Ronald Reagan’s poop is used as currency in Argentina*
Dick McDonald writes:
Ronald Reagan cut taxes drastically, doubled government tax revenues and what happened?
Some jackass went Sadly, No! on his blog board? Ping! Sadly, No!:
From 1981 to 1989 real federal revenues climbed by 20 percent. […] In 1981 income tax receipts totaled $347 billion; in 1989 they totaled $549 billion, a 58 percent increase. In fact, income tax collections grew only slightly slower in the 1980s than in the 1990s despite income tax rate reductions in the Reagan years and increases in the Bush-Clinton years.
Please, please, please don’t give us that nominal crap either. From 1982 to 1989 federal revenue went up by a non-inflation adjusted 60%. But as long as we’re on that topic, why not pay attention to what Mr. Moore (quoted above) writes:
Hence, if we define the beginning of the Reagan years as the first full year when the policies were in effect, the eight years in which Reagan’s policies were in effect were 1982-89. This latter approach seems to provide a more accurate gauge of the economy’s reaction to the change in policies Reagan enacted in 1981, and for this reason we adopt this as the standard for analysis in this study.
Unless, you know, we need to sex things up, like here:
Nominal federal revenues doubled in the 1980s from $517 billion to $1.031 trillion.
In what year did nominal federal revenues amount to $517? Let’s hope you didn’t guess 1982, because the correct answer is 1980. [PDF] And in what year did they reach $1.031 trillion? Was it 1989? Or was it instead 1990? [Same link: you make the call.] And if you answered 1980 because Moore wrote “in the 1980s” — then we have to ask why he dumped his standard halfway through his study.
As for the deficit, must have all those bad socialists in Congress pissing away the people’s money though, right, Dick?
The Defense Buildup and the Deficit. Table 6 shows that the cumulative increase in defense spending from 1981 to 1989 ($806 billion) was larger than the entire cumulative increase in the budget deficit ($779 billion) in those years. That is, if defense spending had been held to the rate of inflation from 1981 to 1989, the total real deficit would have fallen in the 1980s rather than risen.
S…., ..!
* It’s obscure references weekend on S,N!
While visiting the Shrine of Supply Side Jesus in Ulan Bator, Ronald Reagan took a dump so large, an entire tribe made enough bricks out of it to build an entire town.
While Federal revenue rose by about 50% during Reagan’s administration (from about 600B to about 900B), service on the national debt rose 120%. Debt service was a cancer eating at the US budget. It was caused by Regan’s profligate spending and aggravated by interest rates that stayed high because of the overheated economy produced by Reagan’s tax cuts. It wasn’t until the 2nd half of Bush I’s reign, when he turned away from Reaganomics, that we started to get a handle on the budget defecit. By then a great deal of damage had been done (though not by Bush II standards).
Cutting taxes is like homeopathic medicine, you see, when you’ve cut government to the point there’s no dertectable traces of public services remaining, then magickal things start to happen. I’m not sure what they are, but rumor has it they involve CIA poker parties with hookers and blow.
Wait, islmfaoscist, I’m confused – poker parties with hookers and blow are bad? Cuz if they are, I don’ wanna be good!
And it was also in the 1980s that Argentina stamped extra zeroes on their lettuce to decrease the wheelbarrow traffic on market days. Oh let’s do turn back the hands of time.
I invite Mr. McDonald to Google “Reagan recession” and “dead on arrival,” and maybe also “Paul Volcker” for good measure.
Mr. Dick wrote about governments: “They are run by lesser men as the Private Sector draws the best of the best”. I presume he is referring to Saint Ronald, King George the 2nd, & c.?