Help me!

[white_wolf]

Okay here is the thing. My best friend is a really smart kid. He's got a four point GPA so hes not stupid but hes blinded by this conservative propaganda that Regan was some sort of great hero. Do you all know of any sources I can show to him to help prove that Reaganomics failed and that the size of the government and national debt did increase under Regan? Also he mentioned Regan got us out of a minor recsisson do you all have any information on that?

[elleng]

1. Try google: President Ronald Reagan

Then READ.

[Brickbat]

2. Prove Reaganomics failed? Tell him to look around; that should sum it up nicely.

[bertman]

4. Only problem with that method is if he comes from a wealthy family he'll see no problem.

[Brickbat]

7. Then his comfort lies in him believing falsehoods, and there's no convincing him.

And someone like that isn't worth trying to convince.

[white_wolf]

13. That's what I don't undetstand

He is not wealthy at all. His family would probably be considered lower middle class. I guess it shows the success of the RW propaganda machine if nothing else their good at that.

[snagglepuss]

6. LOL

:applause:

[G_j]

3. there are some great graphs and charts,

they can be pretty illuminating..
sorry, I don't have them on hand, but they are out there.

[B Calm]

5. As a union worker who survived the Raygun era, we took three

separate wage and benefit reductions during his term. Each time, it was suppose to make our product more competitive in the market place. We found put later they raised the price of the product and gave all the salary people hefty raises every time we took a concession. They ended up closing the plant in 1989 and moved operations to Mexico so they could exploit even cheaper labor down there.

[givemebackmycountry]

8. Show him or her these...

Wake them up and show them the facts.

[asdjrocky]

9. Read Howard Zinn.

[krispos42]

10. Reagan was divorced, and re-married.

He wasn't a church-goer, and his wife believed strongly in astrology. He passed gun-control laws after he was shot, including the machine-gun registry. He "cut-and-ran" in Beirut in 1983. He supplied advanced anti-tank missiles to Iran AFTER the Islamic extremists took over. He allowed sales of NBC equipment and materials to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. He funneled money and weapons to Osama Bin Laden and his religious guerrillas in Afghanistan. He helped Pakistan get nuclear weapons by overriding DoE bans on dual-purpose technology sales... so he could supply money and weapons to Osama Bin Laden. He slashed the top tax bracket twice in his first term, resulting in a recession and a massive budget deficit. He raised taxes on small businesses and working people (to create the Social Security Trust fund, which he promptly raided to sustain his bond-and-spend policies). He cut banking regs, resulting in the S&L scandal/collapse in 1987. He refused to break up large monopolies or prevent smaller companies from being bought and merged into giant conglomorates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Debt_Trend.svg



Basically, he sucked for the bottom 98% of income-earners.

[Double T]

11. Here you go.

Ronald Reagan's reign was the beginning of the end for America and most of its workers.

http://www.americanpolitics.com/20020319Hersh.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/opinion/21krugman.html

[bluesbassman]

12. Tell him to look up Murray Weidenbaum, one of the architects of Reaganomics.

There are plenty of articles and interviews where he admitted it was a failure.

[blogslut]

14. Here's a start

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics#Criticisms

[renate]

15. welcome to DU!

:hi:

[Elwood P Dowd]

16. Reagan ran up over 3 trillion dollars in budget/current account deficits.

That's not close to the 10 trillion dollars Bush dumped on our ass, but it was the beginning of massive, trillion-dollar deficits. Reagan-Bush 1 also started the negotiations for all the fake free trade deals that have shipped millions of our jobs out of the country. He gave away trillions in tax breaks to the rich and dramatically increased FICA and federal excise taxes that hurt the middle class. Reagan was the piece of shit that pushed Supple Side economics that we now know as Piss On The Middle Class economics.

[omega minimo]

17. Who wants to know? Google broke?

[niyad]

18. welcome to DU-- remind him about the air traffic controllers being fired, the mentally ill forced

out of hospitals, and iran-contra.

had a great button I wore for 8 years (in addition to the mourning band) reading: "jane wyman was right". the people who got it always smiled. the rest. . .