Ronald Reagan's ideas were NOT part of the solution, they were the CAUSE of the problem

[NAO]

<meme>

Reagan famously said, "Government is not part of the solution, it is part of the problem".

In reality, Government is not only PART of the solution, sometimes it is the ONLY solution.

Conservatives who want to "get back to Reagan" are running back to ideas that have been proven to be both grossly mistaken and highly disastrous by the last quarter century. The "proof" is coming in every day in the financial news.

Ronald Reagan's ideas were NOT part of the solution, they were the CAUSE of the problem.

<meme>

[guitar man]

1. exactly

The idea that wealthy employers could be showered with corporate welfare and any of it would find it's way into the pockets of the common workers was ludicrous. What's even more ludicrous is that we kept trying to make that failure work for almost 30 years. Sans any requirement to pass it down, it all wound up exactly where anyone capable of critical thinking would predict, stuck at the top.

[Greyhound]

2. Yet, not a day goes by that I don't read somebody on DU advocating or parroting "his"

bullshit propaganda.

[HughBeaumont]

20. Most of those people are in my Red X Toilet.

Democratic/Progressive board. Not Laissez-FAIL board. Cinch.

[Beer Snob-50]

3. I think that Reagan economics is a big part of the problem

I think an even bigger part of it is the lack of critical thinking by the current administration to continue (and push for more) what they are doing even though it shows to not working.

[Johonny]

4. the total collapse came when Republicans got total control

Reagan had to deal with a Democratic congress and the republican congress had to deal with Clinton. So Reaganomics never got total control over every part of the government until Bush. Now no department works.

[Beer Snob-50]

9. but a big difference is (in my very humble opinion)

is that a president (even a republican one) with even an ounce of critical thinking, could see that something is not working and maybe tweak if not totally blow it away. bush does not critically think at all.

[warrior1]

5. amen brother

this meme needs to blasted back in there collective faces.

[corpseratemedia]

6. I remember one of the first things they did was cut

some of my father's veterans' benefits - ones that had to do with children. I remember our high school's funding running short. Then I remember all the funding they cut for college grants. I had to switch schools in order to continue to afford going to college. The rule changes seemed bizarre and arbitrary. At some point I couldn't have a double major if I wanted to continue getting some kind of grant or benefit.

They stopped funding some psychiatric institutions and there were all these newly homeless un-medicated people who gravitated to our beach community (upscale vulgarity didn't exist there yet). They were supposed to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps." It was all about scapegoating the poorest and the most helpless.

They came up with the specter of the "welfare mother." They and their corrupt buddies turned out to be the biggest sociopathic "welfare mothers " of them all.

[CrispyQ]

7. Reagan built our economy from the top down with his 'trickle down' economics.

You don't build anything from the top down. The repubs have also successfully brainwashed people to fear government & to resent paying taxes. They have masterfully gotten huge numbers of their party to vote against their best economic interests. And yet, here we are, thirty years later, & maybe many of them, even the poorer ones, are paying less taxes, but they don't have jobs & government is bigger than ever.

I've never understood this fear of paying taxes. If I were making $250k a year, I would be happy to pay a higher percentage in taxes than I do making $35k a year.

[Uncle Joe]

11. Can you imagine if builders tried building homes or skyscrapers from the top down!?

Any successful structure must begin with a solid foundation, those people at the top pushing Reagenomics know that, they're not all stupid.

They just don't care about building, their motivation or focus is destruction and death, the same as any scavenger flying high.

[anonymous171]

21. That is why Government Provided Healthcare is a must.

People won't resent paying taxes if they know that they are paying for their own healhcare.

[tjwash]

8. Reagan's economic policies were made for one reason, and one reason alone...

Dereg everything so that large mega corps could grow as bloated and oversized as they wanted and gobble up all the smaller competition, and crash the stock market to make it even easier.

[misanthrope]

10. It amazes me still that people would put someone in control...

...who professed a desire to destroy the very thing they were charged with managing.

Would you do the same with the company for which you work? "Make me CEO because I despise ACME Widgets and would like to see it driven out of existence."

[LeftishBrit]

12. Indeed. As were those who shared and pushed his views elsewhere

In the UK, Maggie and her cronies. Thanks Maggie for the bloody mess that you and your 'sado-monetarism' (as a disgruntled moderate Tory called it) have left us with!

St Ronnie seems to be a 'Teflon president' even in the grave, getting little of the blame that he deserves.

[truebrit71]

13. THANK YOU!!!

It drives me NUTS when the revisionists talk about the raygun days....

He CAUSED the problem you ignorant bastiges....

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. Exactly right, and the reason that things didn't collapse right away

was that there was still some residual strength in our economy. We still had a mostly domestic manufacturing sector, and the banks still hadn't been given free rein.

[mdmc]

15. 4th

:kick:r

[edhopper]

16. To paraphrase Rush

"Reagan is DEAD! His policies may live on, but we're in the process of doing something about that as well."

[Odin2005]

17. It is time to go back to Big Government and Keyensian Sanity. n/t

[FatDave]

19. "Keynesian" is a word I hope to hear a lot more of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics

[Odin2005]

24. It's been 30 long years since the Monetarists first tried to kill it. They Failed.

They left behind a devastated economy in their wake, unfortunately... :(

[Orsino]

18. And who says they were his ideas, anyway?

Reagan was a stooge.

[RainDog]

22. the good news is that the corporate talking heads have pronounced Reaganism dead.

of course, they're a few decades late, but that's the norm among those who suck up to power. they're always the last to see what's really going on.

Thomas Friedman is a great example of this. His new book is only about, oh, a decade too late to matter. Yet it's a bestseller... and all the while, those who are at the forefront of information and ideas are ridiculed and kept off the tubes because they're too "controversial."

maybe the NYTimes wouldn't be suffering so much, financially, if they didn't pay people like Friedman and Kristol outrageous sums to babble and lie.

[Initech]

23. If Reagan was our benchmark for great presidents, we are truly fucked.