What do you think of Ronald Reagan? and Reaganomics? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14531874
Hi there everyone so as it says I'm wondering how many conservatives here see Ronald Reagan has the almighty Savior and if there are any conservatives who think he wasn't that good at all. I don't consider myself a conservative I'm actually quite of a Social-Democrat, Radical Centrist, however I find Reagan one of the most charismatic politicians in the last 40 years he trully knew how to handle a crowd.....
As a policy maker I disagree a lot with Him, I know that people are inherently lazy they want the best outcome with the least effort possible which in some cases, not all, ends up with people getting unemployed for choice, because they're getting more money than they would with a new job.
From among his choices, like freezing minimum wage and deregulate economy they truly decreased unemployment, although worker's rights were down the drain and the real average hourly earnings stagnated which decreased low and middle class standard of living. This is just an opinion of mine and I might be wrong, I'm not american and I didn't read that much about "Reaganomics", so the question Remains what's your stance on Reagan and Reaganomics?

Best of Ronald -


Joke on Communism by Ronald Reagan -
#14531877
I find Reagan one of the most charismatic politicians in the last 40 years he trully knew how to handle a crowd.....


I am not a conservative. Ronald Reagan was the right man for the time. He gave Americans confidence and that is what the economy needed.
#14531881
One Degree wrote:I am not a conservative. Ronald Reagan was the right man for the time. He gave Americans confidence and that is what the economy needed.


That's what I've been told and Seen in quite some opinions among the web, the economic growth in that time was Sky Rocketing, however the debt just and the Debt/GDP ratio increased a lot
#14531885
Debt/GDP ratio increased a lot


No American administration cares about this. They give mouth service to it, if they think it will help with the voters.
It makes more sense politically for them to spend and pass the debt on.
#14531893
philiphos wrote:Debt/GDP ratio increased a lot


One Degree wrote:No American administration cares about this. They give mouth service to it, if they think it will help with the voters.
It makes more sense politically for them to spend and pass the debt on.


That's just hipocrisy from many conservatives: "This debt is a burden we have to cut government spending, to decrease taxes and provide economic growth, otherwise our children and grandchildren will have no future", in the meantime let me just raise Debt/GDP while I make a favor to some guys and start another war...
#14534916
I have a mixed view of Ronald Reagan.

I think Ronald Reagan was a necessary figure for the times and a dose of Reaganomics (defeating inflation, lowering marginal tax rates, weaking union power, deregulation) was neccessary for the time. Inflation was out of hand at the time, this cannot be denied. The Volcker shock was needed. I think Thatcher played the same role in Britain.

This being said I think it needs to be recognized that such economic policies would have been favored by the electorate at the time had Ronald Reagan not arrived on the scene, however Ronald Reagan was able to carry the message.

Reagan's economic policies put down the foundations of a largely prosperous time that lasted from the recovery from the early 80s recession in 1983 to the housing bubble in 2007-2008. There were recessions in the midst but nothing to compare to the 1970s-early 80s stagflation or the 2008-2014 era (it seems recovery is largely taking place now).

Reagan shifted the goalposts on economics to the center-right, so things Obama proposes today, while once within the mainstream of moderate Republicanism, are derided as "socialist" or "Marxist." This being said Reagan could not undo much of what FDR had set in place, so he did not take us back to the pre-FDR era, in fact he didn't even want to. To paraphrase Reagan he often said he wanted to undo Lyndon Johnson's Great Society but thought Roosevelt's New Deal was neccessary and should remain in place.

I think Reagan's economic successes are complimented by some questionable foreign policy decisions. Had Watergate not happened I have always maintained the Cold War could have ended by 1980, we were making real progress with Nixon and Kissinger's realist approach. They might have been able to convince the Soviets not to make the blunder of invading Afghanistan, Reagan meanwhile aided extremists that later morphed into anti-American groups.

I think Nixon could have accomplished a lot more, plus having a long standing reputation as an anti-communist gave him cover to do this, while Carter appeared dovish so negotiating opened him up to looking weak. Reagan wanted to end communism by the end of the 1980s, which he did by his tougher approach. This being said it is questionable if this was the best approach.

Had the Nixon detente continued (assuming Nixon remained in office until 1977 and Carter had not been elected to replace him) the Cold War might have ended in the late 1970s. Communism in name only may have continued into the 1990s but it would have gradually reformed away from communism instead of a sudden collapse, this might have prevented a lot of problems in Eastern Europe.

Another area where Reagan's legacy is questionable is the War on Drugs. Nixon launched the War on Drugs in 1971 with a more sensible treatment based approach. There was a commission under Ford that recommended decriminalizing marijuana and continuing a treatment based approach. Reagan meanwhile focused on a more aggressive approach and also intervened in Latin America propping up regimes that committed various atrocities. This decision hurt America's reputation in Latin America which led to the later arrival of leftist anti-American regimes like Hugo Chavez.

So Reagan was a mixed bag. Had we elected somebody with Reagan's economic policies but a more realist foreign policy it might have been different. Had George H.W. Bush won the Republican primary in 1980 he would have had to have done Reaganomics like policies under a different name because the times called for it, but George H.W. Bush was more of a realist than Reagan was in foreign policy, but later on he had to act like he was more hawkish than he actually was in deference to Reagan's legacy.
#14534982
nucklepunch wrote:Reagan's economic policies put down the foundations of a largely prosperous time that lasted from the recovery from the early 80s recession in 1983 to the housing bubble in 2007-2008. There were recessions in the midst but nothing to compare to the 1970s-early 80s stagflation or the 2008-2014 era (it seems recovery is largely taking place now).

Reagan shifted the goalposts on economics to the center-right, so things Obama proposes today, while once within the mainstream of moderate Republicanism, are derided as "socialist" or "Marxist." This being said Reagan could not undo much of what FDR had set in place, so he did not take us back to the pre-FDR era, in fact he didn't even want to. To paraphrase Reagan he often said he wanted to undo Lyndon Johnson's Great Society but thought Roosevelt's New Deal was necessary and should remain in place.

At dinner with a team of industry vets tonight, I had the opportunity to talk with a guy who was at Bell Labs when the divsestiture occurred in 1984. I think it was a good thing, but at the time I remember a lot of people thinking it was bad. My colleague had been to the Bell headquarters in New Jersey and said that there were empty cubicles and people sitting around reading newspapers. The big monopolies were the kind of big fat jobs where managers spent money so they would get fatter allocations in the following year. Pretty much only a few monopolies and government operate that way now. He even spoke of how that mentality meant that Unix ultimately failed in the market after divestiture and Linux replaced it--they had not patented all their code, but secured copyrights instead. The whole open source market really began with GNU and Linux, and now includes MySQL, Apache HTTP server, Tomcat, JBoss, and countless other huge projects--even Android is open source. Even the PHP board we chat on is open source and free. It simply would not exist without the economic revolution of the 1980s. Clinton also played a role, as he opened the internet to commerce. That's what makes Obama's Net Neutrality initiative potentially a great tragedy.

There is so much good that came from divestiture and de-regulation. The entire cell phone industry was built in large part because it wasn't regulated as a utility. Can you imagine a world without voice mail? Where the phone company owns your phone, not you? Where fax machines and email are illegal, because they compete with first class mail from the post office? Forget call-waiting, three-way calling, conference calls, *69, etc. It simply didn't exist before the Reagan years.

nucklepunch wrote:Had Watergate not happened I have always maintained the Cold War could have ended by 1980, we were making real progress with Nixon and Kissinger's realist approach. They might have been able to convince the Soviets not to make the blunder of invading Afghanistan, Reagan meanwhile aided extremists that later morphed into anti-American groups.

I hardly think that Operation Linebacker helped make friends and influence people. Reagan was a lot softer on communism if you see it from the perspective of the VC or NVA on the wrong end of an arc light strike from the Johnson years through Rolling Thunder, Linebacker and Linebacker II. Reagan rebuilt the military, but he didn't use it a lot. By contrast, George H.W. Bush looked at it like an appliance. He invaded Panama to arrest Manuel Noriega on drug charges. Operation Just Cause. War and Peace in Panama (1991) - PBS Frontline Documentary. It's hard to believe that anyone would look at Reagan's war on drugs and compare it to Bush I invading Panama and say Reagan was more militant. Bush I also deployed the biggest conventional military since the Vietnam War during Desert Storm. Even George W. Bush didn't put a 500k man army in the Middle East.

nucklepunch wrote:Reagan meanwhile focused on a more aggressive approach and also intervened in Latin America propping up regimes that committed various atrocities. This decision hurt America's reputation in Latin America which led to the later arrival of leftist anti-American regimes like Hugo Chavez.

Seriously? Manuel Noriega got arrested by the US Army. Reagan didn't do that. George H.W. Bush did. Honestly, nucklepunch, are you a college student? Check your primary sources. Listening to professors is a mistake. They will deliberately mislead you. Reagan supported the Contras against the Sandinistas. Somoza had already fallen under Jimmy Carter. Violetta Chamorro wasn't exactly oppressive. Reagan used military support to anti-communist forces pretty much everywhere. George H.W. Bush's kinder and gentler approach was to invade Panama for the purposes of arresting Manuel Noriega. Keep in mind that leaders like Augusto Pinchet came to power because of Nixon and Kissinger, not Reagan. Your professors will not tell you this. You must do your own primary research.


nucklepunch wrote:Had George H.W. Bush won the Republican primary in 1980 he would have had to have done Reaganomics like policies under a different name because the times called for it, but George H.W. Bush was more of a realist than Reagan was in foreign policy, but later on he had to act like he was more hawkish than he actually was in deference to Reagan's legacy.

Do you really believe this? George H.W. Bush, like his sons, speaks sweetly but will kick your ass. Socialists like the Bush family, because they expand on FDR. Reagan opposed Johnson, whose domestic policies were tragic. The idea that George H.W. Bush used the military the way he did just to live up to Reagan is an unbelievable apologia, which undoubtedly Jeb's cronies are floating. It's absurd. I knew when George W. Bush won, we'd go to war. I just didn't think it would be Iraq. I know if Jeb wins, we'll be going to war. That's just how it is.
#14535032
I am not repeating the words of professors, I am merely stating what I looked up. I also did know that Pinochet came to power because of Nixon and it was a mistake on Nixon's part, but Nixon's interventions in Latin America were limited to anti-communist policies previous administrations had followed.

This being said Nixon's policies on specifically the Soviet Union were working better than Reagan's, unfortunately Carter simply could not get away from being called a dove, while Nixon had some cover from this because he had a long career as an anti-communist. I never said Reagan was bad, just that I had mixed views on him.

Foreign policy brings up a lot of controversy because it is very complicated, some of what Reagan did in foreign policy was good, others were not, but my overall point was that Nixon would have probably done a better job had he not been brought down by Watergate because he was much more personally interested in foreign policy than Reagan and had more than 20 years of experience in foreign policy while Reagan as a governor was not involved in it.

If you focus simply on the economic side of domestic politics Reagan was a neccessary antidote to the Johnson years that would have arrived in some form or another, as it arrived in most of the Anglosphere in the form of Thatcher, Mulroney, Lange and Hawke, the latter two being neo-liberal members of traditionally left-wing parties.

In general presidents tend to excel in either domestic or foreign policy because there is too little time to focus on one thing. Historically you see presidents choosing to leave one up to the advisors while getting more involved in the other, Reagan largely left foreign policy to advisors while Nixon did the same on domestic policy. The exception was FDR who focused on domestic policy during his first two terms and foreign policy in his third.

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