Much doubt about it. It was the pro- growth policies of the Reagan administration that set us up for our current prosperity. While pundits were touting MITI and suggesting we emulate the high- tax, high- trade- barrier, industrial policy model of Japan, its economy was about to take a plunge into the toilet, and ours was about to take off, even in the midst of significant defense reductions that dislocated the economies of several states (and thus belying the liberal canard that the Cold War was a way of maintaining economic growth).
And, by the way, junk bonds helped to finance a lot of the high- tech start up that is paying off so handsomely in the '90s, not merely as a sector, but in the ripple effects of increased productivity, low inflation, and the empowering of the workforce. If the biggest revolution in high- tech has been the development of user- friendly devices and software, it has also enable otherwise low skilled people to get decent jobs. Cashiers now scan, and depend on their registers to calculate change. Secretaries who could barely type without numerous errors now have spell checks to enable them to speed up. The dearth of people qualified as programmers has lead employers to offer huge starting packages and training to non- college graduates as inducements. Our prosperity is not the result of a ponzi scheme, but of the Cyberevolution, that was at least helped along by many of the policies and financial instruments it is common to vilify. |
