Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch Message Board

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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch

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To: wonk who wrote (25659)	8/16/2003 10:01:11 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) of 89467

Well, I have to admit I was a bit baffled by the Reagan mystique until about 5 years ago. Like you I never quite got what he stood for and why he was so idealized. Turns out his big contribution was moving away from Keynesian big govt economics to the Milton Friedman, free markets style. Reagan and Maggie Thatcher were responsible for breaking a bunch of unions, I think we all remember patco here and there was a miner or coal union (forgot which?) in England which were a bunch of notorious whiners and Thatcher took them down. Back then it was unheard of to break a union. Reagan started unregulating stuff right and left, airlines were one and phone company. Now you could argue that none of this union busting or monopoly divestiture did any good, however it took political will and was not on course for the USA coming out of the 70s. Problem is, all of Reagans other ideologies like breaking communism were sort of sidebars and cloud the main message of deregulation, and as we know the defense initiatives cost a bundle and counterbalanced the "less govt" mandate. You could say that communism was the ultimate in big govt Keynesian economics and Reagan was opposed so therefore the defense initiatives were in-plan... but that is a stretch imho. Another huge problem was that towards the end of the decade the religious right hooked their ideology train to the republicans and used the dimwit Quayle as their mouthpiece and then you had a whole bunch of social agendas which are definitely anti-Friedman free market economics. The PBS special "commanding heights" covers post war economics and addresses the Reagan economic legacy which is significant whether you agree with him or not. A really great 6 hour show if you have time to watch. Lizzie

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