards a control that the founding fathers fought a war over, over 200 years ago. Then the founding fathers wished to be free from a dominant country dictating policy without representation. Today we have the likes of the Koch Bros with the backing of the Supreme Ct quietly moving to buy the govenrment so that they can do the same thing which they might claim the electorate supported. I don't beleive it, what do you think?

 

There have been "1%ers" since the beginning of human civilization.

 

You know how to keep Michael Moore away from your door?

Two steps.

 

Liberals seem content to overlook that little fact. Heck, up to WWII the 1% in America probably had around 10 people in it and look at that group today, there are thousands.

I would say we are going in the right direction if that is a concern.

 

The top 1% would contain 1% of the population. 10 people would be right if the number of Americans was 1,000.

Great liberal math. Reagan created the 1%. That's because God already created the other 99%. Basic math.

 

Yeah, there were no rich people before Reagan came along...*sarcasm*

 

The top 1% is defined by wealth, not population.

Wow, where do you guys get your information from?

 

I think he means mega-wealthy people, not just the top 1% of income people.

And hes right...there were a handful of people at the top 100 years ago. Today we have a million millionaires.

 

Reagan didn't create the 1%, they always existed. However, what happened under Reagan was that ALL of the gains of the economy (positive results of productivity increases) started to be restricted to the very few, meaning that the 1% started to gain more and more wealth relative to the bottom 90%, who were virtually stagnant.

In my view, Reagan contributed to that with tax policy, but also the advent of the credit card availability was a major contributor. which allowed the common man to go into debt slavery not out of necessity, but for buying useless stuff they didn't even need.

 

MSDOS was invented in 1981. Reagan came into office. MSDOS, and sophisticated capital markets, ushered in a highly compressed tech explosion that allowed a greater leap in 30 years than human civilization has ever seen. Reagan streamlined the tax code by eliminating and reducing bracket bloat while simultaneously removing almost all shelters and limiting personal deductions, both factors that had made the top brackets irrelevant for decades. The change in the tax code was revenue positive, as the growth in federal revenues over time proves.

So which factor led to super-rich people, a tech boom of singular world historical proportion, concentrated in the US, in which miracles were delivered to everyone for cheap? Or a rather moderate reengineering of US tax policy that got rid of tax shelters and unlimited personal deductions, and proves revenue positive? You be the judge.

The left displays the same ignorance and avoidance problems with real context it always does in seeking to forward resentment politics and secure benefit for itself, the gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-lawyer-MSM Complex, that INCLUDES the military-industrial complex in the same way the numbers 1-10 include the number 5.

Don't buy into, or allow their distortions and lies.

 

You're 100% correct about Reagan's military spending. My son's first job after he got his master's in engineering was at King of Prussia, PA about 1987-88. He was working on Reagan's Star Wars anti-missile defense system.

The whole story isn't just his spending. He slashed tax rates for the rich to pre depression levels and increased spending thereby effectively borrowing money from foreign banks to finance them. He's not alone in this attack on the middle class. George W. Bush assumed a balanced budget with surpluses projected until the debt would have been completely paid off and immediately cut taxes for the wealthy two times, 2001 and 2003 and used reconciliation to block Democrat opposition. I think all the charts and additions below will pretty well explain what has happened to the 1% vs the lower 50%....when adjusted for inflation the lower 40% has been flat for thirty years.

This is why I left the Republican party after voting for them for 30 years. The Republican party used to stand for something besides the wealthy and corporations. "Trickle Down," "Voodoo Economics" didn't work. The concept is akin to giving one of three dogs a large sausage and expecting him to share it with the other two.

Notice that Bill Clinton raised taxes in 1993 while he still had a Dem congress and look at the 1% line at the end of his two terms just before W. Bush cut tax rates twice:

(click image to enlarge)

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These figures came from the bureau of the debt....they're easily verified:


................................................................Total U S Debt........................................................

09/30/2009 $11,909,829,003,511.75(80% Of All Debt Across 232 Years Borrowed By Reagan And Bushes)

09/30/2008 $10,024,724,896,912.49(Times Square Debt Clock Modified To Accommodate Tens of Trillions)

09/30/2007 $9,007,653,372,262.48
09/30/2006 $8,506,973,899,215.23
09/30/2005 $7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2004 $7,379,052,696,330.32

09/30/2003 $6,783,231,062,743.62(Second Bush Tax Cuts Enacted Using Reconciliation)

09/30/2002 $6,228,235,965,597.16

09/30/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06(First Bush Tax Cuts Enacted Using Reconciliation)

09/30/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86(Administration And Congress Arguing About How To Use Surplus)

09/30/1999 $5,656,270,901,615.43(First Surplus Generated...On Track To Pay Off Debt By 2012)

09/30/1998 $5,526,193,008,897.62
09/30/1997 $5,413,146,011,397.34
09/30/1996 $5,224,810,939,135.73
09/29/1995 $4,973,982,900,709.39
09/30/1994 $4,692,749,910,013.32
09/30/1993 $4,411,488,883,139.38 ( Debt Quadrupled By Reagan/Bush41)
09/30/1992 $4,064,620,655,521.66
09/30/1991 $3,665,303,351,697.03
09/28/1990 $3,233,313,451,777.25
09/29/1989 $2,857,430,960,187.32
09/30/1988 $2,602,337,712,041.16
09/30/1987 $2,350,276,890,953.00
09/30/1986 $2,125,302,616,658.42
09/30/1985 $1,823,103,000,000.00
09/30/1984 $1,572,266,000,000.00
09/30/1983 $1,377,210,000,000.00

09/30/1982 $1,142,034,000,000.00(Total Debt Passes $1 Trillion)((Reagan Slashed Tax Rates To Pre Depression Levels)

09/30/1981 $997,855,000,000.00

 

Exactly my point Finlay99. But we don't often see the Republicans nor Dems saying much about this. Probably because it doesn't suit their individual agendas.

But the numbers tell the story very clearly.

 

If everyone was poor, there would still be a top 1% made up of 1% of the population.

God told me.

 

LIke robber barons. I get it. But have to give him a little bit of a hard time on that math thing.

Thank God for those robber barons. They did a lot for this country.

 

True, on the other hand, a million dollars doesn't spend like it did 100 years ago.

 

How did Robin Hood steal from ? kings, barons, socialites, dukes, aristocrats, etc was created Reagan ? Neat piece of trivia history. Thanks for the lesson learned progressive noise machine.

 

L

I think your last paragraph summarizes more clearly what actually happened. Other comments seem to support that the already wealthy were able to get wealthy much more quickly than wages and slaries grew. The point someone made on computer trading, only confirms to me that regulation didn't keep pace with teechnology advancement. As we very well know now that unregulated banking industry became anarchic in that without controls it eventually brought the financial world to its knees in the last collapse and we have all been paying the peice since. And we will again.

I have no more allegiance to the left than the right, but I would like to see the wealth of the Nation shared evenly rather than concentrated in the hands of the greedy few. Why can't we all be great and genuinely successful rather than the few that seem to select themselves these days. Just because they can manipulate money numbers electronically for their own advantage. They do not generate any real wealth for the nation as a whole.

 

Because not all work hard enough to deserve wealth.

 

What do YOU mean by working hard? Its a very difficult term to generalize on. It means different things to different people.

 

It's means to earn your worth. Your wealth. There is a difference. I have lazy friends that don't deserve great wealth. I mean working hard. Doing your job then some. Care about your job.
You need examples of people that don't deserve wealth? Fine.
Anyone that works at a DMV.
IRS agents.
About half of my employees.
People that work with two speeds only. Slow and dead stop and their slow is broken.
People who walk and drag their feet. To lazy to left your feet shame on you.
We all know people that are nothing more then zits on America's back. They deserve what they work for. Nothing more. No but it makes progressive feel good hand outs.

 

I try not to get too personal, but I think it may be time to get a manager or some consultamts in to run your business or change the culture where 1/2 the people people ore ineffective. If the business is sustaining itself with this level of inefficiency then your prices are too high and the management are not doing their job properly. AS with the politics, its not the people that are to be blamed but the leaders. All people tend to follow and get away with what they are allowed to. If the leadership isn't leading change the leadership, not the people, after all the business recruited them. Its up to the business to create the right environment for them to be effective. If the business does not invest in its people, you get, what you get.

 

Indeed! It has worsened gradually ever since the 40's. In the late 1940's a corporate executive earned about 12-15 times what a plumber or carpenter made. By the 70's that multiplier had reached 100 times as much. In 2012 a typical CEO made 550 times what an ordinary worker earns. 85 people in the world are worth as much as the poorest half of people on the planet....that's 3 1/2 billion souls.

A Walmart heiress is worth about $45 billion and she recently came out opposing a minimum wage. How's that for someone who probably wouldn't have a pot to (*)(*)(*)(*) in if not for her old man's efforts.

What the Republican party craves more than anything is a flat tax. Then the ordinary people in this country will essentially be paying all the taxes. George Romney produced one year of his tax returns when he was running for pres in 2012. He had paid 14% on $15 million of earnings. My wife and I paid almost exactly that same rate on less than $100,000. They never want people to actually realize what a gravy train they're riding. Very few of them even pay the 25%-30% they're supposed to be paying. They'd rather hire lawyers and accountants and pay them the money than to see the government get it. They want a Lord/Serf society and if someone doesn't put a stop to the BS they'll get one.

 

H

That is so, so true. The bit about the Wal Mart heiress is very apposite. I actually have no problems with the founder creating a business. I do have a problem with heirs sitting back and saying things that you quoted. I do have problems with the likes of Koch Bros being able to buy an election. OK there are people on the Dem side who are doing it too. They are equally as bad because of Citizens United.

 

Sorry no. My mom and dad had credit cards back in the fifties.

 

The true "wealth" is already shared close to equally due to the marvels of capitalism and technology:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkebmhTQN-4

By my estimate and IME, ~20-30% of people will never be able to achieve measurable wealth due to repetitive, catastrophic life choices, not Reagan, not "the 1%," not "wealth inequality," but good old fashioned stupidity that is allowed and even incented in the fabulously wealthy land we inhabit. Drug and alcohol abuse, petty crime, dropping out of school, having children out of wedlock or when one cannot afford them, sitting around watching TV and playing games in one's spare time, buying consumerist junk, running up credit cards, wasting college time studying resentment studies, socialist sciences and other unmarketable, unskilled, nonSTEM fields, overbuying cars and houses, floating from -easy- part-time retail to restaurant jobs, these habits and behaviors can NOT be addressed by any amount of tax policy or redistribution. Total nonstarter.

These behaviors CAN be addressed by STOPPING INCENTING THEM. When people cannot truly fail in material, real, eating ramen every other day and living at the shelter ways, the likelihood of them ever truly succeeding becomes more and more remote, depending on their propensity to make stupid choices and do stupid things.

Wealth is not a static pie, despite the left's constant lie narratives seeking to steal more for the Complex, is constantly growing and changing, today's smart poor are young people starting out, and will be tomorrow's "greedy rich" to the left, which utterly discounts the availability of powerful social mobility in our country for people who make REPEATED SMART CHOICES and work hard. Income quintiles are not static either, the Complex loves trying to fool us that they are, but in actuality, for the most part, other than the "poor choice 20-30%," the poor and rich are the EXACT SAME PEOPLE, at different points in time. Taking money from the smart group and giving it to the stupid group destroys massive amounts of wealth on the front end, and in a wealthy country, the wealth will all redistribute right back into smart hands in a matter of years. All that redistribution and social engineering to no avail whatsoever, but of IMMENSE costs to all of us who would like money to be left in productive hands to develop more innovations, to extend life, to increase happiness for the worthy MAJORITY who don't engage in constant, stupid behavior.

Today's poor student is tomorrow's doctor... or meth addict. No amount of redistribution will change that immutable fact of human choice. One large, totally self-interested group DOES benefit from more government and redistribution, the gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-lawyer-MSM Complex that is parasitic on the productive elements of society, and this Complex is the source of all the ignorant, inaccurate wealth resentment propaganda we see here and elsewhere daily. All the rest of us suffer, some by perpetual dependency, others by having to give away 30-50% of the fruits of our labors to the Complex, sitting greedily at its trough snorting for MOREMOREMORE.