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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Abject Failure of Reaganomics
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/10/18-0President Ronald Reagan, delivering his Inaugural Address on Jan. 20, 1981.
Even as the Republican Right licks its wounds after taking a public-opinion beating over its government shutdown and threatened credit default, the Tea Partiers keep promoting a false narrative on why the U.S. debt has ballooned and why the economy struggles, a storyline that will surely influence the next phase of this American political crisis.
If a large segment of the American public continues to buy into the Tea Partys fake reality, then it is likely that both the political damage and the economic decline will continue apace, with fewer good-paying jobs, a shrinking middle class and more of the bitter alienation that has fed the Tea Partys growth in the first place. In other words, the United States will remain in a vicious circle that is also a downward spiral.
The pattern can only be reversed if American voters come to understand how and why their economic well-being is getting flushed down the drain.
The first point to understand is that the current $16.7 trillion federal debt is about $11 trillion more than it was when George W. Bush took office. Not only did Bushs tax-cut-and-war-spending policies send the debt soaring over the next dozen years but it was those policies that eliminated the federal surpluses of Bill Clintons final years and reversed a downward trend in the debt that had threatened to eliminate the debt entirely over the ensuing decade.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)struggle to understand why this isn't obvious to all.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Reaganomics can only ~be~ failed.
It's in the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink, the slime that oozes out of our TV sets.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)were actually spent building a society that helped people instead of manipulating them.
I grew up with all kinds of revolutionary ideas in the music of the day; is that there for young people now? Are there artists producing music to inspire change, music to counteract the $$$$propaganda machine?
xchrom
(108,903 posts)to reaganomics don't vigorously frame it as a failure.
so it's never a jumping off talking point.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)and why don't we remove our support from those who SHOULD but won't?
xchrom
(108,903 posts)i have my ideas -- but they tend erupt in DU hair pulling contests.
duffyduff
(3,251 posts)The rest can go hang.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth
LuvNewcastle
(16,846 posts)It makes 9/11 and terrorism look like minor inconveniences, and it's ruined a lot more American lives.
Corruption Inc
(1,568 posts)No numbers, facts, logic, proof or any reality at all will convince lifetime criminals and self-deluded dumbasses of a thing. They need to be tried for their crimes, such as banking crimes, torture camps, conspiracies to commit war, civilian killing, bribery, poisoning the environment, tax fraud, retaliation, workplace bullying, real estate fraud, libor rate fraud, rigging muni bond markets, rigging energy markets and, widespread use of propaganda against the American people.
Until then, no articles in magazines, no petitions, no protests will do a f-ing thing.