The Private Sector Was Really Fine Under Reagan
The difference is even starker when you compare the results expressed in terms of post-recession workforce growth:
The private workforce shrank by a bit more than 1% during the first eight months after the most recent recession’s official end. In the 27 supposedly magical months after that, it grew by less than 4%. Big whoop: During the analogous 27 months under Reagan, private-sector employment grew by 9.6% — and the economy didn’t have to lose 1.16 million jobs before any kind of recovery appeared.
Oh, and I almost forgot. Data from the BLS’s Household Survey tells us that the number of part-time workers during the first 35 months of the Reagan era’s post-recession boom grew by 1.6%. That’s almost a rounding error compared to the same period’s 10.7% growth in full-time employment. During the same number of months after the most recent recession officially ended, part-time employment has grown by 1.9%, while full-time employment is only up by an I’m-not-kidding 1.3%.
The boom years under Reagan primarily resulted from supply-side tax cuts accompanied by a healthy dose of deregulation. A President Mitt Romney would not have to go with major tax cuts to replicate a Reagan-like boom. Instead, on Day 1 he and Congress should first make the income-tax structure created in 2003 during the presidency of Bush 43 and under which we have essentially functioned for the past nine years permanent. If he wants to be more aggressive, fine, but in my view it’s not as important as the next necessary step.
It is crucial that a Romney administration do the regulatory equivalent of what the Kemp-Roth tax cuts did when they pulled down rates by 25% over three years. Team Romney should carefully target the elimination and revision of regulations with the goal of reducing their overall cost to the economy by 10% each year for the next three years. After that, we can ask “Why stop there?” (Free advice to Romney insiders: Put a task force together to address this matter right now, so you can hit the ground running on January 20, 2013.)
A regulatory Kemp-Roth would free up millions of hours of private-sector time for productive tasks and would over time move hundreds of thousands of federal workers who add nothing to the country’s gross domestic product into the economy-contributing private sector. A 10% annual reduction in the yearly regulatory burden, which the SBA estimated as costing the economy $1.75 trillion a few years ago and which certainly approaches or exceeds $2 trillion now, would be the rough equivalent of an annual $200 billion tax cut. You can write it down that we will see an economic boom if our government ever implements this common-sense idea.
Unlike now, the private sector was really fine under Ronald Reagan. Additionally, once inaugurated, the Gipper almost never complained about the insufferable mess predecessor Jimmy Carter had left or moaned about the high interest rates the Fed had to impose to tame inflation.
Evidence is growing that the American people have had more than their fill of our current ineffective whiner- and regulator-in-chief and those he has chosen to work for him, and that they intend to express that displeasure at the polls in November. If that’s really the case, Election Day can’t come soon enough.
Also read: Trust Me, Reagan Would Win the Nomination
I never understand why people think Reagan was a great conservative? Reagan started us on the slide of debt-death, preferring to use “credit cards” to hide his excess spending and shove the inflation/debt onto coming generations. Reagan waged war on the Working People of America (1)Launching the war with his attack on unionization, firing the air-traffic controllers and (2) Introducing the concepts of low paid part-time and contract workers. Remember how Henry Ford introduced the concept that if you paid your people enough money, they would/could buy the products they were building? Well Reagan destroyed that concept, and brought us HERE, to THIS economic crash. Reagan was no “hero” who destroyed Communism. Reagan was a coward who HID the fact that the USSR was dead on it’s feet and collapsing. Reagan created fear in the People to get support for a wasteful looting of the Public Treasury by the Military Industrial Thieves. Finally, Reagan, the week after leaving office, ran over to Japan to collect at LEAST $6MILLION in “speaking fees” which was a nice term for BRIBE for keeping our markets open to the Japanese, and thus SELLING OUT American Workers. No, Reagan was not a great man, he was a Low Life Credit Card spendthrift.
And another thing — america became a war mongering state on the day that an all volunteer military (another Reagan screwup) became a reality, in the aftermath of the VN war. Thus ensuring more riches for the WAR PROFITEERS
Great Democrat talking points, Duane! None of which can be backed by any logical set of facts and all totally outside the realm of reality….but great talking points! You must be quite young with absolutely no experience in business of any kind during the late Carter era nor any memory of world events as they actually existed during the Reagan era. But nice try with the hogwash. By the way, the air traffic controllers strike was an ILLEGAL strike. Got that? Illegal. Try backing your ignorant bullcrap with some facts. Looking forward to an additional display of your wisdom and knowledge.
Oh, “wisdom and knowledge”? Ha! Truth is not talking points. Obama is one of the greatest leaders ever. Here are accomplishments of Obama:
http://obamaachievements.org/list#top
Your so Stupid!
Okay, Smart Man. I did as you suggested and went to the website that you referenced. I opened the part that was intended to inform regarding Obama’s allegedly magnificent record concerning His establishment of governmental transparency. If you honestly believe that the Obama era will be remembered for its fine record of legislative and executive transparency (think Obamacare and Eric Holder) then you are extremely uninformed and even more gullible. Not surprising for someone who writes “Your so Stupid.” What’s that? Some sort of ghetto-speak? Come back and visit us when you have mastered the English language and proper grammatical construction. Meanwhile, nice try.
Oh! I nearly forgot. Election day is November 8th! See you at the polls!
This may be the worst misnomered reply ever. Sheesh.
Think about it: Why is the jobs record as bad as it is? It’s the public sector job that is the problem. Where is that most evident? In the Republican-led states. Those are the states that have cut public sector jobs the most. Is that surprising when from day 1 the aim was to make Obama fail? Party before country. These people need to get a life. Yes, it’s still about hope and change. We still believe in the President and we will make it as a country. I believe that. Tough times are no reason to give up. It beats being in the party of obstructionists.
Richard, you are a real nincompoop. Government workers are a net drain on our economy. I assert that Democrats intend to use taxpayer dollars to create those jobs so that a bigger percentage of the workforce will vote for Democrats when the economy is hurting. Notice that most of the blue states have bigger debt problems because they spend more money they don’t have by adding all these dependents to the public payroll. Soon they will run out of money to spend on these so called jobs in these Democrat controlled states. Then what will they do? Governments do not create wealth, ey spend it, mostly unwisely.
Jim Baker,
If the government does not create wealth or control gas prices, then why is President Obama being blamed at all? Your talking points only fit to what your agenda is, hmmmmmmm?
Most people also do not know that the debt ceiling was raised 19 times during Reagon’s 2 terms and he did not inherit 2 simultaneous wars and a tax cut for the entire country, including the top 1%, during the 2 wars. Facts are how some would create it to fit their agendas but true facts have no hidden agendas and will stand the test of time and history.
Richard, Why were you defending the job creation efforts of Obama and attacking the job killing efforts of the Republican party, even before I made any response to you. If you are skeptical about my position on wealth, please explain to all of us how government creates wealth by taking wealth from the good producers to provide jobs to poor producers? The net result is a loss of wealth. Think of it this way: Your wealth is the difference between value of what you produce and the value of what you consume. How does government ever make a determination of value when ONLY individuals can place actual value on goods they buy and the services they receive?
That Aircraft Traffic Controllers’ Strike was a major threat to the continued safety of air passenger transport. The Controllers’ union, of course knew this, and was gambling on that being in their favor.
As I recall at that time, the very idea of Federal Employees (Civil Service) going out on strike against their employer was a novel approach.
Truman during the Korean War and Kennedy during the VietNam War also tussled with organized labor with U.S. Steel……Google around…..it became a legal tangle. Taft-Hartley Act and the Supreme Court were brought into play.
Reagan, of course knew this, but was not going to be whip-lashed by these Air Traffic Controllers on the question of safety in air transport.
“Remember how Henry Ford introduced the concept that if you paid your people enough money, they would/could buy the products they were building? ”
Your entire [post is counterfactual drivel (not least the notion that Reagan ended the draft), but it’s time to put to death that old myth. Ford’s record-setting $5 workday hed nothing to do with enabling Ford workers to buy his products (and that makes no sense, since if every one of Ford’s 14,000 workers had bought a Model T it wouldn’t have come close to the cost of the initiative). Ford did it to end his massive turnover problems. Note that it only worked precisely becasue Ford was paying more than anyone else.
He did it to keep the unions out as well.
Ah, is the poor whitle communist still all wee weed up over the Great Reagan defeating his fellow travelers in the USSR and the unions?
How funny!!!!
Reagan, the ASTROLOGY follower, took a CREDITOR Nation, with a strong manufacturing base, and turned it into a DEBTOR Nation.
The ‘astrology follower’ was Nancy, not Ronald.
What I will never understand about liberals is that if the financial policies of the 1930s failed to bring us out of a depression, why did they think those same policies would bring us out of a major recession in 2008?
No, Obama had no intention of getting us out of a major recession. Absolutely not. He saw his election as the last best opportunity to get his massive liberal agenda completed, the crowing jewel of which was socialized medicine under ObamaCare (which, ironically may be overturned by the Supreme Court). That’s why he spent the first two years of his administration not on job creation, but on ObamaCare and every handout possible to unions (such as the government running GM and the massive kickbacks to unions under the “stimulus” bill that only stimulated union or government jobs). This man never had any, ANY, intention of helping the private sector and has done everything in his power to hurt it so that people would become MORE dependent on the government, not less.
November can’t come soon enough for me. We’ll have an opportunity to vote this bum out of office and stop the liberal madness that has spent us into oblivion. It is appropriate that I’m writing this today when there is a major election going on in Greece that will determine whether or not that country sinks or swims economically. We will be facing that exact same choice in November. I hope we don’t blow it.
Actually, liberals like Krugman are now demanding that we pursue the policies of the 1940s.
Krugman admits that the New Deal wasn’t quite enough to restore prosperity, but World War II was. And therefore, he recently called for Federal fiscal stimulus on a scale comparable to World War II.
In WW2, Washington was spending close to 40% of GDP (nearly all of it for national defense). Not just one year, but for several years till the war was won. Today, that would work out to a stimulus package of $5.6 trillion per year for several years.
Joseph Stiglitz doesn’t go quite as far, but he’s leaning toward a stimulus package of $2 trillion per year.
What’s wrong with this “solution”, I will leave as an exercise for the reader.
what’s wrong is that America would have to embark on a campaign of world destruction so as to be the only game in town again.
Krugman is a delusional nutjob with influence bestowed on him to campaign for a fascist/communist America
why did they think those same policies would bring us out of a major recession in 2008
They didn’t believe it was a major recession. The Dems spent at least 2 years talking down the economy (worst economy since Hoover, hamburger-flipper jobs, jobless recovery, etc) and when the economy finally collapsed they knew the election was in the bag. They also knew that the economy would recover, like it always had, in at most 18 months so the Stimulus was designed to prevent layoffs of Public Employees. The Dems engineered a recession with their talking points and they intended to make it appear that Keynesian Spending led to the recovery and cement the idea of “Big Government Works!” into the minds of the American People. They knew that they talked the country into a recession and they believed that the Greatest Orator in the History of Oration could raise all economic boats whilst lowering the sea level. They were wrong, but as is always the case, the taxpayer is the one paying the price.
Liberty– I am in complete agreement with you. Barry and his administration – in particular Holder – are content to impose their agenda as far as our system will let them. And they do it with an impudence that is a slap in the face to anyone who is on to their ulterior motives.
I believe that when Barry said the private sector was doing fine what he really meant was “hey, if you want to understand who this economy is really hurting don’t look to the private sector for the biggest victims — look at the poor public sector employees”
If you ever wanted to know the intention of BO just refer to Rev. Wright. Let us hope that Romney can undo the damage and bring integrity back to the USA. Reagan was a leader and a builder. Bo was and is a destroyer and a taker.
Yea! Where’s Romneys preacher screaming about all the oppressed Mormons?
Also, Reagan’s jobs numbers were with a much smaller population so the difference between their two records is even larger than it appears. If you make the adjustment for an apples to apples comparison Obama would need to create almost 12 million jobs to equal Reagan’s performance.
I wish we would learn to be more careful in our terminology. NO President actually creates jobs, except government jobs, which are a leech on society, not a productive element, at all.
By saying any President, or even Congress, for that matter, CREATES jobs, we are buying into the stupid leftist claptrap. It is old style Europeanism, where the enlightened intelligentsia CREATE everything, and the little peons should be grateful. You can see right now, how that eventually works out.
Americans should scorn such language, whenever they hear it spoken. It is a Great Lie, used by bad people for their own nefarious ends.
The very best we can hope for is that a proper President reign in Leviathan by eliminating agencies and destroying any and all excessive legal and regulatory barriers (that would include about 90% of today’s government monopoly). That clears the field for ACTUAL productivity, not mere shuffling of money between useless people, with government taking a cut at every transfer.
I like the comparison between Obama, the tele-prompter pilot, to Bush the F-102 pilot.
But, I will give Obama more experience behind the controls. What a man! (snort).
Are the fake Greek columns crumbling? The tel-e-prompter lost its zing, zip, and zest? The words sound tinny and recycled? Tried of the rope-a-dope and spending? Tired of being demonized, like “bitter clingers”, the Catholic Church, doctors cutting off of limbs for fun & profit, and big, greed (fill in the blank)? A little tired of blaming Bush, the tsunami, ATM Machines, and the Republican House? Tired of the corruption and executive fiats? O’Dismal is sinking like a lead balloon and he knows it. He’s flailing around like a hooked fish. I really liked it when Romney staged a presser in front of Solyndra—the perfect description of O’Dismal’s presidency. Bankrupt.
Not only is the comparison between Obama and Reagan unfair – it’s offensive. Obama should only be compared to Jimmy Carter – in which case he’s really not doing that badly.
I still remember some of the pandering to minorities that Carter did when he was running for re-election against Reagan in 1980.
Carter visited New York City and promised the blacks in Harlem that he would build them a *second* World Trade Center, this one in Harlem. Twin Towers for the whites downtown, and another Twin Towers for the blacks uptown.
It’s not just that Obama prefers big government and is the first US president to openly announce we should commit to an industrial policy economy because other countries do it. The Corporatism with its heavy dose of benefitting campaign contributors is just a start.
Through the National Science Foundation of all places this administration is working with various UN agencies and international NGOs on a very troubling initiative called the Future Earth Alliance. It is scheduled to become operational in 2013 and is mostly being coordinated out of the country.
We really do not need an administration that announced before being elected that they were committed to fundamentally transforming America. Now it is quietly working with “Major international actors that can bring about economic and social change.” Really?
Were your fingers crossed when you took that oath of office?
Why do UN Millenium Development Goals and sustainability initiatives take precedence over the needs of the American people?
Are we to be free or subjects to be managed and mislead and guided?
As a summer visitor to the great United States, I had the opportunity (foisted upon me) of a relative’s friend engaging me in some Romney-Obama chit-chat. By the end of the conversation I learned that this lady could not possibly be pro-Israel because ‘she doesn’t support anybody’ and ‘wants the UN to solve that.’ Before that turn, however, I learned that if you even factually describe the ‘birther’ trial that took place in New Jersey (the one in which Obama’s lawyer insisted successfully on the judge throwing out the White House-issued long form because it was fraudulent), everything you say is ‘crap.’
Bring on Romney before these thoroughly irrational people continue weakening the US and its allies (including Israel). I am fed up with their insanity.
Consider this bit of speculation. If Obama had attained the presidency during a period of a roaring, strong, and stable economy do you think that he would have encouraged it to remain that way or that his deeply embedded socialist philosophy would have demanded that he set about to destroy what he inherited so that it could be replaced by his socialist/Marxist vision? I believe that would have been exactly the case. A strong private sector capitalist economy would have been portrayed as an era of greed, windfall profits, rich-get-richer bullcrap, and ill-gotten corporate gains. That’s exactly how Reagan’s economy was portrayed by the liberal media. Obama and his ilk, I am sure, consider themselves lucky to have inherited a recession so that big government dependency can thrive. Obama considerers himself in competition with the economic health of our nation and not in any way in cooperation with efforts to restore our economic health. “Never let a crisis go to waste”……“and if you can’t have one handed to you then make one” might be added. Obama has us where he wants us so he can take us where we don‘t wish to be. Reagan led us to where we wanted to be. Liberals may wish to take the former. I’ll take the latter.
In the 8 years of the Reagan epoch (for I see more divergence, rather than convergence, in the record of the first Bush administration, when compared to the Reagan Administration), the money supply didn’t have as many liberties taken with it, since the time Slick Willy entered into the White house.
People had to demonstrate they could handle the mortgage they applied, rather than the NINJA abomination that wrecked desolation for the balance sheets of banks, countries, and whomever else thought they could make money on toxic assets.
Comparing Reagan to Obama needs to take that into consideration, and as long as
http://www.canada.com/business/Fisher+Canada+status+first+tier+nation+becomes+stronger+every/6764314/story.html remains true about neither Obama, nor Romney having a plan – this is one Canadian who will put up with the slings and arrows from Americans for saying this, “It is better for Canada to have closer relations with the Commonwealth, than with the US”.
A lot of people are in pure survival mode now. I pray for our country and our liberty. If the commies succeed…kiss that all good-bye.
Ron Paul Just Won The Iowa Caucuses Grace Wyler Jun. 16, 2012
http://www.businessinsider.com/ron-paul-wins-iowa-caucuses-2012-6
I think it’s telling that the last supposedly “great” Republican president was in office so long ago that a good chunk of the current voting population either wasn’t even alive yet, or don’t even remember who he was.
I also think it’s pretty fitting that he was an actor.
Ronald Reagan claimed that the Russian language had no word for “freedom.” (The word is “svoboda”.
Reagan raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office.
Reagan said that intercontinental ballistic missiles could be recalled once launched.
In the Oval Office, Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps.
Reagan announced that apartheid South Africa had “stood beside us in every war we’ve ever fought,” when the South African leadership had been on the other side in the most recent world war.
Reagan sold heavy weapons to the Iranian mullahs and lied about it, saying that all the weapons he hadn’t sold them (and hadn’t traded for hostages in any case) would, all the same, have fit on a small truck. Reagan then diverted the profits of this criminal trade to an illegal war in Nicaragua and lied unceasingly about that, too. Ultimately, he escaped accountability for the Iran-Contra scandal by arguing straight-faced that it was all just too complex for him to understand.
He then switched without any apparent strain to a policy of backing Saddam Hussein against Iran.
And this is supposed to be the greatest American president in modern history?
Yawwwwwwwwwwn.
I am real tired of articles that attempt to argue for free markets by showing charts and graphs to give credit or blame to politicians and which say nothing about the basis of economic activity. Crediting or blaming Presidents for economic outcomes is only a confession that our economy is basically government driven. If there were free markets, there would be no Presidential involvement in the direction of economic activity. In America, we no longer even have a concept of what free market enterprise would be like. We have only government coercion or else outright government control. If we want to ever have free and unfettered markets, we have to completely strip politicians of any control in the economic life of the country. There is a fat chance of that happening, I say. I also say that a coercive government is a better deal than a controlling government when it comes to our economy.
What about “The boom years under Reagan primarily resulted from supply-side tax cuts accompanied by a healthy dose of deregulation” did you not understand?
Anonymous: I understood the article and I was an adult when Reagan was our President. And while he got the tax cuts passed, he still ended up with a “progressive” income tax schedule and tax simplification turned out to be more complicated than ever before. We were only saved from our annual nightmare by Turbo Tax and other computer software. Reagan wanted tax relief, but the Democrats wanted more tax based coercion. Both got what they wanted. Reagan got some deregulation of business, but at the same time OSHA, EEOC, FCC, EPA, and others were enacting regulations by bureaucratic fiat, on businesses and consumers, at what was considered a record pace. Reagan did little to eliminate these interferences. The government was intervening in the marketplace wherever it could. That is, in part, my explanation for the use of the limited marketplace options afforded to us after coercion and outright control by the government interventionists. You follow my point?
Of course the economy bloomed under Reagan.
He embarked on a massive binge of deficit spending.
Why do you think that Cheney said “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter”?
What about “The boom years under Reagan primarily resulted from supply-side tax cuts accompanied by a healthy dose of deregulation” did you not understand?
The bigger story is unfolding right before our eyes Teavangelicals.
The Teavangelicals: The Inside Story of How the Evangelicals and the Tea Party are Taking Back America David Brody’s book outlines this important phenomenon in modern day American politics.
A hopeful sign that America’s Judeo-Christian heritage is honored, and preserved for posterity. There are those in the New Left, Far Left, Progressive Activists seeking to undermine everything our Founding Father carefully and thoughtfully designed, debated and implemented. Sure, there are problems for us to overcome (remember the Dust Bowl?). But We The People have faced adversity both from within (1970′s anyone) and without( 2 World Wars)…and won. Yes, human sacrifice was a high price to pay, for that reason and that reason alone We The People have an obligation to protect and preserve that which Our Creator so unselfishly and unassuming bestowed upon us.
Stop to think about it…We The People have a massive immigration problem, why? Because America is the only nation in all of some 197 nations in the world that can offer unfettered freedom of religion, speech and individual self governance. Period! That’s why America is special. It’s in Our DNA…excel at excellence.
And Sarah Palin is a Tea Party original. The only professional politician, business woman, family matriarch, national figure, projected wholesomeness, advocate for Pro-Life, Pro-Marriage (male/female), and a true community administrator (as opposed to a ‘community organizer’). These few attributes alone distance Sarah Palin from the current field of Presidential contenders.
Vote your conscious. But seems pretty clear. Activate your Teavangelical community and We The People can take back our Beloved USA. God Bless America. Amen.