New Deal or Reaganomics?

[mix]

In other words, a mixed economy with state intervention or free market corporate America.
Which is your preference? Or perhaps you have something else in mind...

[Tommy_Carcetti]

1. Is this a trick question?

Reaganomics was nothing but a Ponzi scheme that puts Bernie Madoff to pure and utter shame.

[mix]

11. It is a trick question. It is. nt

[Sebastian Doyle]

2. The results speak for themselves

Look at the absolute toilet this country has gone into over the last 30 years.

Anyone who thinks this country is better off with ANY economic policy of the last three decades falls into one of two categories:

1) The top 1% who actually benefit from these fucked up policies.

2) Delusional idiots who believe what they are told, even when the reality of their own lives proves otherwise.

[mix]

5. This alone is damning and shows no sign of abating

Our child poverty numbers have rocketed as well since the 1980s.

[Initech]

3. Reagonomics only benefits the uber wealthy and corporate criminals.

[mix]

4. Raygun's gone, Reaganomics isn't:

[TexasObserver]

6. Reaganomics was a disaster, funded by deficit spending.

He wiped out many of the community banks and S&Ls, replacing them with the biggies that were too big fail in 2008. He trashed unions. He doubled incarcerations. He created a War on people who use drugs. He put mentally ill on the streets and created in them a permanent homeless class.

Ronald Reagan was one of the worst presidents in our history. He's a tribute to the stupidity of people who apply the same standards to electing a president as they do to buying soap. Is it on TV? Is it pretty?

[demosincebirth]

7. Reagan didn't even know he was President. nt

[mix]

8. Yet after FDR who has had a more profound impact on American politics and economy? nt

[Uncle Joe]

9. I voted other by mistake, I was considering the toon to be misleading.

I've never thought of Reaganomics as representing State Government so much as Mega-Corporate or Oligarch Government.

My correct vote would be for New Deal Economics.

Thanks for the thread, mix.

[mix]

10. "States' rights" is probably how I would interpret his side of the scale.

Reagan was the first presidential candidate ever to appear at the fair, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he told that crowd, “I believe in states’ rights.”

Reagan apologists have every right to be ashamed of that appearance by their hero, but they have no right to change the meaning of it, which was unmistakable. Commentators have been trying of late to put this appearance by Reagan into a racially benign context.

That won’t wash. Reagan may have been blessed with a Hollywood smile and an avuncular delivery, but he was elbow deep in the same old race-baiting Southern strategy of Goldwater and Nixon.

Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.

He was tapping out the code. It was understood that when politicians started chirping about “states’ rights” to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/opinion/13herbert.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

[Uncle Joe]

13. Reagen was lying just as the conservative Republicans have ever since, but it's not

just racial, it's every bit social.

The "State Rights" champion Republicans were most happy to trash States Rights during the coup of 2000.

In fact I don't believe they ever believed in "States Rights" it was always oligarch rights and later it became corporate rights as well, but oligarch and corporate rights don't make a good sound bite especially to the average American.

By dividing the American People along regions or states, the oligarchs were able to conquer them, it's no coincidence, The Gilded Age, Jim Crow and the Robber Barons all came in to being during the decades following the Civil War.

When FDR was passing his New Deal, his oligarch peers didn't say he was a traitor to the ideology of States Rights, they said "FDR was a traitor to his class."

[Swamp Rat]

12. Corporate fiefdoms is what we have and will continue to have until the next revolution

[Uncle Joe]

14. Damn it, Swampy!

Now you made me want to buy some Jiffy Pop:popcorn: and I just ate.

[Swamp Rat]

15. I lost power and the Internet!!

:tinfoilhat: :hide: :yoiks: :think: :tinfoilhat:

[Uncle Joe]

19. Well you're back now and better than ever.

They can't keep a good man or for that matter woman down,:toast: although we also know if Lieberman gets his way, they're going to try.:puke:

[Selatius]

16. I would go further than the New Deal. I'm talking about the New Deal + the Square Deal.

The first example being the health insurance industry. If we can't nationalize that sector, then we're going to yank their exemption status and begin a severe round of anti-trust action, and then we're going to expand Medicare to compete with private insurance anyway. Then we're going to go after BP and make them pay for the clean-up. Then we're going to go through the entire economy, sector by sector, and smash up all the monopolies that are inflating prices. There will be hundreds of anti-trust lawsuits being filed.

[mix]

18. I agree, but the establishment is well entrenched in both parties. nt

[Bert]

17. Anybody who votes Reagonomics

should go back to free republic. How about another easy one, good vs. evil?

[Scurrilous]

20. Kick

:kick:

[MisterP]

21. New Deal of course--unless the Dems choose Reaganomics, in which case we must all support

Reaganomics because they're the party that gave us the New Deal *explosion*

[MellowDem]

22. Your post doesn't make a lot of sense...

The New Deal wasn't about mixed economies per se. And Reaganomics wasn't about free market corporate america. And even your cartoon seems to be more about how the new deal, which was really a program to deal with the Great Depression, relied more on Federal programs, whereas Reaganomics relied more on State-level government spending, though less government spending overall.

A mixed economy already will have state intervention. Even Republicans and Reagan himself are for a mixed economy. The argument is really about how much government there should be.

If you are asking which response was better for getting out of a recession, basically spending by the government or tax cuts, then that would make sense. Maybe that was what you are getting at. If that is the case, then government spending should be the better choice in my mind, but with certain caveats. Tax cuts, or subsidies, etc., can lead to more investment depending on how you cut them. Or it can just lead to people spending the money on consumer items or paying off bills or saving it up. It's rather hard to control though, just how those tax cuts get spent, and a lot of that spending will not necessarily be good investments.

With government spending, there is more control over how that money is spent. But the thing is, if the government spends the money on bad/wasteful things, then tax cuts may in fact be better. If government, on the other hand, spends the money on good investments, it could mean greater long term growth for the economy. The thing about investments though is that they take time to mature and show their returns. And in the world of politics, tax cuts are much easier and more popular and more immediate in terms of results. Which is why they've been so politically popular and easy to pass.

If my memory serves me, the stimulus bill that Obama passed was about 1/3 increased federal spending, 1/3 tax cuts, and 1/3 subsidies to state governments. So it looks like Obama took a balanced approach, or more likely one that was politically feasible as well.

Even then, a lot of the economy is out of the reach of being impacted by domestic policy or government. The advent of war helped end the Great Depression. The birth of computing and the internet helped drive the economic boom of the 90s. Presidents will get the praise or blame for the economy, even though most of it has little to do with them, especially considering the lag time it takes for the policies they help enact to actually impact the economy. And that is because most Americans are ignorant of economics. This is a problem in that Presidents that enact hurtful policies could benefit from the policies of their predecessor, only to hurt the economy when they are out of office, which can lead Americans to support policies that are actually pretty bad for the economy. Or things that impacted the economy but were beyond policy or the power of the government get blamed on the President. Such as natural disasters, terrorist attacks, etc.

That is why Reagonomics is still looked at so positively by many. Because the economy did well and we climbed out of a recession. The economy is incredibly complicated and the government can only impact it so much. We would do well to remember that and inform others of that fact as well.