It's getting real hard to tell just who destroyed the economy...

if it is a President you want to blame

known as trickle down economics

Presidents have been "destroying the economy" for a generation and more. It is a team effort, based on supply-side ideology and a desire to enrich the haves while paupering the have-not-so-muches.

-- Mal

Except I'd say Supply Side ideology was propaganda for the masses (who, really, uses its slogans today?). Few believed it would work, and it hasn't. That is, if you're not in the top 0.1%. For the oligarchs, Supply Side economics and the policy it rationalized worked incredibly well: Just observe the shift of wealth from the masses to the few since 1981.

But, yes, hardly monocausual. There is also neo-liberalism, the rise of job-displacing technologies, shock doctrine cabalistic capitalism, etc.

Reagan actually didn't slash them much more than some other folks, including JFK and Bush Sr. In fact, both JFK and Reagan cut taxes 20% (for the top bracket); Popa Bush actually cut them a little more. But since he immediately followed Reagan, we see a tax cut of over 40% for the two administrations. See, eg, this table, which is pretty simple: http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/10/economists-90-top-tax-rate-would-decrease-inequality-.html

In every case, the rationale has been that lower taxes on the rich will stimulate the economy. Despite the fact that experience would seem to indicate otherwise.

-- Mal

REAGAN

Top rate was 50% on earned income prior to Reagan. Top rate was 70% on unearned income prior to Reagan. CEOs, rock stars, and sports stars were taxed at 50% while investors were taxed at 70%. The first tax cut during the Reagan administration was to make the top rate equal for all income at 50% (to encourage investment).

That's a feature, not a bug.

The programs for the masses came mostly from FDR and LBJ. And even those may have been mostly to keep us from storming the gates of the mansions.

But, since 1981, we've had Republican and neoliberal Presidents, if that's a clue. I don't know about Carter's fiscal policies.

See also http://www.democraticunderground.com/10248250

What's your take?

that got the ball rolling.

That helps the rich. So do tax policies. So does tearing social safety nets.

and thank Ronnie for this:
The top marginal tax rate was lowered to 50% in 1982 and eventually to 28% in 1988.
Corporate tax rates were lowered from 48% to 46% in 1981, then to 34% in 1986

but I could throw Nixon in there somewhere.

advances to blow up.

Edit: FDR opposed strikes by public unions, but Taft Hartley was passed during the Truman administration, but over his veto. I do vaguely remember something else under FDR, but I will have to look for it.

And the GOP hasn't let up on driving that point home ever since then.

Bill Clinton's support of NAFTA followed that line of thinking. The TTP is still following it. Trickledown is the Rs philosophy regarding economics. Democrats for the most part still believe in the theory that FDR used and which worked until raygun.

After reading the above post I would add that Nixon applied the trickle down theory to other third world countries as a testing ground for what was to come. And as everyone says "It works. For the rich."

actually think that the economy did not change after raygun?

the same thing as what kind of economy we have. That is that is trickle down or FDR mixed economy. Capitalism vs socialism.

What I said was about our type of economy not our type of government.

Also, there were a number of Presidents between FDR and Reagan and also after Reagan.

I have no use for him but he wasn't so powerful that he is still ruling us from the grave, either.

along? Why wasn't it the big think in the 60s?

Yes, all levels of society have always been here from the beginning but they have not had the run of things like they do now. We used to regulate things (mixed economy) and tax the rich. Today your description is great - perfect. But it does not fit the FDR years and the situation up until raygun. The philosophy changed.

French Revolution comes to mind.

Similarly, we've always had trickle down economics. We just did not necessarily use that term, although the wiki of "trickle down" says that term was used in the 1800s and during the depression.

but they have not had the run of things like they do now

That is not only about economics, though. Lobbying and willing of politicians to sell us out for campaign donations so they can buy TV ads is a big factor.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1024&pid=8253

plutocracy/plutonomy - I am calling corporatism - corporations and their stockholders. We are probably talking about the same mess. At any rate we need someone - more than just the WH to take on the money interests and straighten out the voter's rights issues. They are not going to surrender easily.

We have some leaders in our party that are trying to do this: Bernie, Elizabeth Warren and others. Even if they do not win they are in a good fighting position. Now to find our if Hillary really wants to be OUR champion and tackle these issues.

multi-million dollar enterprise can be a limited partnership.

Wealth and income inequality have been here since the East India Company. Slaves were the greatest source of wealth in the early days. (Talk about income inequality! and wealth inequality--wealth inequality being the real crux, IMO).

The percentages of the very, very wealthy may not have been as small as they are now. Maybe it used to be 15% or 20%, not under 1%, but a plutonomy does mean that the top percentage gets smaller and smaller, thanks to favorable laws and other things. Not just tax laws, either.

I think what Reagan sold was the idea that helping corporations was a wonderful thing--though Eisenhower did that, too.

Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense:

Wilson's nomination sparked a controversy that erupted during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee, based on his large stockholdings in General Motors. Reluctant to sell the stock, valued at the time at more than $2.5 million, Wilson agreed to do so under committee pressure. During the hearings, when asked if he could make a decision as Secretary of Defense that would be adverse to the interests of General Motors, Wilson answered affirmatively. But he added that he could not conceive of such a situation "because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa". This statement has frequently been misquoted as "What's good for General Motors is good for the country". Although Wilson tried for years to correct the misquote, he was reported at the time of his retirement in 1957 to have accepted the popular impression.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Erwin_Wilson

Granted, that was not Ike himself, but Ike did build the national highway system (originally conceived of by FDR as a grid across the map of America)--as part of national defense system. Of course that also benefited Esso, Goodyear, steel, etc.

incorporate. And some of our US corporations we would have a really hard time without them. What I am mostly afraid of are the international corporations who are so involved in the total idea of globalization expressed in NAFTA and now the TPP that blur the idea of government sovereignty.

However I grew up during WWII and corporatism has a special ring to it for me. That is what we were fighting in that war. Government and business/corporations united under the label Nazi.

Throughout history there has definitely been an income inequality as you pointed out with slavery. Usually that does not work out so well in the end. I read somewhere that it was the inequality in 1929 that led to the Great Depression. I would like to avoid that again if we can. But I am not really sure it is possible to avoid. As I have said the rich are not going to surrender their riches easily. Look at the states who refused to participate in the ACA. People are actually getting the idea that they can just ignore laws and they will go away.

No, the rich never have surrendered wealth easily and they never will. In my theory, they do only when they are scared. I think they were scared after the crash 1929, a little more than a decade after the Russian revolution, and in the 1960s.* Then, militant African American groups, more peaceful African Americans groups, the anti-war movement and the economic justice movement were looking as though they might coalesce.

I think they are a lot less scared now because they are armed to the gills and we are surveilled to the gills. The day Boston and 6 other cities and towns were asked to "shelter in place" the manager of my building pointed out to me the locations of street cameras between my building and the place I was going to walk to for lunch. (Yes, I ignored the request to stay indoors.) There were 3 or 4 in under 10 blocks. (My understanding is that Boston is considered a prime target for terrorists because of all the iconic historic sites.)

I would not be surprised if they had audio capability. Hell, if they want, they could probably hear and record me when I am in my home, talking to my son.

*On the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, a man who was publicizing a book he'd written about the march on a local access TV program. As you may know, Mahalia Jackson was on the stage (the only female on the stage). According to him, if anything that might incite the crowd had been said, the authorities were prepared to cut off the sound system being used by live speakers and entertainers and instead play Mahalia Jackson recordings.

Naomi Klein talks about in her book "Shock Doctrine". We call it a whole bunch of name but we have not settled on one that describes the new theory.

I guess the main difference is how long each of us thinks this has gone on. I think it's most of our history. "It's good to be the king." Or a Rockefeller. Or a Bush. Or a Jefferson (until he spent him silly). Or a Pat Weaver.

of other countries if not all. Regardless if we are talking feudalism, empires or monarchial rule it was those with the acquired wealth that rule. No one else had the power to do it.

But in my lifetime I did see it put into some kind of control with the New Deal era laws and as long as those laws held they worked to the extent that the 99% could survive and even prosper - becoming middle class citizens. As these laws (like Glass-Steagell) disappear the controls fail and we are once again at the door of a Great Depression.

I know that FDR was part of the 1% and thus still illustrates the rule of the rich over the poor. But at least once we were able to regulate it. We are losing control over that now.

Because things changed dramatically for the worse shortly after his election. We quickly went from the number one creditor nation in the world to the number one debtor nation in the world. We went from a trade surplus to a trade deficit. Unemployment shot upwards and remained in double digits for a long time.

That was before I moved to a city. But I have been told by numerous people, and have not met one person who will gainsay it, that they never saw a homeless person sleeping in the park or on a sidewalk before Reagan became President. I moved into the city in 1985 and have almost daily walked past dozens of people sleeping on the sidewalks.

In the 1970’s we were expanding the social safety net and going to the moon. Since 1981 all we ever hear is, “we can’t afford that”.

Did you know that we effectively had universal free college tuition? You could go to any bank and have a good chance at getting a government guaranteed student loan. The banks didn’t care because they knew the government would pay if you didn’t. And the government made no attempt to collect those loans when they went unpaid. Legally, the government could have. But pre-Reagan it was the governments job to help people. So they let it go. Lots of people took advantage of that.

Can’t do that today, can you? One guess when that changed.

This is a list that could go on a very, very long time. And it isn’t just economics. Reagan shuttered all VA mental health facilities in 1995 because he did believe in PTSD. That may have been the beginning of anti-science in the Republican Party.

Had I told anyone in 1980 that we would have no-knock warrants and periodic random road blocks within the decade, everybody would have called me a kook. “The American people will never put up with that,” they would have said. Had I predicted that TWA and PAN-AM would go bankrupt, they would have laughed at me.

In the late ‘70s an evangelical, bible-belt community of roughly 100 people near our farm would occasionally drop a tree over the roads into town to keep out the cops so they could have a big party (think: drugs). These people would support death sentences for drug possession today. In many ways we continued to progress. But in so many others we regressed. A lot.

It wasn't that Reagan’s election brought anything new. It just made regression mainstream. And drastically altered the trajectory.

it just has a case of constipation

Compared to all of the presidents since 1980, George HW "Poppy" Bush seems to get something of a free pass on the economy on DU.

I mean "No new taxes."

My lip reading needs work.

We need to learn how to adapt, and I don't believe isolating -- and trading among -- ourselves is the way to do that.

I've been hearing about adapting for a really long time.

we need to look toward a Scandinavian style society.

Even if we took every penny from corporations and "rich" folks, it wouldn't make a whole lot of difference in the long-term. We might live it up, short-term, but then ending up fighting among ourselves in the streets for survival. In the longer term, we'll be growing corn anywhere we can find a bit of land, praying for rain, sleeping with one eye open so we can shoot anyone stealing it, and worse.

It's going to take a long-term approach with a lot of fronts -- including helping corporations make money that we can tax the heck out of to pay for decent safety-nets, guaranteed income, etc. At the same time, meld government and corporations into some kind of cooperative entity that takes care of people better than they have on their own. Most corporations are too focused on the bottom-line, but large organizations are needed to produce basic products. And, this idea that every generation should do better than the previous one, probably needs to change. We got a little too fat in my opinion. We need to step back a notch or two. Give up on having a bunch of bathrooms, cars, etc. Forget about maximizing profits for just stockholders, and a lot more that I don't have time to go into.

I believe the quickest way to get there is with leadership that cares about people and helping corporations do their thing. That won't happen with Sanders, although he has the right vision where we need to be.

I just don't think he can get us there, or even move us very far along, right now. If he makes a good showing I might change my mind, but right now I think he will be chewed up in a GE if he gets that far.

Also, IMO, we've helped corporations, or more accurately, big business more than enough.

95+% of Republicans will vote against him; 75% of so-called Independents, and I'll bet you at least 35% of Moderate Democrats (and there are a whole lot of them, whether we like it or not).

Admittedly, I pulled those percentages out of my rear, but I bet it's close.

Bernie can't win and I will make up the stats to prove it!!

There are a group of ratfuckers who are determined to put it on Clintons plate. Mind you, Clinton did some things that weren't helpful. But to act as if it is his fault, as some do, is a blatant lie concocted by ratfuckers and lunatic right wingers.

dismissing those as merely "not helpful" is far from accurate.

Glass Steagall was a hollowed out husk by the time Clinton was in office, and it passed with a veto proof majority, so that is a moot point.

Banking deregulation began in 1980 under Carter with the Monetary Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Institutions_Deregulation_and_Monetary_Control_Act

lobbying Congress hard.

Ultimately, repeal collapsed the economy of the US and several other nations. It was not hollowed out by the time of the Clinton administration. As best I can determine, Carter never touched it. If you have other info, please be more specific. However, in the 1980s regulations promulgated under and pursuant to Glass Steagall were "re-interpreted."

In any event, it worked until repeal.

The former Treasury secretary, whose Clinton-era assaults on Glass-Steagall protections and opposition to the regulation of derivatives were blamed by critics for weakening safeguards against financial turbulence, withdrew his name from consideration for Fed’s top job.

Remarkably, the decision came exactly five years after the financial meltdown of September 2008.

http://billmoyers.c

om/2013/09/16/the-populist-rebellion-that-tripped-up-larry-summers/

1. Summers blocked pre-crash regulation of Wall Street: In the 1990s, Brooksley Born, the former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) under Clinton, noticed that the complex, opaque, and as-yet unregulated derivatives market was rapidly expanding, so she proposed bringing the multi-trillion dollar market under CFTC rules. (Derivatives are financial products whose value is derived from underlying numbers like interest rates or fuel prices.) Summers, who was then Deputy Treasury Secretary, didn't like that idea. He testified during a 1998 Senate hearing that derivatives regulation wasn't necessary because Wall Street could be trusted to police itself. His fierce resistance, along with that of then-Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, foiled Born's plans. As New York Times reporter Timothy O'Brien said at the time, "They...shut her up and shut her down." Partly because of this lack of derivatives oversight, few people saw the 2007 derivatives market meltdown coming.


2. He pushed to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act: In 1999, Summers also played an important role in convincing Congress to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which had for decades forced banks to keep their commercial and investment activities separate. The idea behind Glass-Steagall was that banks that hold customer deposits should not be making wild bets with that money. Repeal of the law allowed commercial banks to get into the mortgage-backed securities market that came crashing down during the financial crisis. "Larry Summers helped give us the last crash," says Bart Naylor, a financial policy advocate at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. "He must not be allowed to operate the heavy equipment of the Fed."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/07/lawrence-summers-federal-reserve-chair-financial-regulation


Gene Sperling, creator of the sequester under Obama, was also involved as was Podesta and Rubin. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/19/wall-street-deregulation-clinton-advisers-obama

Although I believe it would have passed regardless.

The 'sequester' was another of Obama's big mistakes. Almost everything in it were on the record as stated long term Republican goals. It was a Republican wet dream. Obama's ridiculous one sided 'bipartisanship' will do so much long term damage to this country. They have gained more under him than they did under GW Bush. He put 'everything on the table' and they put 'we won't shoot the hostage' on the table, then Obama signed on the dotted line.

Passing is one thing. Overriding a Presidential veto is another. Without heavy lobbying by Clinton and his financial team, without Clinton's signature, Glass Steagall would not have been repealed.

You are confused, because you are somehow conflating what people fear may happen with what has already happened.
Illogical OP.

of deindustrialization, outsourcing, and the globalization of capital.

Since Reagan all of our presidents and most of our nationally elected officials have been pushing & passing policies that have been transferring wealth from working and middle class people to the uber wealthy.

This isn't new. Maybe you just haven't been listening.

And Reagan DID deeply harm the economy. We've been on this trickle down spiral for sometime, and it's largely nonpartisan.

Democrats just see them as irrelevant and irritating, like little ants or gnats.

Unless you find out why on your own. Then you realize which policies were responsible. While they are ostensively, conservative or traditionally Republican policies like free trade vs balanced trade, deregulation and corporate tax cuts, neoliberal or as some call it, neoconservative, it's all basically pre New Deal economics.

Without those laws being enforced, the banks and investment houses went on a looting spree, even robbing their own customers.

They stole so much money that it caused a money vacuum which put us into a depression. They stole something like 55% of the middle classes wealth.

The TPP would definitely be the final nail in the coffin of the middle class and inner city poor.

Those laws did not exist at all under Bush. Had they enforced even the 'loosened up' laws, most of the CEOs would now be in prison.

Obama's Justice dept should have gone after them and jailed them, but Obama and Holder had no desire to prosecute them. Instead he bailed them out with no strings attached, and they stole that money too.

This failure to hold them accountable guarantees that they will do the same thing in the future once we have another Republican president in office. The failure to hold them accountable, IMHO, is the greatest failing of the Obama administration.

As far as banks, repeal of Glass Steagall under Clinton had a lot to do with their looting. Repeal left nothing at all to enforce. That was not about anti-trust.

Hart Scott Rodino, governing mergers, had very high money thresholds before government even had to be notified in advance of the merger.

You might check this: http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/obama-antitrust-enforcement

Had Holder upheld the laws that were on the books, the bankers and CEOs would have been jailed.

collapsed is cold comfort. Clinton could have prevented it. Instead, he pitched it to legislators in his party and made sure it went through before midterms, lest a more populist group of Democrats get elected.

100% Guarantees it will happen again.

They should have broken up the banks too.

As for Clinton's trade deals, manufacturing was already gutted in this country due to Reaganomics when those deals came around.

They definitely didn't help, but I don't think much would be different today if they'd never happened. China would be somewhat less rich, and somewhat more people in Southeast Asia would still be illiterate peasant farmers rather than urban factory slaves, but I doubt the political or socioeconomic picture would be greatly different for average people.

reforming "welfare as we know it".

This is always a big bipartisan crowd pleaser from people who have never been there and equate taking away welfare with forcing people to get a job. But what welfare reform actually did was create massive instability and, IMHO, a regime of torture, for the most vulnerable layers of society. But these are also the people at the base of our society because they are the ones that end up taking the minimum wage service jobs: not just the "out of sight out of mind" janitor jobs, but positions of caring and trust like eldercare and assisting the disabled. These are the people we've repeatedly run through a psychological and mental ringer ever since Clinton's "reform".

Clinton did it to score political points, but the repeating cycles of poverty he guaranteed led to situations like Baltimore today.

People in this thread are going back to place most of the blame on Reagan because they are mostly concerned with the decline of the middle class. But when that middle class truly sinks into poverty (as opposed to "less affluent middle class" - the face the ravages of Clinton that created the trap didn't allow people to bounce back.

A recent example I just found out about yesterday. The State finally figured out no landlord will take $336/month in rent so I am on a list to request an increase in my General Assistance LOAN (yes, it's a LOAN here - when people get their janitorial job, they are immediately saddled with debt to the State). HOWEVER, if I take it, food stamps will be reduced because that increase counts as income even if it is going directly to a landlord "vendor" as rent.

Bureaucratic crap like that. The poverty bureaucracies filled with people making a living off of other people who are poor - instead of just giving direct jobs to the poor people - and then miring their lives in enough red tape to drag them to the bottom of the ocean. Reduce food if my rent in the Bay Area is more than $336/month? Seriously?

Anyway, Clinton is at the root of that. And I've seen threads offering an escape hatch for Hillary: she's not responsible for what her husband did. However, she takes funding from New Dems, her friends are New Dems, and her speeches use work-not-welfare wink wink nudge nudge keywords like New Dems. While she may realize her husband got the ball rolling in a terrible direction for women and children that she can't take back now, in her heart she believes that "those" people on welfare need a negative incentive to go to work rather than to be given a fair ladder back into the mainstream.

Neocons and neolibs, one and all.

If that isn't a strawman argument, there's never been one.

The guy in the chair is just pulling the levers for the campaign donors.

Well at least their's (1%ers) is not. All the rest of us got a lot of help.

Raygun with trickle down and rolling back decades of Dem gains. Union Busting. Changing the tone of Social help into freeloading. Pay no attention to the billions given to Corps. Shifted tax burden.
GB1 showed that his pals could steal money left and right and then have the Gov't bail them out. S&L. High Oil Prices, what a surprise that Gas would be out of this world while a Texass oil guy was in the WH.
Clinton gave us NAFTA and GATT. Welfare reform.
GB2 Huge Tax cuts during a War, spending out of control. High gas prices, another Texass oil guy in the WH. TOO Big to fail, little FAT brother to S&L scandal. Right out of Poppies playbook.

I have no doubt that someone has blamed each of these presidents solely for destroying the economy in a single hyperbolic statement, but I don't see why those statements are particularly relevant when many have engaged in more nuanced discussion here over what specific harmful economic actions each of those presidents have taken.

I think that's DU's rule of thumb.

Sid

Bills to raise, lower. or reform the federal tax systems have to originate in the House of Representatives, be approved by the Senate, and then go to the president for signature. While a president may or may not have proposed a tax increase or decrease, he was helpless to get it without congress. Blaming JFK or Reagan for lowering taxes or praising FDR or LBJ (temporarily) for raising them overlooks the role of congress in constructing the IRS Code.

While Reagan was very enthusiastic about the 1986 tax revolution, the bill was supposedly "revenue neutral" trading off deductions and exemptions for lower rates. That tax bill was pushed through the Democratically-controilled House by Rep Richard Gephardt who always had a "D" after his name.

When did local factories, mills, printers, etc. start closing down? When did Main Streets have more boarded up windows than businesses because hundreds of workers had left the town? Every POTUS mentioned is to blame because any of them could have stopped it.

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put the shiv in our backs.

Bush the drooling idiot gave the knife the final six or eight twists just for laughs.

The koch bros hope to finish the job and stamp out all freedom in the USA and make it their own little fiefdom/caliphate/sharia law/hell on earth.

With a huge assist from SCOTUS of course.

America still has a massively higher median income than practically all other countries.

The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks. Lord Acton

Donald Regan, Foreclosure Phil Gramm, Martin Feldstein and Alan Greenscam, for starters.

still confused?