Originally Posted by Exile 67'

In short, we've also bought in for 8 or so decades that the bureaucrats are our friends who have our best interests at heart---if only they could tax and bring in more money to "share" with us. Me, I tend to ignore the political arguments/BS relating to other peoples money and I strictly vote on my personal economic interests at stake.

In other words, you are a selfish *BLEEP* who only cares about himself?

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

I think we're looking at two different things here to a degree.

Lower tax rates are not what inflated the housing bubble, at least not as a primary contributing factor. And to the extent that bubble and its subsequent popping were a huge input to the recession, tax cuts are low on the list of "blame points" (since we as a society *love* to place blame; it's one of the things we collectively do best.)

They may have contributed by fostering the illusion that debt-based consumption of luxuries was a lucrative way of making money after all else has been eliminated. Housing has almost always been a good income when middle-income groups (that includes industrial workers) have known rising incomes. But incomes rose only for a small clique and became precarious for more people.

As significant is the assumption among lenders that even if a bank must foreclose on a defaulting borrower (such as after a breadwinner dies or has a crippling injury), then a loan can still be profitable if the banker can resell the foreclosed collateral in an environment of rising prices. The rising prices came to an end. Until the 2000s real-estate lenders typically made no such assumption in issuing a loan. The norm was that one did not make a loan to some borrower with an inadequate income on the assumption that inflation-fueled pay raises would eventually make the housing affordable. That norm vanished!

However, real middle class incomes had already peaked and were falling in the '00s for the most part, and I do think lower tax rates made it harder for the government and the middle class to claw out of the hole as more of the wealth and the spending power were concentrated in a small percentage of entities. Meanwhile we've been seeing corporate profits and CEO pay hit record levels as the rest of us look at several years of pink slips, offshored jobs to India and reduced pay and benefits (or merely frozen if you're "lucky" as I've been). Do lower tax rates and "trickle down theory" do this in and of themselves? No. But they do feed into the mentality that says we have to kiss the butts of Big Business if we want to prosper as well, that corporate America, out of the goodness of their hearts, will share the bounty of rising profits with its workers and pass savings on to customers even when they don't have to. So any time someone suggests a little regulation to keep a competitive marketplace and a decent deal for labor, people scream "Socialism!" and "Job Killer!" as if corporate America hasn't already been killing jobs despite improving fortunes and record profits.

That pathology would have created trouble even without the real-estate boom as well as the promotion of household equity as a line of credit for everything from cars to vacations. Not long ago, real-estate lenders caviled at the idea of someone borrowing against household equity for hedonistic expenditures on automobiles, vacations, furniture, swimming pools, clothing, or electronics. It's worth noting that states that had had their own conjunctions of real estate collapses and corrupt lending (Texas in the 1980s) didn't quite have the problem that California had. Texas no longer allowed borrowers to cash out on equity loans. Political entities can learn from catastrophic failures, and legislatures can adapt (if belatedly).

But -- California remains the largest market for just about everything except heating oil, and when it disappears as a market for the Good Life, then the rest of the US pays. Florida is another such market, probably about a third as large as Florida for many of the same things as California, so that is another big hit for the rest of us. Just imagine that the economic mess were in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the whole of new England -- and the effects would be much the same.

The problem may not have been that Americans were living a Good Life that it couldn't afford; it was more likely that America went from having a distribution of income characteristic of Western European democracies to one characteristic of a fascist oligarchy. One possible solution to the economic mess that we now have is for people to seek out union cards instead of credit cards as a rite of passage. Strong, competent unions are the only defense that working people have against bureaucratic corporations owned by tycoons and managed by narcissistic executives who see working people most charitably as humans of a lesser grade.

In short, we've bought the rhetoric for three decades that corporations are our friends who have our best interests at heart -- if only they could make and keep more money to "share" with us.

Economic elites have never fully merited the trust of the common man. Capitalism is a good system only to the extent that it works for people other than capitalists and their favored retainers. Under capitalism, owners always have the temptation to impose feudal, pre-capitalist relationships upon workers in the absence of or the perversion of democracy.

Originally Posted by Exile 67'

In short, we've also bought in for 8 or so decades that the bureaucrats are our friends who have our best interests at heart---if only they could tax and bring in more money to "share" with us. Me, I tend to ignore the political arguments/BS relating to other peoples money and I strictly vote on my personal economic interests at stake.

Agreed completely about blind trust in government -- in true Gen X spirit, I trust neither Big Business nor government to have my best interests (or that of "middle America") at heart. At best I think they exert a check on each other (as to "we the people") which prevents either from becoming too big, dominant and powerful. And that was largely true, I think, until megacorporations saw buying the government as the easiest path to investing in profit growth.

Originally Posted by Exile 67'

In short, we've also bought in for 8 or so decades that the bureaucrats are our friends who have our best interests at heart---if only they could tax and bring in more money to "share" with us. Me, I tend to ignore the political arguments/BS relating to other peoples money and I strictly vote on my personal economic interests at stake.

No, it worked during the largely-competent response to the meltdown of 1929-32, the shrewd management of public and private resources during the Second World War (the last completed 4T), the post-WWII economic boom that worked for anyone capable of holding onto an industrial job (the last 1T), and the economic inertia of good habits from earlier time during the Boom Awakening (although I have some qualms about the universities that churned out the executives of the recent Unraveling). For about 50 years American bureaucrats in business and industry did their jobs very well and well served the rest of us. Then things degenerated as 'plausibility' supplanted rationality as a criterion of decision making, business executives trained in amoral MBA schools became cruel administrators, and politicians like Ronald Reagan started falling for the vapid arguments of the most rapacious people who had no morality other than prudery.

The deterioration of the quality of bureaucracies in business and government began about as Ronald Reagan replaced Jimmy Carter, slowed some when Bill Clinton was President, but accelerated when we had an amoral and dishonest President with an MBA degree instead of a law degree. Some of the Unraveling (the 3T) was fun, but when it became a full-speed Degeneracy in economics, mass culture, government behavior, and business practices -- things got very bad very fast.

So we had nearly 5 decades of competent leadership in government and business bureaucracies and 3 decades, all in all, of mediocre-to-poor performance. You seem to endorse the recent years of bureaucratic incompetence in government and industry enough to want to see the return of the worst after a President who has tried to change things for the better. Maybe you are grossly deluded about what your interests are. Unrestrained, amoral greed and bureaucratic corruption have always worked -- but only for those with proximity to power, much as is true for gangsters and dictatorial leaders and was true for feudal lords and slave-owning planters.

Sound economic policy mandates heavy taxation of the cash-cows of the economy and solid pay for genuine work and entrepreneurial activity. We are now in a Crisis Era with this decade beginning to look more like a parallel to the 1930s than to any that followed. America got through the bad times of the 1930s none the worse for wear because it established good habits that would make prosperity possible when something went right. Americans may have been giddy with the idea of a New Era of trickle-down economics and glitzy indulgence until the summer of 1929 and in apparent sackcloth and ashes ten years later -- but what America did in sackcloth and ashes in the 1930s created wealth instead of devouring it. Most of the 1930s were a time of recovery largely through shrewd investment -- government investing in big and useful projects (Hoover Dam, the TVA, the George Washington, Transbay, and Golden Gate Bridges, and some expressways including the first section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike) useful even 75 years later and in the less dramatic manner in small-scale mom-and-pop businesses created with sweat equity.

We have had enough of the late-3T Degeneracy, and we either start doing things right again or we commit ourselves to self-inflicted calamity.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Agreed completely about blind trust in government -- in true Gen X spirit, I trust neither Big Business nor government to have my best interests (or that of "middle America") at heart. At best I think they exert a check on each other (as to "we the people") which prevents either from becoming too big, dominant and powerful. And that was largely true, I think, until megacorporations saw buying the government as the easiest path to investing in profit growth.

We still have free elections, and it is up to us to elect government that we trust for competence and good intentions.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

And that was largely true, I think, until megacorporations saw buying the government as the easiest path to investing in profit growth.

Ah yes, the East India Trading Company. It's indeed been all downhill since at least then...

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

We still have free elections, and it is up to us to elect government that we trust for competence and good intentions.

...from among the candidates the ruling elite decides to allow us. Let's not forget that part. Elections in the USA are no less bogus than Yedinaya Rossiya's like-clockwork wins. Just, Americans are a hell of a lot better at marketing.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

...from among the candidates the ruling elite decides to allow us. Let's not forget that part. Elections in the USA are no less bogus than Yedinaya Rossiya's like-clockwork wins. Just, Americans are a hell of a lot better at marketing.

Not quite that bogus -- unless you are looking only at 2010, in which one side floated overwhelming, Orwellian propaganda for which most Americans are ill-prepared. If such is repeated successfully in 2012 then the GOP might as well call itself "Yedinaya Amerika" in any Russian-language materials.

But we have mass protests against some of the policies of GOP hacks where they won Governorships in unlikely places. Those protests do not yet look futile or dangerous. It is true that our first-past-the-post system practically ensures that parties similar to the Social Democratic Parties of Scandinavia or Germany have no chance in America, but that one of the Parties so far can get away with many fascist characteristics.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Not quite that bogus -- unless you are looking only at 2010, in which one side floated overwhelming, Orwellian propaganda for which most Americans are ill-prepared.

I think sometimes people get carried away by their own rhetoric. All that advertising did little to promote the Republican victory, IMO.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Not quite that bogus

Yes, exactly that bogus. You simply indicate the quality of the marketing, when you think that there are any such thing as meaningful 'sides' between the two wings of the American ruling party. Yedinaya tried to pull something like that back in '08 (I believe), with a chunk of its members spinning off to form a new 'opposition' party. No one bought it there -- likely a combination of it having been a pretty ham-handed attempt on ER's part and the fact that the people there have been forced to come to terms for quite a while with the fact of what their rulers are.

As for mass protests? Well.. those aren't 'free elections', now are they? In fact, in a model which featured 'free elections', you wouldn't really see mass protests to begin with...

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Agreed completely about blind trust in government -- in true Gen X spirit, I trust neither Big Business nor government to have my best interests (or that of "middle America") at heart. At best I think they exert a check on each other (as to "we the people") which prevents either from becoming too big, dominant and powerful. And that was largely true, I think, until megacorporations saw buying the government as the easiest path to investing in profit growth.

OK, I can buy this for now. Cynicism is rewarded more than punished at the moment. What will you do if that changes? If it becomes clear that there is a choice between domination by private interests or joining in common opposition, will you still distrust the only power base in the commonweal too much to offer your support?

Originally Posted by Justin '77

As for mass protests? Well.. those aren't 'free elections', now are they? In fact, in a model which featured 'free elections', you wouldn't really see mass protests to begin with...

I agree with this. Let's understand the dynamic that led to those mass protests. The voters voted for a progressive government in 2008, one that would make some real changes and address not only the immediate economic meltdown but also the obscene maldistribution of wealth in our economy, as well as changing our foreign policy to one more peace-oriented and internationalist. They thought that was what they were getting because that's what Obama told them they were getting. But that isn't what they got. So a lot of the people who voted for Obama in 2008 stayed home in 2010, figuring "Why bother?" or else deliberately trying to send a message to the Democrats. By default, the Republicans won the election, gaining complete or near-complete control of many state governments and partial control of Congress. The Republicans behaved as if the votes of slightly more than 20% of the potential electorate gave them a mandate from the people, and so a lot of the almost 80% who didn't vote for them became very upset. But if it hadn't been for the corruption of the Democrats, none of that would have happened. If the Democrats had behaved in 2009-10 the way Obama campaigned in 2008, they would have won the 2010 election, or at least lost more marginally.

But this is an inevitable outcome of a non-engaged people who turn their backs on politics. A politician needs money to run a campaign, and he needs votes to win it. Campaign donors make lots of noise through lobbyists. If the people don't make any noise, the politician is likely to pay most of his attention to the campaign donors, and trust the money they supply him to get his message out and get enough votes to win. If the people do make noise, though, he has to listen to them, because no matter how much money he has, it all comes down to the votes in the end. If the people hate him, he can't win.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

...from among the candidates the ruling elite decides to allow us.

This is, at best, a dead end - a loser's game.

In the 2008 primaries, there were about a dozen candidates on both the Right and the Left representing nearly every faucet of the political spectrum including nuts like Ron Paul (and in the last election, his bigger nut son got to be a Senator). Sure, money was thrown at those races (again from all spectrums of the political sphere) and helped to narrow the field; in the end, however, even the money has to work its magic on the voter - we get what we deserve.

People who want to blame it on "the elites" just don't like to admit that they or their countrymen are so easily manipulated and/or they don't like where that manipulation has led. Generally, to blame in on "the elites" just gets one off the hook from trying to do anything about it while appearing that they are providing some profound insight.

Originally Posted by playwrite

This is, at best, a dead end - a loser's game.

In the 2008 primaries, there were about a dozen candidates on both the Right and the Left representing nearly every faucet of the political spectrum including nuts like Rand Paul (and in the last election, his bigger nut son got to be a Senator). Sure, money was thrown at those races (again from all spectrums of the political sphere) and helped to narrow the field; in the end, however, even the money has to work its magic on the voter - we get what we deserve.

I think you are confusing father and son. The father (Congressman from Texas, perennial Presidential candidate) is Ron Paul, the son (Kentucky senator) is Rand Paul.

I think I want to say something about timing. The 2012 election is important as are all elections, but it may not be final or decisive, no matter how it goes.

A Turning lasts 20 years give or take a few. The last Fourth Turning lasted only seventeen years, but included four presidential elections (1932, 1936, 1940, 1944). It had three presidents (Hoover, Roosevelt, and Truman), even though Roosevelt served for life. The Crisis before that, in my opinion, lasted for seventeen years as well (1860-1876) and also had three presidents (Lincoln, Johnson, and Grant). (Or four if one counts Buchanan.) (Or five if one also counts Jefferson Davis.) It included five presidential elections (1860, 1864, 1868, 1872, and 1876) -- although the last could also be considered the first High-era election, so maybe only four. It's a little fuzzier.

In any case, we have had one Crisis-era president and one presidential election so far. We should, if things go the usual course, have three or four more presidential elections, and between one and four more presidents, depending. The next election, accordingly, will not set the stage for the coming First Turning. It will simply be another milestone as the Crisis proceeds. We have a long way to go yet.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

I think you are confusing father and son. The father (Congressman from Texas, perennial Presidential candidate) is Ron Paul, the son (Kentucky senator) is Rand Paul.

Thanks, I made the correction. My mind must have temporarily gone to another planet - it often happens when contemplating Libertarian land.

Going to that citadel of liberalism, if not pinko-commie land -

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/...ord-on-record/

we find that Bush and his Laffer-induced tax cuts resulted in what???!!

Bush On Jobs: The Worst Track Record On Record

...The Bush administration created about three million jobs (net) over its eight years, a fraction of the 23 million jobs created under President Bill Clinton‘s administration and only slightly better than President George H.W. Bush did in his four years in office.

...Because the size of the economy and labor force varies, we also calculate in percentage terms how much the total payroll count expanded under each president. The current President Bush, once taking account how long he’s been in office, shows the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records.

Originally Posted by playwrite

People who want to blame it on "the elites" just don't like to admit that they or their countrymen are so easily manipulated and/or they don't like where that manipulation has led. Generally, to blame in on "the elites" just gets one off the hook from trying to do anything about it while appearing that they are providing some profound insight.

Huh. I've been pretty outspoken about how easily the people of this country are led. And about the only hope for 'fixing things' being our interactions at our personal scale in helping each other recognize where our interests really lie and how very much common ground we have.

None of that obviates in the least the fact that there is a ruling class which currently rules. It offers a way out of that situation, of course -- but one would be mistaken to thing an effective exit could be plotted without first having a clear understanding of where things are now.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Huh. I've been pretty outspoken about how easily the people of this country are led. And about the only hope for 'fixing things' being our interactions at our personal scale in helping each other recognize where our interests really lie and how very much common ground we have.

None of that obviates in the least the fact that there is a ruling class which currently rules. It offers a way out of that situation, of course -- but one would be mistaken to thing an effective exit could be plotted without first having a clear understanding of where things are now.

Okay, but giving up on the ballot box is a losing game.

It's not nearly even mostly about the elites, its about their sheeple. And one man's sheeple is another man's idea of a path to individual freedom - proven as one of the most easily manipulated mindsets in the country.

Originally Posted by playwrite

Okay, but giving up on the ballot box is a losing game.

Huh. I'd think that putting one's hopes into nonviolently changing the structure which holds the monopoly on application of violence into a direction where its current owners would have less power would be a rather more losing game. Change doesn't happen at the ballot box -- at best the ballot box merely ratifies it. Change happens in people. Not sheep, mind you -- people.

The Haitians have a saying: "La Constitution est en papier, les baïonnettes sont en acier." That's simple reality there -- and we're not the ones with the steel. I'll let you put all the ballots in the world up against that one.

Originally Posted by playwrite

...Because the size of the economy and labor force varies, we also calculate in percentage terms how much the total payroll count expanded under each president. The current President Bush, once taking account how long he’s been in office, shows the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records.

Whether coincidentally or conveniently, note that these records only goes back to 1939 and thus can't include FDR's first two terms. I wonder how they would compare before that pesky attack on Pearl Harbor in his third term.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Huh. I'd think that putting one's hopes into nonviolently changing the structure which holds the monopoly on application of violence into a direction where its current owners would have less power would be a rather more losing game. Change doesn't happen at the ballot box -- at best the ballot box merely ratifies it. Change happens in people. Not sheep, mind you -- people.

That is true no matter what mechanism one prefers for enacting change. If the ballot box merely ratifies change, then so does the cartridge box -- either one is a means for implementing the change that must first happen in people. I prefer to say that the ballot box is a way of peacefully manifesting that change and is to be preferred over violent revolution for that reason. The mistake is in thinking that voting by itself is enough -- not in thinking that it is a useful procedure.

The Haitians have a saying: "La Constitution est en papier, les baïonnettes sont en acier." That's simple reality there -- and we're not the ones with the steel. I'll let you put all the ballots in the world up against that one.

Translation: "The Constitution is written on paper, bayonets with steel." (Another reminder that not everyone here reads French, Justin.) But there's another saying that goes the opposite way and holds much truth: The pen is mightier than the sword. The Man always has more military power than the opposition. The only time that ever changes is when the Man's soldiers desert him. If you have to fight the Man's soldiers, you can't win. All you can hope to do is survive until the day when you don't have to fight them -- then you can win.

All governments exist with the tacit support of their people. The advantage of democracy is not that it makes that true (that's true regardless), but that it makes transitions of power possible without violence and chaos. It's not something that should be given up.

Originally Posted by Odin

In other words, you are a selfish *BLEEP* who only cares about himself?

Yep that's right, I can be just as selfish as a public employee or a public recipient like yourself.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Whether coincidentally or conveniently, note that these records only goes back to 1939 and thus can't include FDR's first two terms. I wonder how they would compare before that pesky attack on Pearl Harbor in his third term.

Estimates of unemployment during the 20s and 30s show, of course, that the largest falloff in employment occurred during Hoover's Administration (1929-1933). That too followed a major cut in taxes in the 1920s orchastrated by Mellon using the same argument as the Laffer Curve - the maximum rate went from 70% to 20%.

Following the initial tax cuts, there was a significant increase in real GDP, - after a pretty nasty recession (actually, a mini-Depression) in 1920-21. That growth soon peter out as capacity exceeded demand. In turn, the funds that would have been tax revenues actually began to pour into stocks/land/commodity speculation. We all know what soon happened after that when that bubble burst.

Regarding idiotic and short-sighted tax cuts and their ultimate consequence, there is little daylight between what happened back in the 20s and early 30s and with what happened to us since 2001 with the Bush tax cuts. Anyone who is over 100 years old could probable tell us that from experience; it's just that there's not too many of those guys around - that lost wisdom is one of the things that drives 4Ts.

What saved our collective arses this time (and only so far to date) is a Fed chairman that spent his life studying the Great Depression, its causes, and how it could be at least better managed even if it couldn't be prevented.

The real question now is whether there will be a repeat of 1937. It's not a question of how that would come about (the forces setting us up - handwringing over inflation, deficits and currency value - are already there), it is really only a matter of whether our current leadership takes the bait and tries to appease those forces.

--- if it happens this time, there likely isn't going to be a world war to pull us out of the ensuing depression.

Originally Posted by playwrite

First of all, even the most die-hard Laughable Laffers that have any integrity will tell you there is an apex to the curve that to the right means greater revenue can come from lower tax rates AND TO THE LEFT WHERE LOWER REVENUE IS OBTAINED FROM LOWER TAX RATES. It is beyond idiocy to claim that any cut in tax rates will always result in increased revenue - even if you believe in the Laffer Curve, you know it depends on where you start from.

The other thing is that there is a generalized Laffer Curve, but if such a curve actually exist it would be different with each economy AND different with what phase that economy is going through. It is actually extremely hard to draw a Laffer Curve based on empirical inputs and detailed assumptions. No one has done so where there is a consensus that it truly represents a particular economy.

Also, it is a little hard to justify either the validity of the theory or its actual utility when you compare the actual impacts of raising and lower tax rates in various periods such as Reagan's or Bush's tax cuts against Clinton's tax increases either in terms of economic growth, employment and wage increases or in terms of revenues generated for the federal government. At best, the picture is cloudy and certainly should not be taken as a panacea in our highly complex economic world.

And again, if you really want to try to understand what is going on, you need to get under the model and look at its assumptions rather than pout about people just don't understand.

Most of what you say above is correct. As I said, 0% taxes produce no revenue, obviously. Some of your other statements, however, indicate that you're confusing the revenue effect of tax rates with their effect on the overall economy. They are related, but distinct issues.

Art Laffer would say that the optimal tax rate is well below where we are now, for what his opinion is worth. What must also be remembered is that the diminishing returns of tax increases are not isolated to federal income tax rates. They are a result of the overall effective tax burden on the individual, including all state and local taxes, which for the highest earners is approaching 60% of their income. And yet many believe the "rich" are still not having enough of their income stolen by those who don't work as hard. At what point will "Atlas Shrug" and simply stop trying, causing the whole thing to collapse? 70%? 80%? We know what that kind of situation looks like thanks to communist regimes throughout history. We'll all be driving 40 year old cars and trying to access this forum on Commodore 64s.

More to the point, you could raise the taxes of everyone making over $250,000 a year to 100%, and it still would not close the budget gaps we now have thanks to Obama and the Democrats. The dirty little secret of European socialism that the fanciful American left has ignored is that their system is built upon massively regressive VAT taxes and spiderwebs of regulation that lock people into a permanent class status in exchange for the welfare state hammock. They also do not operate in a federal system like the U.S. -- another fact that the American left ignores in its quest to make the U.S. federal government look like the national governments of Europe. They seem to forget that the state governments even exist, with individual systems of taxes and regulations of their own.

The Laffer Curve is associated with Supply Economics where the assumption is that demand is insatiable and one only needs to produce more to meet as much of the demand as possible. By doing so, you are going to hire countless people to produce and they, in turn, will then have the incomes to translate their insatiable demand into actual purchasing power.

When that assumption falls apart, and it has, then the Laffer Curve become laughable. What you get, as I first pointed out, is flows of money (what would have gone to keeping the deficit in place, infrastructure, etc) into non-productive 'investment' that Wall Street was all-too-happy to provide, then comes asset inflation, bubbles popping, and, when the tide goes out, a lot of naked ugliness that was previously hidden.

If this doesn't sound familiar, you've been in a coma, or just plain stupid like this guy -

The above does not help dispel your appearance of economic illiteracy. The Laffer Curve illustrates the relationship between taxes and government revenue. Supply-side economics, on the other hand, was in large part a response to the myopia of Keynesianism, and the crippling sclerosis it had introduced into the U.S. economy by the 1970s.

Keynesians focus solely on demand, which is only half of the economic equation. They think that you can tax and regulate the supply side of the economy into oblivion and still have a healthy economy by constantly pumping in "stimulus" on the demand side. There are some basic things that happen as a result of reducing the burden of taxes and regulation on the supply side. It's easier and cheaper to bring new products to market, the economy is more flexible in response to change, and prices fall. It does not rest on the assumption that demand is insatiable. It rests on the (accurate) assessment that supply creates its own demand. Not necessarily in a 1:1 ratio, but there is no doubt, for example, that the introduction of new goods and services, and the reduction in prices for existing goods and services, increases the demand for those goods and services, and ultimately raises standards of living at all levels of society.

To pretend that the last 30 years were not characterized by a dramatic increase in the standard of living for all Americans, to the point where even people in the "lower class" possess cell phones and high definition TVs, is to perpetuate a bald-faced politically motivated lie, nothing more, nothing less.

As for the recent downturn, it has nothing to do with any of the above, despite the left's desperate efforts to conflate the two. The asset bubbles of the .com bust and subsequent housing bust were made possible by the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. Interest rates were kept too low for long. The catastrophic nature of the housing bubble was specifically the result of moral hazard introduced into the market by government policy. Too easy credit and loans where no one is ultimately liable (except, as we have found out, the taxpayer) have nothing to do with low income tax rates or supply-side economics.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

In any case, we have had one Crisis-era president and one presidential election so far. We should, if things go the usual course, have three or four more presidential elections, and between one and four more presidents, depending.

The Crisis started on 9/11/2001. At the latest.