The Death of Reaganomics

[flashl]

The biggest political story of 2008 is getting little coverage. It involves the collapse of assumptions that have dominated our economic debate for three decades.

Since the Reagan years, free-market clichés have passed for sophisticated economic analysis. But in the current crisis, these ideas are falling, one by one, as even conservatives recognize that capitalism is ailing.

You know the talking points: Regulation is the problem and deregulation is the solution. The distribution of income and wealth doesn’t matter. Providing incentives for the investors of capital to “grow the pie” is the only policy that counts. Free trade produces well-distributed economic growth, and any dissent from this orthodoxy is “protectionism.”

The old script is in rewrite. “We are in a worldwide crisis now because of excessive deregulation,” Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in an interview.

TruthDig

[loveable liberal]

1. Go Barney Frank!!

[applegrove]

2. Yep. Deregulation doesn't work because the market doesn't work in all cases.

And all it took was 30 years. Economics is based on theories and if the employment or the consumer falls off the graph .... then that is a horrible outcome. Why government intervention is needed to keep the worst of the worst from happening.

I cannot wait to see what the next package of policies the conservatives come up with looks like.

[wishlist]

3. Pundits such on CNBC refuse to acknowledge tax policies have failed too

What is it going to take with business failures, layoffs, worsening markets, financials going under and the tremendous US budget shortfall before the trickle down defenders admit that the answer is not still more tax cuts for the wealthier and corporations.

[bronxiteforever]

4. Excellent-K & R

[Jim__]

5. Somebody better tell John McCain.

He's running for president on an reagonomics platform.

[Karl_Bonner_1982]

6. The deregulation issue needs to extend beyond finance

I commend Mr. Frank for pointing out the crisis of excessive financial deregulation. But what about other industries? We also need to focus on areas where environmental standards have been rolled back, where media ownership is allowed to become too concentrated, and where monopolies, oligopolies and market power are too prevalent. And we need to start enforcing our damn labor laws and throw all the illegal union-busters in jail, dammit!

It's time to throw the whole conservative economic program out the window as an example of "elitist capitalism," and start demanding the changes needed for a genuine "democratic capitalism."

[RainDog]

7. Matrix economics: there is no invisible hand n/t

[Auggie]

8. There's a lot of big money out there that doesn't want to see it die

We need to be sure to elect those to Congress who will help us kill it once and for all.