Reagan’s ‘Greed Is Good’ Folly

[marmar]

from Consortium News:




Reagan’s ‘Greed Is Good’ Folly
October 5, 2011

Exclusive: For three decades, the United States has undertaken an extraordinary social experiment, incentivizing greed among the richest Americans by cutting their top tax rates in half or more. The results are now in from Ronald Reagan’s bold gamble and Robert Parry says they aren’t good.

By Robert Parry


So, it turns out that greed isn’t good after all – at least not for the vast majority of the American people. But this is a lesson that many U.S. opinion leaders still resist.

For the past three decades – since Ronald Reagan’s Republican landslide in 1980 – the United States has undertaken arguably the most destructive social experiment in American history, the incentivizing of greed among the rich by halving their top marginal tax rates.

The idea – once famously sketched out by right-wing economist Arthur Laffer on a napkin – was to slash the tax rates on the rich to spur a “supply side” bonanza of economic growth and higher tax revenues for the government.

Before becoming Reagan’s vice presidential running mate, George H.W. Bush labeled this tax strategy “voodoo economics,” and Reagan’s first budget director David Stockman warned that, without severe spending cuts, it could create a sea of red ink as far as the eye could see. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2011/10/05/reagans-greed-is-good-folly/

[Demeter]

1. Wealth is not a legitimate goal for a nation

unless that wealth is equally distributed.

[Skittles]

2. reagan made greed and idiocy fashionable

America has yet to recover

[mwb970]

3. As far as I'm concerned, Reagan killed America.

Watching the idiotic teabaggers dancing on its grave is infuriating. Maybe we can get bring our country back to life. The battle is joined: it's republicans vs. Americans. I'm on the American side.

[libinnyandia]

4. Reagan's descendents

It is an inication of how far right the GOP has gone that many people refer to him as a model of moderation. I even wrote a letter to my local newspaper calling for a return to Reagan's tax rates(I did add that Eisenhower's rate would be better). In my local paper I saw a reference to a "Reagan Democrat" considering supporting Herman Cain. Rhe nation has lost it's mind. To idealize a man who started the path to destruction is idiocy. Maybe our brains have lost their cognitive function, due to air pollution from trees. To call the government the enemy was almost treason. And that's what Reagan believed.

[Locrian]

5. cooperation

They like to think the "greed is good" is some sort of natural selection and survival of the fittest. They miss the fact that life also values cooperation just as much.

If you think of your body as being a collection of millions of cells, organisms, working together and cooperating - you're partly there. Greed is good (exclusively) would be akin to cancer cells destroying the body for their own favor.