Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

I wonder if Noonan would have been able to say anything about the 1986 tax reform if Bill Bradley had won the primaries or presidency in 2000.

Just idly speculatin'.

As Homer Simpson might say, "Sweet mother of crap!" Or as Tony Soprano or Paulie Walnuts might say, "F--king motherf---ker!" What I mean to say is, it's hard to keep going around and around with this subject. I try to follow this stuff closely, and usually, I think that I am pretty successful. But it would really help if there was a fairly legitimate, non-biased account of this stuff.

Is there a book out there, Brad or anyone else, that gives a decent summary of what happened in the last twenty or thirty years?

Brian, for the 1986 tax reform, the book is Showdown at Gucci Gulch by Birnbaum and Murray. It's got explanations and charts and everything.

It even explains income taxation in a light and entertaining style, as long as you are one of the many people who finds the details of tax policy to be infinitely fascinating.

Hey, that's what I was gonna say.

These last couple of posts reminded me of another time and place:

"History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogenous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now. [Jetztzeit].* Thus, to Robespierre ancient Rome was a past charged with the time of the now which he blasted out of the continuum of history. The French Revolution viewed itself as Rome incarnate. It evoked ancient Rome the way fashion evokes costumes of the past. Fashion has a flair for the topical, no matter where it stirs in the thickets of long ago; it is a tiger’s leap into the past. This jump, however, takes place in an arena where the ruling class give the commands. The same leap in the open air of history is the dialectical one, which is how Marx understood the revolution."

(Walter Benjamin, Thesis 14. http://www.tasc.ac.uk/depart/media/staff/ls/WBenjamin/CONCEPT2.html)

Relevant, though not entirely related, is Jacob Hacker's paper in the May 2004 issue of the American Political Science Review. Hacker describes how policies starting in the '70s and magnified in Reagan's '80s took the bottom out of the social safety net through systematic pracitices of privatizing risk without privatizing the welfare state. Hacker's point is that not only have social policies been scaled back, their very ability to achieve the goals already embodied in them has been considerably weakened. Nowhere is this more evident than in health care -- see also Michael Porter's HBR article and this link: http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2004/06/08/a_prescription_for_healthcare/

Those who intentionally distort Reagan's record for their own use have no respect for him or his efforts as president. Why does the radical right hate Reagan so much?

This is probably the 3rd time I've posted this link, but Joshua Green deserves real credit for revealing the rightwing lie machine's plan to distort Reagan's record well before he died.

Read "Reagan's Liberal Legacy" at:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0301.green.html

"Newt Gingrich, Jack Kemp, and Dick Cheney led a revolt among House Republicans"

Well, Jack Kemp (along with Bill Bradley--and it's not a coincidence that both were professional athletes who knew the distortionary effects of high tax rates) was one of the congressional leaders behind the TRA of 1986, so it's hard to take the above claim seriously.

Great line at the end of the article: "The Reagan gospel, to be sure, is interpreted selectively. But then, so is the Bible."

http://pep.typepad.com/public_enquiry_project/2004/06/larry_kudlow_ex.html

Harking back to the gist of this post:
Brian at June 9, 2004 09:40 PM

I experience great difficulty, as well, finding what can be deemed 'the fact(s)' regarding these certain arguements.
In particular, I have read that Soviet defense spending remained relatively flat throughout Reagan's term, and, at the same time, read Soviet defense spending broke the back of the Soviet economy as a direct result of the proposed SDI. I can find nothing that verifies either, though I have read that the CIA over-estimated the GNP of the USSR by a factor of five, or more. Would someone help to enlighten me on this?

Thanks in advance...

Lowering marginal tax rates by eliminating deductions and broadening the tax base? Sounds like pure, unadulterated supply side economics. (Supply side's big policy idea was to encourage supply and eliminate distortions in the economy by 1) minimizing marginal tax rates, 2) making sure taxes fall evenly on all sorts of income, with no significant deductions, i.e. broadening the tax base, and 3) eliminating regulatory burden. Jack Kemp was Supply-Side's greatest advocate in Congress - that is why he drove this tax plan through. The left claiming it as their own is disingenous.)

The only thing Reagan did in lowering income taxes below the Equitable Threshhold (that is, below the lower break-point where social welfare and economic growth remain mutually-enabling), was uncouple the locomotive from the passenger train just as it pulled into Silverado Station.

Paraphrasing that old Alaskan joke, for those of us riding in the caboose, the view never changes.

Now comes ol' slap-happy BushCo, running that locomotive in reverse, determined to back this passenger train all the way down the mountain. Paraphrasing a Sr. VP, "Is that guy punchdrunk?"

rvman wrote, "...making sure taxes fall evenly on all sorts of income, with no significant deductions, i.e. broadening the tax base..."

Really? So supply siders are happy with taxing capital gains at the same rate as other income? Or dividend income at the same rate as other income?

"...The left claiming it as their own is disingenous."

Huh? Tax policy wonks, left or not, have always been in favor of simplifying the tax code.

Reagan also signed into law the largest working class tax increase in history: the so-called Social Security "reform." For most of us, thanks to the SS payroll tax, we've been paying drastically higher taxes overall ever since. That tax increase, which promised to make SS solvent, was actually used as an accounting gimmick to cover ballooning deficits from reduced taxes on the rich and from corporate welfare thinly disguised as "Defense" spending. Now that twenty years of payroll tax "surplus" exists only as a stack of IOUs, and Allan Greenspan is calling for benefit cuts.

So the American working class was robbed to throw a party for the rich bastards. It's time we throw another party for them--this time with a rope.

Noli me vocate. Ego te vocabo - Don't call me. I'll call you

Omnia mutantur nos et mutamur in illis - All things change, and we change with them

Sedit qui timuit ne non succederet - He who feared he would not succeed sat still. (For fear of failure, he did nothing.) (Horace)

Nil homini certum est - Nothing is certain for man. (Ovid)

Tamdiu discendum est, quamdiu vivas - We should learn as long as we may live. (We live and learn.) (Seneca Philosophus)