I know you remember the interview with David Stockman in The Atlantic. For most others, it’s still news. Corporate owned media monopoly being like that.
The Education of David Stockman
“None of us really understands what’s going on with all these numbers.”
by William Greider
The Atlantic, December 1981
Excerpt...
The supply-side approach, which Stockman had only lately embraced, assumed first of all, that dramatic action by the new President, especially the commitment to a three-year reduction of the income tax, coupled with tight monetary control, would signal investors that a new era was dawning, that the growth of government would be displaced by the robust growth of the private sector. If economic behavior in a climate of high inflation is primarily based on expectations about the future value of money, then swift and dramatic action by the President could reverse the gloomy assumptions in the disordered financial markets. As inflation abated, interest rates dropped, and productive employment grew, those marketplace developments would, in turn, help Stockman balance the federal budget.
“The whole thing is premised on faith,” Stockman explained. “On a belief about how the world works.” As he prepared the script in his mind, his natural optimism led to bullish forecasts, which were even more robust than the Reagan Administration’s public promises. “The inflation premium melts away like the morning mist,” Stockman predicted. “It could be cut in half in a very short period of time if the policy is credible. That sets off adjustments and changes in perception that cascade through the economy. You have a bull market in ’81, after April, of historic proportions.”
Snip...
Across the river from St. Joe’s, Stockman drove through the deserted Main Street of Benton Harbor, his favorite example of failed liberalism. Once it had been a prosperous commercial center, but now most of its stores and buildings were boarded up and vacant except for an occasional storefront church or social-service agency. As highways and suburban shopping centers pulled away commerce, the downtown collapsed, whites moved, and the city became predominantly black and overwhelmingly poor. The federal government’s various efforts to revive Benton Harbor had quite visibly failed.
“When you have powerful underlying demographic and economic forces at work, federal intervention efforts designed to reverse the tide turn out to have rather anemic effect,” Stockman said, surveying the dilapidated storefronts. “I wouldn’t be surprised if $100 million had been spent here in the last twenty years. Urban renewal, CETA, model cities, they’ve had everything. And the results? No impact whatever.”
Continues...
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/12/the-education-of-david-stockman/305760/
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