Originally Posted By dshyates The Street is a financial website that in general is very republican friendly. If I had to put my finger on a bias I would say it is a conservitive web site.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh Well, I don't trust your finger. The article you linked to is a review of a book by a dedicated leftist. Do you really think you'll get the truth about President Reagan's successes from an editor of the New Republic?
Originally Posted By dshyates I don't know what the political bias of the street.com is but I just noticed that they use Jim Cramer as an financial advisor so it is obvious that they are idiots and what they think doesn't count. But even a broken clock is right twice a day. I'll find a better example.
Originally Posted By mrkthompsn <IE: It did NOT trickle down. PERIOD.> One can never escape trickle-down economics. The only reason it may have not "worked", is because in order to get trickled on, you must get a JOB, and perform well in the job such that your performance is valuable enough to get the trickling. Money is either trickled by the free market (by earning it), or it is trickled by the government (by taking it). The only question is: which trickle is right for America? Freedom, or government tyrrany?
Originally Posted By dshyates It didn't trickle at all. The mean salary of the middle class has gone down since Reagan took office, while CEO salaries have exploded. Your theory totally ignores reality.
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo >>>which trickle is right for America? Freedom, or government tyrrany?<<< What a crock. The only thing companies are interested in is profit, and does not always go to the people. Quite the opposite. That's why offshoring has been so popular. As someone who has been an exec for two large multinationals, I say "get real"
Originally Posted By dshyates The middle class gets what the Execs choose to give them. Remembering that every dollar they give the employees is one they don't get to keep. There is a reason the mean salary of the middle class has gone down, and executive salaries have exploded. Profit sharing went by the wayside.
Originally Posted By mrkthompsn Up and down, up and down. Sharp rate of going up, slow rate rate of going up. Democrats are always thinking in derivatives - never the basics.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <<By a small amount.>> <Small percentages of very large numbers make for large numbers.> Thank you Einstein. But the fact remains that they never altered things by more than a small percentage, and that Reagan presented budgets with large deficits built in. Congress made them slightly larger by restoring certain cuts, but what Reagan presented had deficits larger than any seen before. <<He did when he said congress changed the proposals by more than a small amount.>> <I don't believe he said that. I took him to mean that you were wrong when you claimed the small increases were insignificant. They weren't.> Yes, they were.
Originally Posted By mrkthompsn Going forward, it is better to spend FAR FAR FAR less than we are spending now. If either party can do it, then hoorah. I just don't trust the Democrats are able to do it .. or even to calculate the ability to do it. It's just not their mantra.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Both parties are too enamored of deficit spending, but as several links have shown, Democrats have lately done a somewhat better (though still not good enough) job of things.
Originally Posted By dshyates Didn't the very last Democratic president leave office with an actual surplus? After having paid off the monumental deficit left by the 2 previous Republican presidents? So mrkthompson I have to wonder what the hell your talking about. You trust the Repulicans budgetary skills more than the Democrats when the only fiscally responsible president in my adult lifetime was NOT a Republican.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <Thank you Einstein.> If you wouldn't ignore the obvious, I wouldn't have to point it out. <But the fact remains that they never altered things by more than a small percentage, and that Reagan presented budgets with large deficits built in.> And if Reagan had presented budgets with smaller deficits, the Democrats would have made them larger by a another small percentage. <Yes, they were.> No, they weren't.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <Didn't the very last Democratic president leave office with an actual surplus?> No. There was a projected surplus, but then the tech bubble burst, revenues fell, and expenditures continued to rise. <You trust the Repulicans budgetary skills more than the Democrats when the only fiscally responsible president in my adult lifetime was NOT a Republican.> While President Clinton deserves some credit for helping balance the federal budget, it came about mostly because of the Republican Congress.
Originally Posted By DyGDisney What's funny here is if the budget had had a huge deficit when Clinton was president, Democrats would blame the Republican congress, and Republicans would blame Clinton. Just an observation.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh What would be logical is blaming the people who consistently vote for greater spending. For example, who voted for the bloated farm bill in greater numbers - Democrats or Republicans?
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>What would be logical is blaming the people who consistently vote for greater spending.<< Yes. And since the GOP held all the reigns for the first 6 years of this administration, their pattern of spending was enormous, including the ongoing tab for the wars we're still fighting in two countries. George W. Bush "consistently" couldn't find his veto pen until the issue of stem cells came up. Prior to that, where was this great fiscal restraint the GOP was once proud of?
