Author Topic: Fantastic religious quote.  (Read 21289 times)

arce1988

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #50 on: June 09, 2012, 10:28:40 PM »
  In fact, when asked if he believed in a higher power generally, Dr. Tyson responded: “Every account of a higher power that I’ve seen described, of all religions that I’ve seen, include many statements with regard to the benevolence of that power. When I look at the universe and all the ways the universe wants to kill us, I find it hard to reconcile that with statements of beneficence.”

syntaxmachine

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #51 on: June 10, 2012, 04:40:09 AM »
He was and still is. Liberals will always find fault with someone that has helped the country because they couldn't do it themselves.

Saying a president whose average approval rating was 53% was "very well liked" seems like a stretch. That's a whopping +6% over Obama's current level.



http://www.gallup.com/poll/11887/ronald-reagan-from-peoples-perspective-gallup-poll-review.aspx

Further:

-Reagan began the unfortunate trend of deficit spending that is so problematic now, setting a precedent: The federal debt tripled under Reagan.
-At the end of the Carter Administration (an evil liberal!!!11), the USG spent 27.9% of federal income; this grew to 28.7% under Reagan.
-Despite promises to cut taxes and "starve the beast," tax revenue for the USG pretty much stayed the same under Reagan (earlier cuts were matched with later increases, including the largest tax increase since WWII in 1982).
-Reagan presided over an increase in the size of the federal workforce by some 200,000+ plus employees.
-Reagan granted amnesty to over 3 million illegal aliens in 1986.
-Very little to no deregulation took place under Reagan; the much-maligned Department of Education persisted and VA (at the time the largest independent agency in the government) was added as a cabinet-level department.
-Reagan was very protectionist, increasing quotas and import restrictions significantly.

That's to say nothing of foreign policy. Doesn't almost all of the above sound like the sort of stuff a "liberal" president would do, Coach? If so, you need to talk about how much you hate Reagan in order to maintain logical consistency among your beliefs. Either Reagan was great and you can tolerate liberal policy after all or otherwise such policy is unacceptable and therefore Reagan was a pretty bad president.

Everything you've said about those damned "liberals" and politics in general makes me think you're a shit-for-brains (if that's a noun), but maybe you can clarify that for us here.

Thespritz0

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #52 on: June 10, 2012, 04:54:51 AM »
my 8th grade teacher(yes i actually made it to 8th grade guys :o) was an investigator into the jfk assassination on his off time and used to talk to us about it, he made us really doubt oswald acted alone. he was in new york doing a lecture on it and took a bullet in the shoulder
^^
Did they arrest the shooter?  Any connections to gov't or just a nut?

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #53 on: June 11, 2012, 12:04:34 PM »
Saying a president whose average approval rating was 53% was "very well liked" seems like a stretch. That's a whopping +6% over Obama's current level.



http://www.gallup.com/poll/11887/ronald-reagan-from-peoples-perspective-gallup-poll-review.aspx

Further:

-Reagan began the unfortunate trend of deficit spending that is so problematic now, setting a precedent: The federal debt tripled under Reagan.
-At the end of the Carter Administration (an evil liberal!!!11), the USG spent 27.9% of federal income; this grew to 28.7% under Reagan.
-Despite promises to cut taxes and "starve the beast," tax revenue for the USG pretty much stayed the same under Reagan (earlier cuts were matched with later increases, including the largest tax increase since WWII in 1982).
-Reagan presided over an increase in the size of the federal workforce by some 200,000+ plus employees.
-Reagan granted amnesty to over 3 million illegal aliens in 1986.
-Very little to no deregulation took place under Reagan; the much-maligned Department of Education persisted and VA (at the time the largest independent agency in the government) was added as a cabinet-level department.
-Reagan was very protectionist, increasing quotas and import restrictions significantly.

That's to say nothing of foreign policy. Doesn't almost all of the above sound like the sort of stuff a "liberal" president would do, Coach? If so, you need to talk about how much you hate Reagan in order to maintain logical consistency among your beliefs. Either Reagan was great and you can tolerate liberal policy after all or otherwise such policy is unacceptable and therefore Reagan was a pretty bad president.

Everything you've said about those damned "liberals" and politics in general makes me think you're a shit-for-brains (if that's a noun), but maybe you can clarify that for us here.

Caught my attention THROUGH YOUR PM to remind me. Since I have a business to run (62 clients today for example...capitalism is GREAT!) and can't go through your post line by line, I'll let you take a gander at this. Call me whatever you want, liberalism fails 99.5% of the time. Again, libs lack economic and social commonsense. Hope this helps junior.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2011/05/05/reaganomics-vs-obamanomics-facts-and-figures/

bears

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #54 on: June 11, 2012, 01:17:16 PM »
Saying a president whose average approval rating was 53% was "very well liked" seems like a stretch. That's a whopping +6% over Obama's current level.



http://www.gallup.com/poll/11887/ronald-reagan-from-peoples-perspective-gallup-poll-review.aspx

Further:

-Reagan began the unfortunate trend of deficit spending that is so problematic now, setting a precedent: The federal debt tripled under Reagan.
-At the end of the Carter Administration (an evil liberal!!!11), the USG spent 27.9% of federal income; this grew to 28.7% under Reagan.
-Despite promises to cut taxes and "starve the beast," tax revenue for the USG pretty much stayed the same under Reagan (earlier cuts were matched with later increases, including the largest tax increase since WWII in 1982).
-Reagan presided over an increase in the size of the federal workforce by some 200,000+ plus employees.
-Reagan granted amnesty to over 3 million illegal aliens in 1986.
-Very little to no deregulation took place under Reagan; the much-maligned Department of Education persisted and VA (at the time the largest independent agency in the government) was added as a cabinet-level department.
-Reagan was very protectionist, increasing quotas and import restrictions significantly.

That's to say nothing of foreign policy. Doesn't almost all of the above sound like the sort of stuff a "liberal" president would do, Coach? If so, you need to talk about how much you hate Reagan in order to maintain logical consistency among your beliefs. Either Reagan was great and you can tolerate liberal policy after all or otherwise such policy is unacceptable and therefore Reagan was a pretty bad president.

Everything you've said about those damned "liberals" and politics in general makes me think you're a shit-for-brains (if that's a noun), but maybe you can clarify that for us here.
i don't even know where to begin with this post.  you can almost see the words spinning.

gracie bjj

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #55 on: June 11, 2012, 03:39:13 PM »
^^
Did they arrest the shooter?  Any connections to gov't or just a nut?

my teacher said he was warned by phone call to drop the research on the jfk assassination, a week later he was on his way to do his lecture in new york and got shot. they never found out who did it but he thinks it was the cia
R

syntaxmachine

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #56 on: June 11, 2012, 04:06:57 PM »
Caught my attention THROUGH YOUR PM to remind me. Since I have a business to run (62 clients today for example...capitalism is GREAT!) and can't go through your post line by line, I'll let you take a gander at this. Call me whatever you want, liberalism fails 99.5% of the time. Again, libs lack economic and social commonsense. Hope this helps junior.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2011/05/05/reaganomics-vs-obamanomics-facts-and-figures/

1. You're the one claiming the sorts of liberal policies Reagan implemented are always crap, so I thought that you would be able to respond, explaining why you're hot for Reagan rather than linking to a discussion about the efficacy of Reagonomics, which, while interesting, has no bearing at all on what I've said.

2. Even then, what you link to is, for the most part, disingenuous. For example, the author talks about spending reductions, but then cites "nondefense discretionary" spending. LOL, of course the size of the government relative to GDP shrank if we conveniently exclude defense and entitlement spending from our calculations. The author then performs a major of sleight of hand by saying, 'even when we include defense spending, the government shrank.' This still leaves out entitlement spending, and this is no accident: entitlement spending went from $197.1 billion in 1981 to $477 billion in 1987, largely due to bills Reagan explicitly signed into law. Once this fact is accounted for, all of the statistics I cited hold true: under Reagan the government grew significantly, began taking a bigger piece of the national income in tax revenue, increased its workforce, added departments, and tripled the national debt.

3. The author cites the economic growth under Reagan, which I think is terrific. However, correlation does not equal causation, and the author makes literally zero effort to demonstrate the causal efficacy of government policy with regards to the aforementioned growth. He just says, "Hey, we at the administration moderately cut taxes and spending (later to be offset by huge increases in spending and moderate increase in governmental share of income); sometime later, the economy recovered from stagflation; therefore, we cured staglation!!!" Deploy this argument form in any other context and you'll see how inadequate it is.

4. Glad you referred to capitalism. A central component of capitalism is that private actors and not the government propel growth, investment decisions, and so forth. Therefore, the growth under Reagan cannot, for the most part, be attributed to him, since private actors drove the recovery, not the Reagan Administration. U.S. presidents may not be as powerful as you think; they certainly cannot harness policy to affect economic variables significantly, despite their always taking credit for the good and deflecting the bad (this practice has apparently managed to fool you).

5. Having a job means you can't take a few minutes to address my post? LOL. You post 2.5x as much as me on a daily basis but when your beliefs are challenged (i.e., their logical inconsistency pointed out) you have to hightail it back to work. I have a better explanation for why you can't address my points.

6. Finally, you make up a statistic and continue hurling insults at "liberals," even though by your own criteria (and most others') Reagan was a liberal when it came to domestic policy.

Hope This Helps, Grandpa.

The Ugly

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #57 on: June 11, 2012, 05:02:47 PM »
Oswald killed JFK, end of story.

garebear

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #58 on: June 11, 2012, 05:10:37 PM »
The Coach getting owned to smithereens in this thread.

Great stuff!
G

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #59 on: June 11, 2012, 05:34:25 PM »
1. You're the one claiming the sorts of liberal policies Reagan implemented are always crap, so I thought that you would be able to respond, explaining why you're hot for Reagan rather than linking to a discussion about the efficacy of Reagonomics, which, while interesting, has no bearing at all on what I've said.

2. Even then, what you link to is, for the most part, disingenuous. For example, the author talks about spending reductions, but then cites "nondefense discretionary" spending. LOL, of course the size of the government relative to GDP shrank if we conveniently exclude defense and entitlement spending from our calculations. The author then performs a major of sleight of hand by saying, 'even when we include defense spending, the government shrank.' This still leaves out entitlement spending, and this is no accident: entitlement spending went from $197.1 billion in 1981 to $477 billion in 1987, largely due to bills Reagan explicitly signed into law. Once this fact is accounted for, all of the statistics I cited hold true: under Reagan the government grew significantly, began taking a bigger piece of the national income in tax revenue, increased its workforce, added departments, and tripled the national debt.

3. The author cites the economic growth under Reagan, which I think is terrific. However, correlation does not equal causation, and the author makes literally zero effort to demonstrate the causal efficacy of government policy with regards to the aforementioned growth. He just says, "Hey, we at the administration moderately cut taxes and spending (later to be offset by huge increases in spending and moderate increase in governmental share of income); sometime later, the economy recovered from stagflation; therefore, we cured staglation!!!" Deploy this argument form in any other context and you'll see how inadequate it is.

4. Glad you referred to capitalism. A central component of capitalism is that private actors and not the government propel growth, investment decisions, and so forth. Therefore, the growth under Reagan cannot, for the most part, be attributed to him, since private actors drove the recovery, not the Reagan Administration. U.S. presidents may not be as powerful as you think; they certainly cannot harness policy to affect economic variables significantly, despite their always taking credit for the good and deflecting the bad (this practice has apparently managed to fool you).

5. Having a job means you can't take a few minutes to address my post? LOL. You post 2.5x as much as me on a daily basis but when your beliefs are challenged (i.e., their logical inconsistency pointed out) you have to hightail it back to work. I have a better explanation for why you can't address my points.

6. Finally, you make up a statistic and continue hurling insults at "liberals," even though by your own criteria (and most others') Reagan was a liberal when it came to domestic policy.

Hope This Helps, Grandpa.

1. Site your sources and we'll go from there. Because the majority of it is liberal university spin guaranteed.
2. Yes, I don't have a job I have a business.
3 calling me "grandpa" only means you weren't even born during that era and since the ACLU who  approves the propaganda of changes in our ps systems......you fell for it! Congrats son, you're brainwashed.

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #60 on: June 11, 2012, 05:37:37 PM »
Btw, saying I'm on Herr twice as.much as you is funny since you claim.not to be a.gimmick but in the week or so you've  been here already racked.up almost 250 posts. Pretty good for posting between classes.

garebear

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #61 on: June 11, 2012, 05:39:19 PM »
1. Site your sources and we'll go from there. Because the majority of it is liberal university spin guaranteed.
2. Yes, I don't have a job I have a business.
3 calling me "grandpa" only means you weren't even born during that era and since the ACLU who  approves the propaganda of changes in our ps systems......you fell for it! Congrats son, you're brainwashed.
Haha. YOU are calling people brainwashed.

You have the most uninformed "opinions" I've ever seen. It's obvious that you simply listen to Rush and watch Fox News and then walk away feeling educated. You don't have the slightest grasp on things whatsoever.

G

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #62 on: June 11, 2012, 06:16:50 PM »
The Coach's brain in pursuit of a logical thought that could potentially refute anything I've said:



Again, site your sources. Apparently I wasn't wrong about you. While you're at it give me one GOOD reason why we should elect this asshole again? Is it because you're looking for free shit as well?

syntaxmachine

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #63 on: June 11, 2012, 08:24:58 PM »
Again, site your sources. Apparently I wasn't wrong about you. While you're at it give me one GOOD reason why we should elect this asshole again? Is it because you're looking for free shit as well?

LOL at you thinking your delaying tactics will halt this owning. Now, you need to explain why you idolize such a liberal president (sometimes the "liberal vs conservative" paradigm is of questionable value, but in any case here I am using your version of the term "liberal").

1. Reagan and the national debt

Year              Debt Level
09/29/1989       2,857,430,960,187.32
09/30/1988     2,602,337,712,041.16
09/30/1987       2,350,276,890,953.00
09/30/1986       2,125,302,616,658.42
09/30/1985       1,823,103,000,000.00
09/30/1984       1,572,266,000,000.00
09/30/1983       1,377,210,000,000.00
09/30/1982       1,142,034,000,000.00
09/30/1981       997,855,000,000.00

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo4.htm

Since budgets are submitted a year in advance (e.g., FY1981's budget was submitted in 1980), Reagan's budgets run from 1981-1989. As you can see, the national debt nearly tripled during this period, starting out at $997.9 billion and ending up at $2.8 trillion. The last tripling of the debt had taken 31 years.

Has the Treasury Department been hijacked by "liberal professors"?

2. Reagan and spending as a percentage of GDP

Year          GDP           Population  Spending % of GDP
1981     3126.8   228.670   33.64 %
1982     3253.2   230.815   36.25    %
1983     3534.6   232.979   36.31    %
1984     3930.9   235.164   34.44    %
1985     4217.5   237.369   35.48    %
1986     4460.1   239.595   35.71    %
1987     4736.4   241.842   35.09    %
1988     5100.4   244.110   34.73    %
1989     5482.1   246.399   34.93    %

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1900_2010&units=p&title=Spending%20as%20percent%20of%20GDP

These numbers are slightly different than my original post because this man in particular used interpolation. In any case, he derived the values from the appropriate governmental sources as far as I can tell; his findings are in line with what everybody else discovers: government spending as a percentage of GDP only went up under Reagan (by 3.7% according to these numbers and 2.8% according to my other post's numbers).

This guy is apparently a conservative author, tea party sympathizer, and climate skeptic. Can you explain how the ACLU managed to brainwash him into producing these statistics?

3. Reagan's amnesty, in addition to his growth of the federal workforce, are commonplace news items and therefore I don't think I need to provide sources. You can easily find them in a moment's notice online in your free time.

4. Reagan's "tax cuts"

Reagan cut taxes early on, but all the while the overwhelming majority of the cuts were balanced out by the elimination and reduction of deductions, plus tax increases later on.

Year   Receipts   As Percentage of GDP
1981   599.3      19.6%
1982   617.8      19.2%
1983   600.6      17.5%
1984   666.4      17.3%
1985   734.0      17.7%
1986   769.2      17.2%
1987   854.3      18.4%
1988   909.2      18.2%
1989   991.1      18.4%

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200

The overwhelming majority of government revenue comes from taxes; as you can see, the government derived only a little less tax revenue from the American people under Reagan than when he first came into office (a little over 6% less by the end of the Reagan era). In other words, Reagan kept the percentage above the historical average of 18.1%, and never seriously considered pushing it below the average.

The Tax Policy Center is an outgrowth of the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank. Did they get hijacked by evil liberals while these statistics were being produced (actually, the statistics are ultimately from the Office of Management and Budget, but I'm sure the damned liberals run that place too).

5. Finally, a favorite of liberal presidents, entitlement spending

Year    Billions spent on SS and Medicare   As % of GDP
1981    179.1                                        5.9%
1982    203.1                                        6.3%
1983    224.0                                        6.5%
1984    237.0                                        6.2%
1985    256.1                                        6.2%
1986    270.7                                        6.1%
1987    285.0                                        6.1%
1988    302.5                                        6.0%
1989    324.4                                        6.0%

Avg percentage of GDP: 6.14%
Avg percentage under Carter: 5.44%

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/ (Tables 15.4-15.5)

Reagan increased entitlement spending by hundreds of billions of dollars, doing so at a clip Carter would have been envious of (as evinced by the percentage of GDP values).

In short, your idol was a very "liberal" president, based on your own criteria of liberalism. The man went hog wild with governmental spending, increasing the share of GDP the government spent, tripling the deficit (the previous tripling had taken 31 years), expanding the federal workforce, granting amnesty to millions of illegals, pumping up entitlement spending in absolute and relative terms, and doing precisely nothing to decrease the amount of tax revenue the government siphons from the people below its historical average.

Now, we come to the logical contradiction in your original beliefs: either you must abandon some of the blind praise you give Reagan and realize that by your own criteria he was very liberal and thus not a good president, or you can drop the belief that the sorts of liberal policies he engaged in are always stupid and misguided.

bike nut

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #64 on: June 11, 2012, 08:31:43 PM »
my teacher said he was warned by phone call to drop the research on the jfk assassination, a week later he was on his way to do his lecture in new york and got shot. they never found out who did it but he thinks it was the cia

It was "Benchmaster" on the grassy knoll.... ;D

syntaxmachine

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #65 on: June 11, 2012, 08:37:23 PM »
Again, site your sources. Apparently I wasn't wrong about you. While you're at it give me one GOOD reason why we should elect this asshole again? Is it because you're looking for free shit as well?

And this my dear friends is what is called a "false dichotomy." Mr. "I can count to baked potato" here has labeled me an Obama supporter because of my posts here evincing that Reagan was a liberal and terribly, terribly overrated president. Either one is a blind supporter of Reagan or otherwise must be hanging off of Obama's nuts, so Coach's imaginary dichotomy goes.

Unfortunately, you'll never find any evidence of my supporting Obama, because it doesn't exist (will be voting Romney 2012). Thus, your effort to characterize me as some young liberal douche fails.

I almost feel bad shredding an old man like this, but then I see his soon-to-be-diaper-wearing self constantly haranguing on everything not in agreement with his neanderthal, Fox News-derived worldview with the logical precision of a corpse. Sorry, someone has to call you on this bullshit, and today is that day.

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #66 on: June 11, 2012, 09:36:02 PM »
You did good junior. You've proven that not only have you have more time than me to research, you've also proven you're good at it. Bravo. It's too bad no one prospered during the Reagan era. Have to change my mind. I now hate Reagan. Hahah. Good night junior, I have a long day tomorrow.

Let me leave you with this parting gift....

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2001/03/the-real-reagan-economic-record

Good night sunshine, I'm feeling sooo shredded right now..LOL.

syntaxmachine

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #67 on: June 11, 2012, 10:11:09 PM »
You did good junior. You've proven that not only have you have more time than me to researchyouve also proven you're good at it. Bravo. It's too bad no one prospered durjng the Reagan era. Have to change my.mind. I now hate Reagan. Hahah. Good night junior, I have a long day tomorrow.

Thanks, gramps.  ;D

P.S. It's not that nobody prospered during the Reagan era, but that maybe we shouldn't attribute all of that prosperity to the Gipper, seeing as he didn't do all that much differently than other presidents (especially the liberal ones).

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #68 on: June 11, 2012, 10:13:21 PM »

avxo

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #69 on: June 11, 2012, 10:58:12 PM »
1. Site your sources and we'll go from there. Because the majority of it is liberal university spin guaranteed.

Guaranteed? Really? What will you do if this liberal university spin isn't confirmed? Create it? I mean, that's kind of what a guarantee is, after all.

Also a rant about the whole "liberal university spin" stuff. Chances are I've spent more time at a University in one semester than you have in your entire life and I've not really seen this liberal spin. Granted, I was in science and engineering, so perhaps I missed all the liberals at the <i>(cue scary music)</i> liberal arts department... But still, this notion that Universities are bastions of liberalism seems a little undeserved to me. If anything, the mood at my campus seems to be decidedly libertarian. But perhaps I'm wrong.

Oh, and it's cite, not site. You're never too old to learn.


2. Yes, I don't have a job I have a business.

So does the illegal immigrant running a pushcart selling hot dogs franks made from ge-new-ine New York sewer rats. What's your point? Are we supposed to be amazed at your business acumen? It's not like you're running a Fortune 500 company...


3 calling me "grandpa" only means you weren't even born during that era and since the ACLU who  approves the propaganda of changes in our ps systems......you fell for it! Congrats son, you're brainwashed.

Ooh, the ACLU. Cue the scary music again. Seriously Coach, you're a joke.


You did good junior. You've proven that not only have you have more time than me to research, you've also proven you're good at it. Bravo. It's too bad no one prospered during the Reagan era. Have to change my mind. I now hate Reagan. Hahah. Good night junior, I have a long day tomorrow.

Whether someone prospered or not isn't the point. Whether the assertions you made about Reagan were true is the point.


Let me leave you with this parting gift....

If it's all the same to you, I'd rather you don't.


http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2001/03/the-real-reagan-economic-record

Oh, the "real" Reagan economic record (as if the actual numbers aren't real enough). a conservative think tank that took center stage during Reagan's Presidency and which has, since then, devoted itself to Reagan hagiography. Guaranteed bias-free. By Coach. Who owns a business. (Cue the oohs and aahs here).


Good night sunshine, I'm feeling sooo shredded right now..LOL.

Shredded is good, but I'm pretty sure if you look at yourself objectively you'll detect at least a thin film of water... ;D

syntaxmachine

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #70 on: June 11, 2012, 11:44:23 PM »
Hey Coach,

Thanks for the parting gift -- an item of propaganda that was rather easily refuted on my part. It was an instructive read in some sense, however, and so I appreciate it.

Let's briefly look at the blatant contradictions in the linked article by parsing what I shall here call the Magical Happy Reagan Was Amazing narrative from the actual data.

Here's the happytime narrative:

1. "...by 1983, the Reagan policies of reducing taxes, spending, regulation, and inflation were in place. The result was unprecedented economic growth."

--Ok, so Reagan had a cluster of policies that reduced taxes, spending, regulation, and inflation. Once in place, these policies propelled the economy to an "unprecedented" period of growth.

2. "From 1950 to 1973, real economic growth in the U.S. economy averaged 3.6 percent per year. From 1973 to 1982, it averaged only 1.6 percent. The Reagan economic boom restored the more usual growth rate as the economy averaged 3.5 percent in real growth from the beginning of 1983 to the end of 1990."

--Some details about this "unprecedented" panacea of economic growth.

3. The propaganda piece concludes, "No matter how advocates of big government try to rewrite history, Ronald Reagan's record of fiscal responsibility...."

--Advocates of big government oppose Reagan's great record of fiscal responsibility and wish to tarnish it as best as they are able, for fear of another such period under George W. Bush which will permanently shrink the size of government (lol).

syntaxmachine

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #71 on: June 11, 2012, 11:58:56 PM »
Great, now here are the facts, pulled from the very same propaganda piece as the above narrative:

1a. Recall part 1 of the narrative, "...by 1983, the Reagan policies of reducing taxes [and] spending ... were in place. The result was unprecedented economic growth."

Pieces of data mentioned in the very same article:

"Federal spending more than doubled, growing from almost $591 billion in 1980 to $1.25 trillion in 1990. In constant inflation-adjusted dollars, this was an increase of 35.8 percent."

--Uh...ok.

"Revenues from individual income taxes climbed from just over $244 billion in 1980 to nearly $467 billion in 1990.5 In inflation-adjusted dollars, this amounts to a 25 percent increase."

--Great, so the government was deriving even more revenue from taxing citizens than it was before Reagan.

1. is not consistent with 1a., both of which are from the same article. Logic fail. Mind you, this is from an elite conservative think tank based in the capital of this country....

Regarding 2, the article admits the "unprecedented" growth really amounted to an average rate of 3.5% per year, which is below the average rate between 1950-1973. Also, given the statistics I've mentioned earlier, it's hard to see how Reagan's tax cuts could be causally responsible for this. Tax revenue as a percentage of GDP (money the government is siphoning from the productive economy) barely nudged downward. Did that stimulate the growth or are there better explanations rooted in secular economic trends? In any case, Reagan hagiographers (thanks avxo) simply act as if it's obvious and undeniable that it was the cuts that were causally efficacious without any argument.

3. The final component of the myth: Reagan was a fiscally responsible man. Again, from the same article:

"Federal spending more than doubled, growing from almost $591 billion in 1980 to $1.25 trillion in 1990. In constant inflation-adjusted dollars, this was an increase of 35.8 percent" (already mentioned above).

Regarding fiscal responsibility, the author of the article somehow forgot to mention the increase in size of the federal workforce and the tripling of the national debt. How ironic, then, that he mentions in the conclusion that "His [Reagan's] efforts to restrain the expansion of federal government helped to limit the growth of domestic spending." If this article isn't a demonstration of a slew of cognitive disorders at work then I don't know what is. The guy isn't even capable of engaging in confirmation bias, or only showing the evidence that supports his ideas: he simply mentions the factual data and then ignores their logical incompatibility with his chosen narrative, LOL.

Kahn.N.Singh

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #72 on: June 12, 2012, 12:10:40 AM »
Oh, the "real" Reagan economic record (as if the actual numbers aren't real enough). a conservative think tank that took center stage during Reagan's Presidency and which has, since then, devoted itself to Reagan hagiography

If I may chip in my humble two cents. The Heritage Foundation would be engaged in Reagan hagiography if R.W.R. was a conservative "saint." However, as Syntax has pointed out, given that the conservative consensus is far from uniform about Reagan's GOP bona fides, the HF think tank seems to be devoted toward #40's hagiopoiesis, i.e., saint-making, or conservative canonization. ;)

"Even Hell has its heroes, señor." The Ninth Gate (1999)

avxo

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #73 on: June 12, 2012, 01:21:53 AM »
If I may chip in my humble two cents. The Heritage Foundation would be engaged in Reagan hagiography if R.W.R. was a conservative "saint." However, as Syntax has pointed out, given that the conservative consensus is far from uniform about Reagan's GOP bona fides, the HF think tank seems to be devoted toward #40's hagiopoiesis, i.e., saint-making, or conservative canonization. ;)

"Even Hell has its heroes, señor." The Ninth Gate (1999)

That's actually a fair point.

King Shizzo

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Re: Fantastic religious quote.
« Reply #74 on: June 12, 2012, 01:29:21 AM »
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