It should now be virtually impossible for anyone with serious intellectual training to avoid the conclusion that the entire range of economic mantras ushered in by the Reagan Revolution has been exposed as total fraud.
Ruinous deregulation. Massive tax cuts for the wealthy. Radical privatization. Aggressively pro-corporate trade matched by aggressive anti-labor policies. Devastating attacks on the welfare state as it applies to the middle and lower classes. These are the dominant economic trends that have defined the last three decades.
All of these have led us to where we stand now.
The country is precariously close to the kind of economic depression that now-gutted New Deal reforms had prevented for the better part of a century.
Meanwhile, the top 400 wealth holders possess $1.5 trillion. That's double what they had before Reaganomics went into hyper-drive during the Bush 43 years. That's also more than the GDP of Canada.
This happened during a period of increasing poverty, decreasing median income, and exploding personal debt.
To the degree the corporate press refuses to frame events in this light it is as culpable as the politicians (including DLC Democrats like Bill Clinton) who pushed the Reaganite agenda for nearly 30 years. Dean Baker is at least one important voice providing excellent analysis as the current crisis unfolds.
If John McCain wins this election there is literally no justice. His history of support for Reaganite policy is well established and he hasn't the foggiest notion of the imperatives facing us now. We won't even talk about his running mate, who was barely qualified as a mayor.
This could all play out in a number of ways. The best case scenario involves New Deal style Democrats overwhelming Reaganite holdovers this November. I'd rather not even think about some of the other possibilities.
http://bullbythehorns.blogspot.com/2008/09/reaganomics-1981-2008.html
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