50 years later, and still no one has articulated the downside to big government better than the Gipper.
Folks, since 1964 this country has spent over $15 trillion dollars on eradicating poverty and today, the poverty statistics are the same if not a little worse. It was reported not too long ago that 4 out of 5 American families are one missed paycheck away from poverty, yet every year and every campaign, big government politicians, particularly Democrats, run on helping the poor – do you believe them anymore? Do you really think more money will cure the problem? Do you honestly believe they want to solve the problem?
The other day Mersault understandably was frustrated over the VA health care administration, to which I remind everyone that is what government health care is – a bloated, inefficient bureaucracy ran by bureaucrats focused more on file organization and lunch breaks than the administration of care, and that is what we are all in for with Obamacare. No one has ever been able to explain to me how adding an additional layer of bureaucracy to an industry can bring down costs.
Welfare, disability, unemployment and labor force measurements are all at alarming levels, so my question to big government advocates is – how is this working out for you?
Blogs For Victory 
http://mises.org/daily/5009
Reagan ballooned government.
dolf
and obama killed it
Wouldn’t it be nice if people, particularly liberals, were as critical with Democrats as they were with Republicans. Reagan did raise some taxes, but the net effect was positive. In California, government revenues tripled during his term, employment grew, the economy expanded and the tax payers also received $5 billion in tax rebates, incentives etc.
As President, Reagan presided over the creation of 11 million jobs in just his first four years, (1 million in a single month), and an expanding economy while lowering the top marginal tax rate from 92% to 28%.
Reagan was a better leader by a factor of 10 over the current occupant and this country badly needs his type of leadership once again.
Reagan was a better leader by a factor of 10 over the current occupant and this country badly needs his type of leadership once again.
by ten?? REALLY
leadership?? NO,
we need a REAL American NOT someone with a kenyan father, who was raised in indonesia, who never set foot on the US mainland until he was 19-20 yo. Someone is not a marxist, not an islamic devotee, not a follower of saul alinsky, cloward and piven, not someone who is a mob connected AA tool from chi cago, who studied 20+ years under a rancid racist hate monger.
The Two men have NOTHING in common but a penis and im not sure about one of them.
A tidbit from the website above (Austrian school economists are not liberals)
*During his eight years in office, Ronald Reagan increased federal spending by 53 percent, added a quarter of a million new civilian government employees, escalated the War on Drugs, created the “drug czar’s office,” and lowered the value of your 1980 dollar to 73 cents. His Republican successor, George Herbert Walker Bush, further increased taxes, further increased federal spending, and “managed to knock thirteen cents off the value of your dollar in just four years.”*
BUT, BUT, BUT Democrats must be bigger spenders than the GOP on average right? Well, no
“Over the last one hundred years, of the five presidents who presided over the largest domestic spending increases, four were Republicans. Include regulations and foreign policy, as well as budgets approved by a Republican Congress, and a picture begins to emerge of the Republican Party as a reliable engine of government growth.”
SO, the thread is about THE DOWNSIDE TO BIG GOVERNMENT and it turns out the party of big government is the GOP.
“Over the last one hundred years, of the five presidents who presided over the largest domestic spending increases, four were Republicans.”
Turns out bardolf doesn’t understand the math behind the statement.
Except that the algorithm used is “measuring the change in domestic spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) between the fiscal year of a president’s inauguration and the fiscal year of his successor’s inauguration.”
This calculation ignores the actual biggest domestic spenders of the 20th Century because it measures the “change” not the amounts; Roosevelt’s domestic spending eclipsed Hoover by a magnitude of 10 but Roosevelt didn’t follow the economical Coolidge, and he ended his terms as president with a massive amount of non-domestic spending (a world-war or two). Likewise LBJ had the great good fortune to follow both Eisenhower and Kennedy.
The 5 with the largest delta were; Nixon, Hoover, Eisenhower, Truman, and Bush.One need only look at the types of domestic spending to understand this list.
I also notice Reagan isn’t on either list of “Big Government Spenders” by virtue of the change or in raw dollars spent.
“Austrian school economists are not liberals”
the author is Jeff Riggenbach; a historian and anti-war journalist; he is neither Austrian nor an economist.
Having said that, Reagan raised taxes more and more often than fiscal conservatives are comfortable with.
Given the massage deficit Pat Brown left in California, spending cuts would not have fixed the problem; Regan raised taxes when he had to, and lowered or gave rebates/refunds when he could. In California he wiped out the deficit, gave California a surplus (Moonbeam Jerry Brown frittered it away) and left California a much improved business-friendly state (Moonbeam also frittered the business climate away).
His record on taxes and spending as President is more of a mixed bag.
Rathaven
Economics is described by delta and not absolute amounts. e.g. one talks about the economy growing at a RATE of x% not at some absolute amount.
Riggenbach isn’t an economist true, he is published at the von Mises Institute (a proponent of Austrian economics) and his analysis is consistent with that school.
I would hope most people, journalists and conservatives included, would be anti-war. Why would anyone who treasures freedom be pro-war? Woodrow Wilson, the true worst president of all time was hugely responsible for getting the US involved in World War 1 and I see nothing wrong with pointing that out, especially since World War 1 had a second part called World War 2. The enormous costs of the Iraq war , first in blood but then in money have stolen a decade from the US economy.
bardolf,
I understand economics, thank you, but the assignation of “largest increases” is misleading when the factor is the change as a % of GDP since GDP is – as you no doubt know – a variable. Meaning there is no fixed point with which to draw a comparison.
For the less mathematically minded, it qualifies as comparing the change in one number (GDP on inauguration day) to the relationship to a completely different number (GDP on the day before the successor is inaugurated. Truman’s GDP was $2.0 (Trillion) when Roosevelt died; and $2.31 T when he left office. By contrast Roosevelt’s GDP upon Hoover leaving was $0.73 T and 2.0T when he died. Comparing domestic spending to the first then the second number and drawing a conclusion is convoluted at best. after the war Truman moved the economy from a war time economy to a domestic economy; all the while GDP didn’t rise significantly. Roosevelt, by contrast, spent like a drunken sailor on domestic issues when the GDP was low, and on non-domestic issues as GDP more than trebled.
As to Riggenbach; a seal-professed libertarian, where his thesis is in sync with Von Mises, however, I wouldn’t trust the conclusions based on his faulty reading (and selective statistics) and his heavily progressive historic view-point. His anti-military writings set him apart from the reluctant warriors in that he writes that all military intervention is an act of American Imperialism. Since America hasn’t expropriated any part of our former combatants, his theory is simply wrong-headed.
“Over the last one hundred years, of the five presidents who presided over the largest domestic spending increases, four were Republicans.”
I wonder if dolf understands that this is an argument for basing decisions, and judgments, on actual objective political ideology instead of just on identity.
(Actually, I don’t really wonder that at all. I am pretty sure that has never occurred to him, given his dependence on superficial definitions of political models, such as his conviction that if Obama appoints someone who has been identified by someone else as having a certain position, that is proof that Obama is not really a Liberal. )
To reinforce this observation of the fatuousness of dolf’s political analyses, he goes on to confirm it:
“SO, the thread is about THE DOWNSIDE TO BIG GOVERNMENT and it turns out the party of big government is the GOP.”
Once again, if your understanding of political theory and ideology is so superficial that it is entirely dependent on things like personality and events instead of focusing on the actual political philosophy behind it, you are capable of uttering such nonsense. And emphasizing your political illiteracy by putting it in caps, to draw attention to it.
Amazona
Being on point, the post is about the ‘Gipper’ and his message of small government. In practice of course Reagan was not about small government as added a quarter of a million new civilian government employees during his tenure.
If one is not to trust the brand GOP because it is identity politics one can can only look at a politicians record. But, then by that measure one would have to assume that Mitt Romney would protect the pro-choice status quo and was for massive health care reform, that’s what happened in Massachusetts.
Actually, dolf, one would have to look just teeeeeny bit deeper than the superficial level at which you are arguing, to understand that at one time Mitt Romney was a GOVERNOR, whose job it was to support and enforce the laws of the STATE which had elected him. If the people of that state wanted it to support a health care system, it was his job to do so. There was no Constitutional restriction in the state of Massachusetts regarding its ability to have a state run health care system, and the 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution also allowed this.
In this Brave New World where the executive officer of the nation simply picks and chooses which laws to enforce and which to ignore, and issues edicts to support his personal political agenda, it may slip past some people that this is not the way it supposed to be done. Romney did it right, and there is no reason but bias to believe that he would not have done it right as the executive officer of the nation.
The other day ****Mersault****
REALLY???
I was pondering Presidents the other day – and since Theordore Roosevelt, who infamously decreed that if it isn’t explicitly prohibited, government may do it – we’ve had a lousy run. Taft tried to return to rationality and got crushed between the twin progressivisms of TR and Wilson. Harding also made a stab at it, but got ground up in the idiot corruption of his troops. Coolidge did genuinely dial back the progressive twaddle, but he only had a few years, and was succeeded by Hoover, an archetype of Establishment Republican who goes along with progressive ideas. Then the absolute catastrophes of the FDR and Truman Administration leading to the inanities of Eisenhower rolling on in to JFK’s follies, Johnson’s bloated government, Nixon’s even more bloated government and then Carter’s sheer idiocy. We got a reprieve with Reagan but then the Elder Bush seemed to want to be another Hoover and got Hoover’s reward…then 8 years of Clinton corruption and increasing bloat, held slightly in check by a Congressional GOP. The Younger Bush tried very hard to do the right thing, but he worked within the progressive framework and simply never saw the need to hack and slash at government, as an institution. Capping it all off the utter disaster of Obama.
We’re not at the point where we are functionally bankrupt – we’re borrowing money to pay back money we borrowed – and the Rule of Lies is absolute…we don’t just have politicians who lie, but we have politicians who appear to work on the assumption that lies are necessary and beneficial. It will be a long road back, if we can even get on it…
The Younger Bush tried very hard to do the right thing????
* Journalist Steven Greenhut agreed. “This president,” he wrote, late in 2003, “has not vetoed a single bill, which means he has signed into law every big-spending project that has come down the pike. Federal spending, even on non-military matters, has soared. His nation-building experiments are downright Wilsonian, a far cry from the ‘humbler’ foreign policy he promised when he ran for office.”*
HOW do all politicians win election and reelection? NOT by strength of character. It is by controlling how taxpayer monies are distributed. The power of elected office has been reduced to how officials dole out money.
FInally as Mark brought up the “rational” President Taft of the GOP, I will recall the central historical fact that it was during the Taft presidency that Congress passed the 16th Amendment to levy an income tax on the American people.
U.S. GDP vs. U.S. Expenditures
Each president has had his own spending style and a different, current GDP amount. Ronald Reagan began his eight-year term in 1981 with a GDP amount of about $3 trillion. During that year, the expenditures were about $1 trillion. Both the GDP and the expenditure number climbed steadily during Reagans two terms. The final year of Reagans second term, 1988, saw a U.S. GDP of about $5 trillion and expenditures of about $1.75 trillion
George H. W. Bush was president during four years of steady GDP and expenditure growth, starting with a GDP of about $5 trillion in 1989. There were about $2 trillion in expenditures in 1989. At the end of his term, in 1992, the U.S. had a GDP of about $6.5 trillion. The U.S. government expenditures in 1992 were $2 trillion.
President Bill Clinton came into office with a U.S. GDP of $7 trillion in 1993. The expenditures of the U.S. government in 1993 were about $2 trillion. During Clintons eighth year of office, the GDP had greatly grown while the amount of U.S. expenditures rose moderately. The last year that Clinton was in office, 2000, showed the lowest expenditure to GDP ratio. That ratio was 32.6 percent. The GDP in 2000 was about $10 trillion. The U.S. expenditures of 2000 were about $3.2 trillion.
George W. Bush took office in 2001, and the GDP of the U.S. was about $10.3 trillion. The U.S. expenditures in 2001 were about $3.3 trillion. For the last year of George W. Bushs two terms, in 2008, the U.S. GDP was about $14 trillion. The U.S. expenditures in 2008 were about $5 trillion.
President Barrack Obama took office in 2009 with the highest expenditure to GDP ratio. The ratio was 44.7 percent. In 2009, the U.S. GDP was about $14 trillion. U.S. expenditures were about $6.2 trillion. In 2010, the GDP is about $14.6 trillion. U.S. expenditures were about $7 trillion.
Spending Breakdown
During his eight years in office, President Reagan spent 15.9 percent of the expenditures on pensions. He spent 9.9 percent of the expenditures on health care. Education made up 14.4 percent of the expenditures. During that time, 19.2 percent of the expenditures were spent on defense. Welfare made up 9.4 percent of expenditures. The rest of the expenditures, 31.2 percent, went to miscellaneous expenses.
During his four years in office, President George H. W. Bush spent 15 percent of the expenditures on pensions. 10.7 percent of the expenditures were spent on health care. Education made up 14.4 percent of the expenditures. During that time, 16.7 percent of the expenditures were spent on defense. Welfare made up 8.5 percent of expenditures. The rest of the expenditures, 34.7 percent, went to miscellaneous expenses.
During the two terms of President Bill Clinton, 16.5 percent of the expenditures were spent on pensions. 14.1 percent of the expenditures were spent on health care. Education made up 17.3 percent of the expenditures. During that time, 12.4 percent of the expenditures were spent on defense. Welfare made up 9 percent of expenditures. The rest of the expenditures, 30.7 percent, went to miscellaneous expenses.
During the two terms of President George W. Bush, 16.3 percent of the expenditures were spent on pensions. 16.1 percent of the expenditures were spent on health care. Education made up 16.5 percent of the expenditures. During that time, 12.6 percent of the expenditures were spent on defense. Welfare made up 8.9 percent of expenditures. The rest of the expenditures, 29.6 percent, went to miscellaneous expenses.
In President Barrack Obamas first two years in office, 15.2 percent of the expenditures were spent on pensions. 16.5 percent of the expenditures were spent on health care. Education made up 15.5 percent of the expenditures. During that time, 13.4 percent of the expenditures were spent on defense. Welfare made up 10.6 percent of expenditures. The rest of the expenditures, 28.8 percent, went to miscellaneous expenses.
Presidential Spending: Expenditures by Year | CreditLoan.com® http://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/presidential-spending-expenditures-by-year/#ixzz2bDq5kRIy
PS
W had 911, wars, a democrat gutted military, and a donk led housing collapse……..
NEXT?
dolf
sprinkled with a huge amount of donk cheating……..and obama phones, you know glittery trinkets that dazzle low information voters to keep them on the plantation.
Bardolf,
Presidents, though, have nothing to do with Constitutional Amendments – they are passed by Congress and ratified by the States. Presidents play no role – Taft did advocate an income tax, but his proposal appears to have been for a corporate income tax, not necessarily a personal income tax.
Mark: I was pondering Presidents the other day – and since Theordore Roosevelt, who infamously decreed that if it isn’t explicitly prohibited, government may do it – we’ve had a lousy run.
Now THAT’S revisionist history writ large. Seriously, are you really saying that it’s all been downhill for America since McKinley was shot?
Ricorun,
Pretty much though the most cataclysmic event early on was the formation of the Federal Reserve. There was a reason Jackson veto’d the Bank of the United States – setting out very clearly why such an institution is a direct threat to liberty as well as a contravention of the Constitution. But, 80 years passed and people forgot and the Ruling Class wanted a bank so that they could, at need and will, loot the American people to ensure that the rich will suffer no catastrophic loss, no matter how greedily stupid they may be. But the Progressive were ascendant in 1913, and it was asserted that we needed a national bank in order to “control” things and make them fair and secure…our Progressives pointed to bank failures and financial panics (the most recent had been in 1907 when the Banksters really screwed things up and nearly brought themselves to ruin…and they were determined that they never suffer like that again; the taxpayers were to be put on the hook, permanently) and said we needed a Federal Reserve to protect us.
Getting back to TR – while he, himself, wasn’t a complete catastrophe, his assertion that unless the Constitution forbids it, the government may do it was a horrible departure from American law and custom. Before TR, Presidents had actually veto’d legislation on account of their finding no warrant for the act in the Constitution. Now it became a free for all – unless and until someone got the Supreme Court to say an act was unconstitutional, it was ok. But what is the Supreme Court but nine people who may or may not care a fig for the Constitution? Being people just like everyone else, they are fully capable of twisting things to get their desired end – and over the past century, especially, they have done just that.
A Constitutional republic only lasts as long as everyone agrees to obey the rules – especially those rules which get in the way the most often. Was listening to a radio show on my way home tonight and it was something like 3,000 new federal regulations enacted in the past year…where is the warrant from the Constitution for this? Nowhere. The government is just doing what it wants and daring anyone to do anything about it…and, to be sure, if you’ve got bags of money you can get the government to modify things in your favor. But that is not a Constitutional republic…that is an oligarchic tyranny. Our government, especially under Obama lies all the time – shamelessly. The Benghazi video whopper just being one in a thousand over the past few years. None of them in the Administration and most of them in Congress don’t play by the rules – the rules are for fools; for you and me, that is. We break them, we go to jail…they break them, and they just brazenly tell us, under oath, that they gave the least untruthful account they can. For crying out loud, Ricorun, Obama’s first Treasury Secretary cheated on his taxes and told us, as an excuse, that he misunderstood a tax program! You and I can’t do that – mistaken or not, if we get our taxes wrong, we pay…the Ruling Class? Not only doesn’t pay, but gets promoted.
You’re living in a bizarre, little world where you think things are ok. They aren’t. They’re lousy and getting worse – and its time you stepped out of your comfort zone and realized that if you want to have an America 50 years from now, you’d better get on the side of the TEA Party types (Jacksonians to a man and woman, as they are) and change things.
Mark [referring to the members of the Supreme Court]: Being people just like everyone else, they are fully capable of twisting things to get their desired end.
For anyone to believe such a thing suggests a profound repudiation of the entire judicial process as it currently exists. That begs the question… what system do you suggest should replace the existing judicial process? Perhaps more importantly, why do you think that whatever you come up with would be more infallible than the system already in place?
Ricorun,
Its really quite simple – all three branches are co-equal and can do things to ensure that the Constitution is enforced. Congress may regulate how appeals are made, and whether or not certain cases are even valid for the federal courts. The President can simply refuse to enforce a Supreme Court ruling (the Court may hold him in contempt and Congress may impeach, of course, for his so doing…but given political realities they’d both better have public opinion on their side before trying such a thing). The Supreme Court can, of course, reverse itself (it has done so in the past). Our system must not allow to remain a system where the Supreme Court is the final arbiter – it wasn’t intended that way and if we are to be a free, self-governing people it cannot be that way. We, the people, make the laws we live under – not the Courts. The Courts are merely there to adjudicate between parties when a dispute arises as to what the law says – I say this, you say that…we take it to court and decision will be rendered asserting that “it says this”. But even that is not the full-on end to it…because after that ruling the Congress or the President can act in ways to modify or overturn the court decision…we are not a nation governed by the judiciary.
“For anyone to believe such a thing suggests a profound repudiation of the entire judicial process as it currently exists”
No, for anyone to believe such a thing suggests a profound understanding of human nature and is simply realistic. One might even say pragmatic.
The Supreme Court has gradually allowed itself to be corrupted, as it has slowly taken over authority never granted to it by the Constitution, and no one has stepped in to halt this assumption of power. The Court has gone from simply evaluating laws to make sure they comply with the Constitution to making new laws, and justifying them with elaborate constructions of imaginary protections, rights and allowances which simply do not exist. This process has not only allowed but encouraged the expansion of federal power and authority into areas that would have been clearly understood to be the purview of states or local governments, if allowed at all, in an age which understood and respected the law of the land.
Some may find absolute faith in the opinions of five unelected political appointees to be rational. I don’t.
When a former government employee whose job was to be an advocate for Obamacare is appointed to the Supreme Court by Obama, in anticipation of the law coming before the Court for review, and she refuses to recuse herself from the case, I find it impossible to understand blind faith in the Court.
“For anyone to believe such a thing suggests a profound repudiation of the entire judicial process as it currently exists”
Oh, are you referring to the pResident, his corrupt “justice” department and the others who rejected the verdict in the Zimmerman trial? They seemed to ignore the judicial process because they did not like the jurors’ verdict.
Wow, rico, what Mark said was completely accurate. You do realize that our Supreme Court held up slavery? Or the time when, Ruth Ginsberg admitted to using FOREIGN LAW and INTERNATIONAL LAW in her constitutional adjudications. A judge who has sworn to uphold the Constitution, the LAW OF THE UNITED STATES – the sworn basis of her decisions, is using FOREIGN LAW and INTERNATIONAL LAW as the basis to justify of her decisions or “to get the desired end”.
Amazing…yet pathetic. Or do I have to be a lawyer to comment on what she said. Now, don’t be lazy and refuse to look it up. I refuse to post a link simply because I want you to learn something.
I’m asking because a convincing consensus of historians, economists, et. al, have concluded otherwise.
Actually, I’m asking for two reasons: (1) because you cannot possibly PROVE your case, and (2) because there really is a very broad consensus among historians, economists, and the like, that the 20th Century was a really, really good time for the US.
Am I saying that the consensus opinion is always right? No. After all, except perhaps in the field of mathematics, precious little can ever be PROVEN with 100% precision. But the consensus opinion does gain weight to the extent that whatever it is has been examined over and over, from multiple perspectives, and still found valid.
I thought I’d throw that in because there seemed to be some question in previous posts as to whether, when, and to what extent consensus opinion could ever be valued.
reek-O
your babbling sounds like a conspiracy theory to me
I think there is a consensus on that.
Neocon, show me the consensus of historians, economists, et. al, who have concluded that I’m babbling, I’ll believe you. Alternatively, show be an alternative view which is backed by compelling evidence, I’ll believe you.
In the mean time, I regard the idea that you and Amazona have come to a consensus that I’m just babbling as a positive development.
…..there really is a very broad consensus among historians, economists, and the like, that the 20th Century was a really, really good time for the US.
Well considering that that period comprises 100 of the 237 years that this country has been around, or nearly 50%, it’s not a real stretch to believe that.
“there really is a very broad consensus among historians, economists, and the like, that the 20th Century was a really, really good time for the US.”
Well, we had two devastating world wars, two huge police actions that might as well have been wars, the Cold War with its immeasurable costs, two huge economic depressions (one of which lasted nearly ten years and provided a springboard for massive expansion of the federal government), and an erosion of our Constitution which may never be fully repaired. We may need to revisit the idea of just might constitute a “really good time”.
Compare it to the 19th Century, which, in spite of the devastation of the Civil War, was a period in which the United States leapfrogged over every single civilization in the world to establish new standards of economic prosperity and individual liberty, and laid the foundation for the 20th Century advances in civil rights and scientific achievement.
Then there is the first decade or so of the 21st Century, which has seen not only a revival of racism but actual support and encouragement of racism from the top levels of our government on down, causing damage that has undone the progress made in the past two centuries and which may never be healed, all in the pursuit of political power by the callous application of the concept of “divide and conquer”. And the damage done to our Constitution is unequaled in any other period.