Ronald Reagan
* Won the Cold War against totalitarian socialism;
* Inspired a wave of liberation that toppled tyrannies
in Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Angola,
South Africa, the Philippines, South Korea, etc.
* Restored the U.S. military's status as a victorious
liberator;
* Restored confidence in market capitalism both at home
and across the Western world; (remember the 1980
Time Magazine cover: "Is Capitalism Working?")
* Stopped inflation in its tracks when economists were
starting to claim that inflation is inevitable
under democratic capitalism;
* Launched an economic boom that in eighteen straight
years saw only three quarters of economic contraction;
* Cut marginal tax rates from 70% to 30%;
* Forestalled for at least a quarter century the Democratic
party's efforts to finish socializing the healthcare
industry (which its platforms have sought since 1980);
* Appointed strict constructionists to the Supreme Court
while not tipping the balance against Roe v. Wade;
We libertarians may wish he had been even more successful, but Reagan's
record is clearly unequaled by any other president of the twentieth century.
The Myths of Reaganomics
by Murray N. Rothbard, late 1987
Reagan called for [..] a return to the gold standard
The 1980 GOP platform makes no mention of the gold standard:
http://reagan2020.com/platforms/republican/rep.980.html
After two decades of successful monetarist management of the money supply,
the idea of a gold standard is now a quaint historical curiosity.
Sophisticated economists say that these absolute
numbers are an unfair comparison
Not "sophisticated" economists; ANY economist, and anyone who understands
fiscal policy, will say that what counts is constant dollars and percentage
of GDP.
But this strikes me as unfair in the opposite direc-tion,
because the greater the amount of inflation generated by
the federal government, the higher will be the GNP.
Yes, the nominal GNP will be higher, but nominal tax receipts will be
equally higher. In fact, given the progressive tax rates that lead to
bracket creep, inflation is well-known as increasing the federal share of
GNP/GDP. Either Rothbard is disingenuous here, or is shockingly ignorant of
basic economics.
the excuse cannot be used that Congress massively
increased Reagan's budget proposals. On the contrary,
there was never much difference between Reagan's
and Congress's budgets
Utterly misleading, and devoid of a single statistic. Rothbard ignores the
fact that each year's budget takes the prior year's as a baseline. If a
budget cut were proposed but ignored in the previous fiscal year, that
spending remains the baseline for the current fiscal year.
I'll repeat the actual facts that I've already posted here: