We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Ronald Reagan… the rhetoric mattered When told once too often that President Reagan was ‘just rhetoric’ (“he did not reduce governement spending, either in California or with the Federal government, he did not get rid of X regulation, he did not…”) the late M.A. Bradford replied “You will miss that rhetoric when he is gone”.
Ronald Reagan has gone, and I do miss the rhetoric – and I miss him.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
When I heard his famous “The government is not the solution to the problem, the government is the problem.” the other day, I thought, well, he meant it well, some of it worked, some didn’t, whereas now the politicians don’t even bother to actually have ideas – other than how to “enhance revenue” in order to build a brave new world.
It’s not the rhetoric, it’s the attitude.
Actually, though overall spending did not decrease under Reagan, real domestic discretionary spending did fall by an average of 1.3% per year. One reason Reagan’s record on spending looks so bad, besides large amounts of defense spending, was that there was substantial inflation between 1981 and 1989 (36% according to the CPI inflation calculator) left over from the extreme inflation during the late 1970s. Contrast the average annual 1.3% decrease in real domestic discretionary spending under Reagan to the average annual increase of 8.2% under Bush Jr. and 4.0% under Bush Sr.
My figures for changes in domestic discretionary spending come from the “GOP Drunken Sailors”(Link) article in the Wall Street Journal(Link).
If he did anything, it put libertarian ideas back in the mainstream public debate. At the very least, no one is going to win an election by being too obviou about wanting to make government bigger.
Substantively, on the domestic front, perhaps his most important contribution remains dropping the top marginal tax rate from 70% where it now fluctuates between 30 and 40%. As a testimonial to its importance, I don’t think my grandfather would have expanded his business, had he been rewarded for his risk by owing 60-70 percent to the federal government. I’d estimate this expansion alone employs about 30 people and a healthy outlook for the future. I don’t want to sound like these people who think Reagan is the reason the sun rises everyday, but he at least played a small part in the success of my family’s small business.
And don’t forget 401Ks came of age under RR. That also helped the SBOs and everyday folks.
The reality is that under Reagan the debt ballooned. Real spending may have declined somewhat, but not nearly enough to meet the cuts in taxes. Perhaps some of this can be blamed on a Democratic controlled Congress during the 80’s. I’ll give RR the benefit of the doubt that he tried. But then, from an individual’s point of view, it has always been hopeless as the federal gov’t will grow despite real efforts to contain it. Then of course, today, we, in the US, have a Republican prez and a (slight) Republican controlled Congress and there is but a blip on the radar for containing the federal government, and in fact Bush II has done his level best to increase the fed. There is no excuse that there is a schism between the White House and Capital Hill. I have lost most of my faith that there is a viable portion of the Republican Party that is really economically conservative anymore.
I remain surprised that President Reagan does not receive more credit from the Samizdata readership. He cut taxes, delivered great rhetoric on liberty, and — oh yeah — that thing about freeing half the world from Communism. Sorry if his stats on spending appropriations don’t comport with yours, good people.
I cannot imagine a better friend to liberty in the 20th Century.
I remain surprised that President Reagan does not receive more credit from the Samizdata readership. He cut taxes, delivered great rhetoric on liberty, and — oh yeah — that thing about freeing half the world from Communism. Sorry if his stats on spending appropriations don’t comport with yours, good people.
I cannot imagine a better friend to liberty in the 20th Century.
Freeing others is not a social program I favor paying for, just like all others. Speaking for myself, I don’t feel that it was the US’s specific business to free anyone. Our fight with the USSR was for our own interests in combating the expansion of collectivism lest it consume us. Freeing others might merely be a pleasant side effect. Regardless, there may be some who, while living under tin-horn dictators of the right-leaning sort, might dispute the machiavellian approach the US took in freeing half the world. I think it’s naive to think that the thuggish juntas we supported were somehow better than the juntas soviets supported. They were all prostitutes bidding to the john that would give them the most. The cold war was necessary IMO to keep the US free. We ‘freed’ some at some points, and supported tyranny when it suited us. Doesn’t make me a chomsky-ite, is makes me a realist.
Cutting taxes does not do any good unless spending is cut. I don’t blame RR as he had a Democratic Congress to contend with was well as the start of the bills for the New Deal and the Great Society to pay for (the lions share which is just about upon us). If spending is not cut, but taxes are, then the funds are merely borrowed, impounding the credit market by the State. I see little difference other than one is more readily seen by the masses in lost equity while the other is ‘off balance sheet’ at least where an individual is concerned. Cutting taxes is only half (and by far the easiest part of) the battle. Of course under Bush II we not only have tax cuts, we have expansion of the federal gov’t, so RR is ahead on that score. But no one should operate under the illusion that we are/were any freer. The confiscation of equity is merely postponed.
Other than Margaret Thatcher, I can’t think of any political leader who did more to advance the cause of liberty in my lifetime.
As for freeing others is not a social program I favor paying for, surely one lesson of the last century is that “freeing others” is nothing short of a forward defense strategy. For the last two generations, the US has been at war with one variety of fascist or another. Ignoring the Japanese, Germans, and Soviets was certainly not an option consistent with the long-term prosperity and freedom of the US.
As for freeing others is not a social program I favor paying for, surely one lesson of the last century is that “freeing others” is nothing short of a forward defense strategy. For the last two generations, the US has been at war with one variety of fascist or another. Ignoring the Japanese, Germans, and Soviets was certainly not an option consistent with the long-term prosperity and freedom of the US.
As I said, our involvement in freeing others should part and parcel of a strategy which protects the US from threats. Conversely, if we gain security by supporting a dictator who is amenable to our needs, we follow that tangent as well, and perhaps the rank and file of country X may not feel quite so free. I’m curious how the partisans in the Soviet Union who greated the Nazi’s as liberators felt about our support of the government (they of course were soon to learn better about the Nazi’s). It is securing our borders and economy from super-ordinate threats. How else do we reconcile the fact that we bolstered Soviet Russia with lend lease one minute and battle in a Cold War the next? How did we lend some support to a Saddam, when Iran was the super-ordinate threat, only to remove him later? Why did we lend some assistance to what was the formative cells of Vietnamese communism when Japan was the super-ordinate threat? We have a history of supporting then battling the same forces. The only common element is that they are all patently Statists. But the caution on our part is to not become the same thing in our endless battles for moral causes instead of economic preservation.
Praising the freeing of foreigners as a categorical good instead of an ancillary good is the difference. I will not support sacrificing our economic position without some return in security from direct threats. Invading Iraq has much less to do with freeing iraqis and more to do with eliminating a threat to the oil market in the region. If some of the population are happier that Saddam is gone, great, but it is secondary to the investment of our fiscal resources and people. That is all I’m trying to say.
Yes, I will always put PM Thatcher up there with President Reagan.
tookien:
I think it’s naive to think that the thuggish juntas we supported were somehow better than the juntas soviets supported
I beg to differ. Compare Taiwan, South Korea, Chile, South Vietnam, and pre-revolution Iran to the PRC, North Korea, most of South America, post-1975 Vietnam, and post-revolution Iran.
The regimes we supported *were* better – both towards us and towards their people. There is not a single country you can point to in which US intervention/occupation was *worse* than the lack of US intervention/occupation.
This includes West vs. East Germany, Greece, Japan, and probably many more examples I’m forgetting.
test–feel free to delete
I don’t think that President Reagan can take the credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union. The event was inevitable, given the nature of socialism. Indeed it was predicted by some far-sighted libertarians, for this very reason.
See e.g. Mises back in 1959 (Link)
And Ramsay Steele writing in 1980:
“Surely it is clear that the Russian empire is in its final throes and will not live to see the turn of the century. (For it to survive the eighties would require Political genius of the phenomenal stature of Stalin, and present methods of Politbureau recruitment hardly favour the emergence of such a man.) Soviet Russia is finished. Socialism is finished. Let us not live in the past.”
(Link)
I did not know that Ronald Reagan had managed to reduce even domestic government spending (I thought that increases in such things as farm supports counterbalanced the welcome reductions in some programs).
Of course the term “discretionary spending” was used – which I understand to leave out the “entitlement programs” the various unconstitutional welfare schemes (Medicare, Social Security and so on).
On taxes: The cuts in the top rates of income tax produced more revenue (not that I would care if they had not – the justification for cutting the top rates of income tax, moral and economic justification, does not rest on producing more revenue for the government).
Cuts in high top rates of income tax tend to produce more revenue (whether in the United States or anywhere else) if is only cuts lower down the scale that tend to “cost” the government anything.
Those who foresaw the failure of the USSR were the tiny minority, hardly spoken and heard of.
It’s entirely possible Reagan read of their views, and concurred with them. But talking wasn’t enough.
The Soviets themselves admitted it: they bankrupted their own nation trying to keep up. Without the additional spending on defense, the USSR could have declined a lot, lot slower, instead of the steep fall we witnessed.
There is not much doubt in my mind, after having read quite a bit about the pressures on the Soviet Union, that Reagan’s hardline defence posture played a significant part in forcing Gorby and co to make the reforms which ultimately unravelled the system. Of course, the communist system’s own weaknesses, recognised by Russia-watchers for years, had their effect.
To Reagan’s credit, he was an optimist about the possibilities of Russia changing course while many on the pessimistic right (a well populated part of the political class), thought that the best we could manage was to keep our heads down and accomodate the monster.
On deficits and taxes: yes, the deficit ballooned and that was a clear cost, but I believe the price paid was worth it for both making massive and necessary tax cuts possible, and in defence spending. Also, give credit to other things: he kept faith in Paul Volcker at the Fed during the harsh early years, and later appointed Greenspan, who has proven on the whole to be an excellent central bank chief. Reagan also ensured some deregulation, although frankly not enough was done to slow the advance of Big govt.
His biggest black mark was the Iran-Contra affair.
Some libertarian purists have attacked RR for the War on Drugs, which tells you all you need to know about how out of touch they are. I honestly cannot see how they could expect a right-wing pol with a need to carry popular support to decriminalise hard drugs.
toolkien – Real spending may have declined somewhat, but not nearly enough to meet the cuts in taxes. Perhaps some of this can be blamed on a Democratic controlled Congress during the 80’s.
Actually, you can lay it squarely at the feet of Congress. Federal tax cuts GENERATE revenue. Yes, I realize it’s counter intuitive, but look at the data.
Per OMB (hey, they keep the books, it’s ALL thier numbers, right? ) Federal revenues went UP by a factor of 2.1 between 1980 and 1988. Unfortunately, SPENDING went up by 2.25.
I have lost most of my faith that there is a viable portion of the Republican Party that is really economically conservative anymore.
Have to agree w/ ya here, man. Ol’ Dubya is far too liberal for me… drugs for seniors, increased school spending, Viagra for PRISONERS fer Cry-Yi… give me a frigg’n BREAK!
Mr Greenspan an “excellent central bank chief”.
Well, of course, government central banks (whether in the form of a Federal Reserve Board, or in the other forms that have been tried) should not exist (their efforts to keep interest rates below their market levels lead to a boom-bust credit cycle, and their efforts to bail out politically connected financial and other corporate interests are harmful).
However, not all Fed Chairmen are equally bad. Mr Greenspan is clearly a terribel Chairman – making endless nice speeches about financial responsbility and restraint whilst blowing up one of the biggest credit bubbles in the history of the United States. The money supply has increased at a rapid rate under Chairman Greenspan and the capital structure has become badly distorted with malinvestments.
On drugs: Booze was banned under the 18th Amendment – by what Amendment are drugs banned?
Or is reading the Constitution a sign of being “out of touch” to modern Americans?