Remembering the Real Reagan

dailykos.com — That many people still buy into Reagan's ideas on economics is understandable, because the press then and now fails to point out the most important fact about Reagan’s contentions. They made it up. The Cadillac driving welfare queen, the ever-enriching Laffer Curve, the insistence that regulation was what troubled our markets and banks – they are phantasms. Deliberate mendacity, with no sounder theoretical basis than "that's what I want you to believe." The Great Snake Oil Salesman foisted on America a set of remedies that had all the scientific basis of the four humors and even less curative power than a good old fashioned bleeding. But now we take these things for granted, we start from the basis that aid to women and children needs to be reduced, that decreasing taxes stimulates the economy, and that deregulation is the cure, not the problem. We deliver the nation one round of poison after another, and feign shock when it fails to work.

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