Jon Stewart is to blame for Trump.

[Lexicus]

Well....

There actually wasn't a boom at all in the 80s. You don't get a boom when you don't have business investment. And there was no business investment while Reagan was in office. Cutting the personal income tax rate does not result in increased business investment.

Tfw you need socialism to have business investment

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Well....

There actually wasn't a boom at all in the 80s. You don't get a boom when you don't have business investment. And there was no business investment while Reagan was in office. Cutting the personal income tax rate does not result in increased business investment.

One of us missed something.

I didn't say anything about cutting taxes causing a boom.

In fact, I specifically said that cutting taxes did NOT cause a boom.

The boom of the eighties, which carried into the nineties, was caused by the standard method of Keynsian intervention...increased government spending. It would have happened approximately the same if there had been no tax cuts at all, it would just have produced less federal debt in the process because revenue would have risen much faster.

As to your claim that there "was no business investment" I can see the results of millions of dollars in business investment from the eighties just driving across town, so I disagree.

 

[Cutlass]

When I say there was no boom in the 80s, what I mean is that the economic performance of the 1980s was less than the average economic performance of the US 1945-1979. That does not qualify as a boom.

As to the investment, I wasn't being precise in my words, though basically correct. To be precise: There was no net new business investment in the US while Reagan was president. None. Every 'new' dollar of investment came at the expense of destroying an 'old' dollar of American business capital.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

When I say there was no boom in the 80s, what I mean is that the economic performance of the 1980s was less than the average economic performance of the US 1945-1979. That does not qualify as a boom.

As to the investment, I wasn't being precise in my words, though basically correct. To be precise: There was no net new business investment in the US while Reagan was president. None. Every 'new' dollar of investment came at the expense of destroying an 'old' dollar of American business capital.

Ah. Lack of precision. I said "in the eighties" without specifying that I did not mean the eighties in their entirety.

I'm interested in where you are finding this measure of net business capital.

 

[Lexicus]

Cutlass is slightly off-target here. Net investment has been declining in the US at least since the 1920s. To say that this is Reagan's fault is clearly incorrect.
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/43038
I would encourage anyone interested in this topic to read that whole essay.

 

[Cutlass]

Economist Benjamin M Friedman says it in his book Day of Reckoning
Harvard Business School professor and writer says it in his book The Competitive Advantage of Nations

I've read it other places as well. Keep in mind that if there were booming times in California and the South and Southwest, it came at the expense of Reagan policies accelerating the creation of the Rustbelt, and Reagan policies that destroyed millions of manufacturing jobs and sent them overseas.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The decline of the rust belt wasn't a policy issue. US auto manufacturers failed utterly when the time came to shift from an innovation market to a consumables market. No policy by any government anywhere could have saved them.

 

[Lexicus]

The decline of the rust belt certainly was a policy issue, because the rust belt could have been supported by other forms of investment even as the auto-makers took nosedives.

 

[Flying Pig]

Economist Benjamin M Friedman says it in his book Day of Reckoning
Harvard Business School professor and writer says it in his book The Competitive Advantage of Nations

I've read it other places as well. Keep in mind that if there were booming times in California and the South and Southwest, it came at the expense of Reagan policies accelerating the creation of the Rustbelt, and Reagan policies that destroyed millions of manufacturing jobs and sent them overseas.

I'm surprised to see you of all people complaining about manufacturing jobs being sent overseas. What should he have done to protect them?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The decline of the rust belt certainly was a policy issue, because the rust belt could have been supported by other forms of investment even as the auto-makers took nosedives.

Perhaps. You might be underestimating how committed the auto workers of the time were to being auto workers though. I remember a whole lot of effort being put into expanding the economy of the rust belt and all of it falling absolutely flat. There was a widespread misunderstanding regarding what the "layoffs" in the auto industry meant, and "no, thanks, I'll wait for the recall" was the predominant attitude. No one, not the auto makers, not the workers, and not the state and local governments, wanted to hear "yeah, there aren't going to be recalls this time." Unpleasant fact, as is often the case, was ignored.

 

[Lexicus]

Well I guess that would get into what you mean by decline. If 'decline' to some people meant 'withering away of auto industry' rather than a general decline in economic activity, then sure. But I think most of those guys would have preferred shifting to some other economic activity over what actually happened.

In these kinds of discussions generally it seems like there is a lot of conflation of those two things: good jobs and manufacturing jobs, that is. People don't seem to realize there are lots of other factors operating that made the manufacturing jobs good jobs (they were not good jobs in the late 19th century for example). There is a kind of essentialist view of the matter, as though the task is specifically keeping manufacturing jobs in the US rather than ensuring that Americans have access to good jobs in general.

 

[Gori the Grey]

There is a kind of essentialist view of the matter, as though the task is specifically keeping manufacturing jobs in the US rather than ensuring that Americans have access to good jobs in general.

At a Trump town hall in Iowa in advance of the primary, a recent college graduate asked him, What will yourpolicies do for me? He said I'm going to bring back jobs from China. I wanted to scream a follow up on her behalf : I didn't get a four year degree for a manufacturingjob!

 

[metalhead]

It annoys me to no end that politicians only ever talk about manufacturing jobs. How about making service jobs better, seeing as most people have service jobs?

 

[SupremacyKing2]

It annoys me to no end that politicians only ever talk about manufacturing jobs. How about making service jobs better, seeing as most people have service jobs?

Possibly because service jobs usually require a higher education so people with service jobs can more easily find another job. People in manufacturing jobs tend to really struggle with finding work if they lose their job. So it is a voter group that politicians try to reach out to.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Well I guess that would get into what you mean by decline. If 'decline' to some people meant 'withering away of auto industry' rather than a general decline in economic activity, then sure. But I think most of those guys would have preferred shifting to some other economic activity over what actually happened.

Absolutely...once they saw what actually happened. You may have skipped over it when I said that no one wanted to hear the unpleasant fact that there weren't going to be recalls. Years later there were plenty of people saying "wow, we should have shifted to some other activity," but what people say years later doesn't really affect what happened at the time.

In these kinds of discussions generally it seems like there is a lot of conflation of those two things: good jobs and manufacturing jobs, that is. People don't seem to realize there are lots of other factors operating that made the manufacturing jobs good jobs (they were not good jobs in the late 19th century for example). There is a kind of essentialist view of the matter, as though the task is specifically keeping manufacturing jobs in the US rather than ensuring that Americans have access to good jobs in general.

I agree with this completely. Oddly enough the source of this is the auto industry. Henry Ford is responsible for making manufacturing jobs, specifically jobs manufacturing cars, into the good jobs that they had not been previously. That's what made the auto industry "the backbone of the US economy" and created any number of other truisms. It is also what set the stage for the decline of the auto industry to be so catastrophic in its effects on the economy in general. Auto workers weren't even interested in other manufacturing jobs, they were committed. The son of an auto worker who took a job doing the exact same thing as his dad but in a refrigerator factory would be considered a failure, because he wasn't an auto worker.

 

[Lexicus]

Henry Ford labor organizations engaging in decades of sometimes-bloody struggle is responsible for making manufacturing jobs, specifically jobs manufacturing cars, into the good jobs that they had not been previously

Fixed that for you.

 

[Hygro]

Decades of trying, trying and then Ford comes along with a high wage strategy and it happens...

 

[Lexicus]

I really hope you're not being serious because what you're saying is just flat-out untrue. For example in giving his workers an eight-hour day, Ford was simply following what had already been won by unions in many other economic sectors. And it wasn't until the FSLA in '37 that forty hours became "standard" due to overtime.

So no, manufacturing jobs in the US did not become good jobs because of the beneficence of Henry Ford, sorry.

 

[Takhisis]

Did you actually read the article?

No single event or trend initiated the takeoff of Space Shuttle Trump. It’s not just white lower- and middle-class resentment; it’s not just nationwide frustration with whatever “The Establishment” means to a particular voter; it’s not just a chance for white supremacists to pour out of the woodwork.

The flavor of the article sez it all, like:That's in the first paragraph and imo sets the tone.

I thought the Republican Party was abut freedom and defeating the slavers and white supremacists and so forth? I dunno, it's what they peddle at their speeches.

At a Trump town hall in Iowa in advance of the primary, a recent college graduate asked him, What will yourpolicies do for me? He said I'm going to bring back jobs from China. I wanted to scream a follow up on her behalf : I didn't get a four year degree for a manufacturingjob!

Pick a job off the job-tree.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Nobody said anything about beneficence. He paid what he had to pay because his manufacturing process required reliability in the labor force. But the fact remains that he paid way more to get that reliability than the going rate of the day, and auto workers were always way ahead of the average manufacturing job wage as a result.