blackjack21 wrote:
1) A "signal" has no force and effect of law. The only unions that would worry about that are government unions in essential functions, which legally cannot strike--like air traffic controllers.
2) You people and your phony histories of Ronald Reagan: when are you ever going to give it a rest?
3) Actually, it was Nixon taking the US off the gold standard
4) The lack of responsible monetary policy led to cost-push inflation in the 1970s, which wasn't corrected under Carter either.
5) Bretton-Woods had to come to an end, but generally governments have to make a guns-or-butter decision, and Nixon chose both.
6) Oil exporters responded to this by forming OPEC and jacking up oil prices, and further used it to protest US support of Israel. By 1973, guns-and-butter alone had inflation to 8.8%. By the Carter years it was 12%. When Reagan took office, inflation was 14%.
7) Unions wanted special treatment--non-union workers be damned. Corporations simply could not afford to pay unions more under cost-push inflation.
In fairness to Jimmy Carter, he did appoint Paul Volker late in 1979, and Reagan kept him on hand until 1987. They had to break inflation by raising interest rates. The Fed Funds rate hit 21% in 1980--one reason for Carter's unpopularity.
9) Reagan was busting cost-push inflation. Today, we have very low inflation and low interest rates and we can thank the great Ronald Reagan and his administration in part for getting that under control.
1) Reagan made is abundantly clear business could screw people without consequence.
2) You need to prove me wrong. Which you simply can not do. Sorry if I popped your fantasy bubble.
3) The Bretton Woods agreements were utterly brilliant. But they were designed to punish bad actors. With our massive spending on the empire, that was us. The result was our gold reserves going to France. You are looking at effect, not cause.
4) Carter appointed Volcker, who may have been the best head of the Fed in that century. So he kinda did, but it took a while.
5) Social spending wouldn't get big until the 80s. That was just massive military spending.
6) It's a lot more complicated that that. But if you want to start, read Daniel Yergin's Oil.
7) Europe still has Unions... The reality is that CEOs wanted more money, and stole it from the workers.
The decision you are talking about was a mistake that happened a couple years before Volcker made his move on inflation. The cause was external to the economy (oil) and kicking the economy had no effect on inflation. I was trying to get my first house at the time. Double digit mortgages, that was crazy.
9) Nope, Reagan's big spending made Volcker's job harder, a lot harder.