National Debt

[mirgro]

Kasz216 said:

highwaystar101 said:

Kasz216 said:

highwaystar101 said:

mirgro said:

highwaystar101 said:

That picture's pretty funny. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but it is funny.

If I remember correctly, he increased the debt by $3 trillion. I don't remember if that was in then dollars or modern dollars.

Modern dollars according to the picture. I had no idea Reagonomics was that bad.

It wasn't as much reaganomics as it was vastly increased govenrment spending to take out the russians, greatly increased trade deficits and a savings and loans problem.

Reaganomics itself actually wasn't bad... it increase GDP and cut unemployment.

His tax cuts worked wonders... it increased GDP and lowered unemployment.

The problem was he decided to start spending a lot more on a war vs a crumbling enemy who posed little threat anymore, there was a giant credit problem with banks and our trade deficit got out of control....

In otherwords... basically a smaller version of what's happened recently... though the savings and loan crisis only cost us like 150 billion or so.

 

Had Reagan cut spending when he cut taxes instead of increasing it... we'd still be the worlds largest creditor... rather then a debtor... or, would of been until this crisis anyway.

I understand now.

I knew that one of the main goals of Reagonomics was to cut government spending where possible. So investing in a war with the USSR can't really be seen as the fault of Reagonomics, more the fault of not carrying it out properly by investing too much money in a war.

To be honest though, I haven't read enough on the subject to give a meaningful opinion.

To be honest i'm not even sure reagan cared at all. Lowering taxes on the rich pretty much always is going to raise GDP and create jobs because the rich have more money to invest. Which means they invest it and create jobs. Or hell, even put the money in a bank, which banks can loan. The real issue is "how much are other people benefiting". What kind of jobs are being created... are these people opening new stores and factories? Or just increasing the amount of lower level workers they hire.. etc. T he reagan tax cuts were huge and had to have a giant positve effect. Problem was... reagan was the first real cut and spend Republican. He's just generally given slack for it because the USSR collapsed during his presidency... some say the massive arms rate he started caused the russians to retaliate and break their economy... others say their economy was already going to collapse. I have no clue which is real honsetly. Their economy was going to crash anyway i imagine... authortiaran communism can't work on such large a level with competitors who aren't communist. How long it would of took however...

I would like to point out a simple fault with the trickle down. If you take a CEO and he has a private plane, the price range on those are between $6 mil to $60 mil. In the best case scenario, that's 6 jobs being paid $100,000 a year for 10 years.  You can adjust those numbers inversely of course. Worst case scenario would be 60 jobs being paid $100,000 for a year. This is simply for a plane. I hear upkeep is anotheer $100,000 - $200,000 per year so that's another job or two every year spent on a plan. I fully realize that those money are going somewhere else which also creates jobs. So the real question is, why not just give the lower classes the $6 million initially and they can just bubble it up back to the rich by buying more things? The lower classes definitely could use the $6 mil, for food or a few luxury items ehre and there, but the CEO can easily live his life without a plane.

The truth is that the rich are rich because they know how to make money and, most importantly, keep it. Yes they will spend some, but they would not be rich if they just wasted all of their money. The poor however, always spend their money, they are reliable like that. SO if anything the money would bubble up to the rich anyhow and stay there. It's just that in one way the poor get something along the way of making the rich richer.