[HN Gopher] Debunking our narratives of the late 70s and early 80s
___________________________________________________________________
Debunking our narratives of the late 70s and early 80s
Author : nabla9
Score : 140 points
Date : 2021-11-03 17:28 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (noahpinion.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (noahpinion.substack.com)
| [deleted]
| pjdemers wrote:
| Carter was a classic centrist. Both sides hated him. And by
| today's standards, Reagan was only slightly right of center.
| Reagan is remembered more fondly than Carter because of attitude.
| Carter told American: if we all sacrifice and work really hard,
| things will be pretty good again. Reagan told us: Everything
| going to be great because we deserve to be great. And yes, cheap
| oil destroyed the USSR, not the US military build up. The
| military build up pushed them over the edge, but they were
| already failing. US military leaders knew this at the time,
| that's why the build up happened when it did.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Reagan was a master at speaking to the public. It makes sense
| when you consider that he was an actor. But it's hard to
| _really_ understand unless you 've watch him in action.
|
| The dude rolled and 18 for charisma then got a +7 bonus.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I've always found it baffling that 70s inflation was somehow
| magically blamed on progressive policy and pay rises and not on a
| far more obvious cause - oil price shocks.
|
| In the 1973/4 crisis the price of crude _quadrupled._
|
| In the 1979 crisis it more than doubled.
|
| On both occasions the price hikes were combined with physical
| shortages which did huge damage to economies which were - and
| largely still are - dependent on oil for everything from
| transport to energy to plastics to food production.
|
| And yet... these economic cataclysms have been almost sidelined
| from the official economic narrative in both the UK and the US.
|
| Ask a typical British voter about the history of the 70s and
| they'll tell you the UK was bankrupt because of excessive
| government spending, and not because the price of crude went
| through the roof.
|
| It's one of the reasons I consider economics a branch of
| propaganda and not a real science. Clearly the oil shocks were an
| economic catastrophe and were directly responsible for very
| severe inflation. But somehow the effects are still blamed on
| wage growth and (in the UK) unionisation - both of which were far
| more credibly an effect than a primary cause.
| bambataa wrote:
| Rather than economics itself being a tool of propaganda (which
| might be true but I think most economists would say they strive
| to be evidence-based), I think it demonstrates that the average
| voter's views on economics are more or less worthless.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _Rather than economics itself being a tool of propaganda
| (which might be true but I think most economists would say
| they strive to be evidence-based), I think it demonstrates
| that the average voter's views on economics are more or less
| worthless._
|
| Your second point is not an alternative to the first, rather
| it is implied by the first.
| handrous wrote:
| > I think it demonstrates that the average voter's views on
| economics are more or less worthless.
|
| Poli-sci research is depressingly consistent in demonstrating
| that the average voters' views on _everything_ are worthless.
| It 's amazing the system works at all, even for very generous
| values of "works".
|
| Research on voters' understanding of issues, and of the
| world, largely amounts to a less-funny version of that thing
| where a late night show has someone go out and get people to
| give incredibly stupid answers to easy questions.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Economics is so closely tied to politics that I don't really
| blame the public for seeing it as worthless. I couldn't tell
| you what modern economic theories look like, but I could
| certainly talk about Reagan's trickle-down economics.
| breakyerself wrote:
| Conservatives are masterful at messaging.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Oil goes both ways. Ask Texans why the oil bust in the 80's
| happened. Not a clue then or now.
|
| Not that Reagan supported a war between Iraq and Iran, played
| both sides, caused OPEC to fall apart and flood the market
| dropping the price to $15 barrel.
| snomad wrote:
| That completely ignores leaving the gold standard... which was
| necessitated by... runaway govt spending
| gumby wrote:
| Actually it wasn't. The national debt had been falling for a
| few years when Nixon took the US off the gold standard. This
| was even discussed on HN in the past few days.
| User23 wrote:
| By that time, gold redemptions were mainly available only
| to foreign entities. Unlike all other forms of money[1],
| only US federal government spending, in cooperation with
| the Fed, could create new reserves[2]. That there were too
| many reserves in foreign hands chasing $35 an ounce gold
| could only be the result of US federal spending. Therefore
| while foreign demand was the proximate cause, it was
| definitely a downstream consequence.
|
| The size of the US government's outstanding liabilities at
| the time isn't relevant, what affects prices is money
| flows, not stocks.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply#United_States
|
| [2] Back then the Fed wasn't willing to just expand its own
| balance sheet significantly on its own initiative as it is
| now.
| Natsu wrote:
| > a far more obvious cause - oil price shocks
|
| The way you put it sounds rather backwards and gives me "wet
| streets are causing rain" vibes, as if lots of government
| increase of the money supply won't cause demand for scarce
| resources and drive up their prices via sudden increases in
| demand with the newly available cash that can't be met by
| similar increases in supply.
| oblio wrote:
| You could make such a naive comment if you knew absolutely
| nothing about the history of the period.
|
| OPEC.
| Natsu wrote:
| Are you trying to tell me here? That was no stagflation in
| the 70s and the only problems were in '73 and '79 and we
| can pretend the rest of the decade never happened?
| oblio wrote:
| You can't handwave away the main resource of the century
| going up in price like a rocket in a world where oil
| shocks were practically unheard of in times of peace.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| This author really relies on strawmen in order to have anything
| to argue against.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Whenever I hear about the end of the cold war, I think the Polish
| contribution to the fall of the USSR is mostly unknown, under
| appreciated and under valued.
|
| Also obviously with the end of the cold war, what most of this
| articles miss, the US lost Europe. Before e.g. Germanys
| establishment pushed US nuclear weapons ("Jump!" "How high?")
| into Germany against a large part of it's polutation, after 1990
| no country in Europe jumps anymore when the US says "Jump!",
| because the Soviet scare is gone.
| vmception wrote:
| From my perspective we are only at the beginning of a period
| where Europe doesn't jump for US.
|
| Through NATO they follow us along into dubious, pointless,
| dangerous US conflicts, sparing the US President from asking
| Congress for authorization, while bearing the brunt of
| extraterritorial attacks since there arent two gigantic oceans
| separating them from the conflict.
|
| The US uses almost countless Europe located bases for missile
| shields against Russia and to many hawkish people the cold war
| is still going on as if it was the 80s still.
|
| Europe still depends on Russia for energy so this symbiosis is
| seen as important.
|
| But I think this changes because the UK was the only EU member
| state vetoing an EU military, and with them gone the EU can arm
| itself. Dismantling a lot of the need for the US, we can mostly
| assume it will be to keep out Russia and lessen the burden of
| NATO but there are a lot of values that differ if we are being
| honest.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Is the EU going to arm itself with nuclear weapons? France
| has them, but that's it for EU member nations AFAIK.
| btilly wrote:
| You are correct.
|
| The complete list of countries known to have nuclear
| weapons worldwide is The United States, Russia, the United
| Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North
| Korea. Now that the UK is no longer in the EU, France is
| it.
|
| In fact France is surprisingly militaristic. For example it
| is the only EU country in the top 10 on
| https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.php.
| fleddr wrote:
| To "have" nuclear weapons in your context likely means
| "controls". Meaning, some of those countries store part
| of their nuclear weapons in other countries that are not
| on your list.
| Fnoord wrote:
| Correct. My country, The Netherlands, is hosting US nukes
| (not officially but its a public secret). Officially, we
| don't have nukes, nor do we host them.
| btilly wrote:
| You are correct, but less correct than you might think.
|
| Per https://fas.org/blogs/security/2006/11/new_article_wh
| ere_the..., about 15 years ago the only country to put
| its nuclear weapons in other countries was the USA. That
| said, US nuclear missiles are in many EU countries thanks
| to NATO.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Remember that France was the first country calling for
| intervention in Libya, and made a big deal of pushing
| Clinton and Obama towards intervention.
|
| They are also wrapping up their own counterterrorism
| operation in the Sahel.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barkhane
| freeflight wrote:
| _> From my perspective we are only at the beginning of a
| period where Europe doesn 't jump for US._
|
| As a European, I tend to agree with that assessment,
| particularly with countries like Germany.
|
| Most of the US military presence might be gone compared to
| cold war levels, but the pro-US political presence mostly
| remains the same.
|
| Which is actually quite astounding considering we are slowly
| entering the second decade of when this distancing started
| [0] and it had plenty of additional contributions since then
| [1].
|
| [0] https://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0919/p12s2-woeu.html
|
| [1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/2
| 014...
| Finnucane wrote:
| In particular, when the Polish government asked Gorbachev for
| for help in putting down Solidarity, thinking they'd get a
| Soviet tank brigade like HUngary in 1956, Gorbachev said nyet,
| and Soviet control of the Eastern bloc unzipped pretty quick.
|
| The disastrous response to Chernobyl also gave a boost to
| independence movements in Ukraine and the Baltics. Gorbachev
| has always been in denial about how his policies helped hasten
| the collapse.
| btilly wrote:
| _Whenever I hear about the end of the cold war, I think the
| Polish contribution to the fall of the USSR is mostly unknown,
| under appreciated and under valued._
|
| One of the most fascinating theories that I've read on this is
| that this was the result of a secret alliance between Reagan's
| CIA and the Catholic Church. The basic outlines of the alliance
| was that the CIA supplied money and material on non-violent
| resistance (through deniable channels), the Catholic Church
| supplied the network and connections that could distribute
| them. Also the two aligned on other things, such as tying US
| foreign aid to abortion policies that the Catholic Church
| liked.
|
| What does Poland have to do with all of this? Pope John Paul II
| was Polish, and so their test became the Solidarity movement in
| Poland. After that proved a success, they replicated it
| throughout the Eastern Block.
|
| I first read this theory in a _Mother Jones_ article back in
| the 1980s. And every so often I wish I could find it to read it
| again.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| From a local perspective, I can tell you that Catholicism
| played a huge role in pulling down Communism in Poland, but
| next to no role in neighboring Czechoslovakia, where the
| Czech part of the country is rather irreligious and
| distrustful towards organized churches.
| netrus wrote:
| Is it this one?
|
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1983/07/their-will-
| be-d...
|
| (Asides: My first impulse to find the article was
| archive.org, but after that failed, Google delivered on the
| first try!)
| btilly wrote:
| I love that article, but I believe that it was a follow-up
| after Solidarity succeeded.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Yes, I've had to explain the bit about Volcker to a few people
| over the years. People older than me that should know better.
|
| Another fascinating chapter from that era, if you're interested
| in the revolution in Iran and resulting US election, is covered
| in the book "October Surprise," by Gary Sick. While the author
| states soberly that we don't have all the details, those we do
| point in an unfortunate direction. That many in the Reagan admin
| would be behind bars and implicated with the Iran arms scandal
| less than a decade later has also largely been forgotten. The two
| events are thought to be unconnected.
|
| At the time Reagan often said he "didn't recall..." Back then I
| thought he was omitting the truth, but then we found he had
| Alzheimer's a few years later, and turned out it was probably
| true he didn't remember a thing. Can't make this stuff up, folks.
|
| There was also a good Frontline episode on the subject, but I've
| not been able to find it due to PBS' shenanigans. Maybe they lost
| the tape.
| yyyk wrote:
| >if you're interested in the revolution in Iran and resulting
| US election, is covered in the book "October Surprise,"
|
| As one can see, conspiracy theories are not a new invention.
| This particular one has been investigated and debunked over and
| over (wiki has a decent overview for once).
| tptacek wrote:
| You kind of can make this stuff up. Reagan's in-office
| Alzheimers is the same kind of narrative Noah Smith is talking
| about, more talked about than empirically supported. Reagan was
| first diagnosed in 1993, long after leaving office; his White
| House physicians all attest to no evident decline. The closest
| we get to a serious report is Leslie Stahl claiming that he was
| vacant during an interview... but who knows what that means? I
| was vacant last Tuesday after not sleeping the night before.
|
| The topic of Reagan's decline in office is debated, but we
| should be wary of premising conclusions on it. Reagan was
| probably fully competent while serving as President.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I can't reply, but anyone downvoting the sibling comment
| about Biden needs to do their own research rather than
| downvote reflexively. It's perfectly fine to think he was
| better than the alternative, but it's pretty silly to look at
| the evidence and conclude that Biden is perfectly mentally
| OK.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| That poster has a history, perhaps all their comments end
| up dead now.
|
| Reagan was shot in the ribs, not to be confused with Brady.
| No one is perfect; I expect B to step down at the end of
| the term or sooner.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Note that Reagan had been shot and had surgery, so nobody's
| surprised he didn't fully recover at his age.
|
| Biden however has been reported as declining mentally since
| 2012, yet his family and the Democratic Party knowingly
| propped him up as a Presidential candidate. And here we are.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| The events in question started in ~1980, so he was likely
| fine at the time. But not able to talk about them coherently
| a ~decade later. From memory (which could be failing) he
| didn't try any politician-esque evasion of questions or make
| excuses or even outright lie. He merely repeated, "I don't
| recall," several times in row. Not a common strategy at that
| level.
| tptacek wrote:
| On the contrary, "I don't recall" is an ultra-common legal
| risk minimizing strategy.
| the-dude wrote:
| Our PM ( The Netherlands ) has invented his own wording :
| _I do not have active recollections of this-or-that_.
| CalChris wrote:
| I can never remember whether Reagan single handedly won the
| Cold War on horseback with a six shooter or if he was
| functionally incapacitated and thus not responsible for
| anything.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| This SNL skit provides one view:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5wfPlgKFh8
|
| Even my mother, a product of an FDR world, who threw shoes at
| Reagan on TV could not stop laughing about how over the top
| it was.
|
| I credit Nancy. She saw the ideologues he put in during the
| first term where driving for a cliff and brought Baker,
| Deaver and Schultz in to right the ship. It helped to have
| someone like Tip O'Neil in the House who thought impeaching
| over Iran Contra would be bad for the country.
|
| Reagan, like W Bush wasn't incompetent, he was just incurious
| and easily led the farther he went up. Look at Reagan's 1964
| speeches and W's Governor debates and it's like they both
| fell of a skateboard and cracked their heads open once they
| ran for President.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Fantastic, miss Phil Hartman.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| A decade is a long time in your seventies.
| legitster wrote:
| My history professor also made passing mention to Carter's loss
| largely being due to the Iran hostage crisis, which "magically"
| resolved when Reagan was inaugurated.
| CalChris wrote:
| He's partly right. Stagflation was another issue. Also Reagan
| was a natural actor, brainless but telegenic.
|
| The United States (Dulles) overthrew the democratically
| elected Mossadegh in 1953 and installed the Shah. Then
| Eisenhower, JFK, Nixon, Ford and yes Carter completely
| supported the Shah. The Iranian revolutionaries held that
| against us and in particular, against the then president,
| Jimmy Carter. Given what we did to them, they had a point.
|
| The resulting hostage crisis was the smallest humiliation the
| US ever suffered. Compare that to Saddam sending an Exocet
| into the _Stark_ or Israel strafing the _Liberty_.
|
| Reagan made much of this crisis during the election, and the
| hostages were released on inauguration day. Then Reagan
| supported Iraq in their invasion of Iran AND also sold
| missiles to Iran. A strange foreign policy, mostly beholden
| to whatever Saudi Arabia and Israel wanted on a given day.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Yes, and until looking into the subject I didn't realize how
| close it came. Wikipedia says it took only minutes, but
| definitely later on inauguration day. They just didn't bother
| back then I guess. Cable news didn't yet exist.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis#Release
| dhosek wrote:
| I remember watching the inauguration on TV in my junior
| high auditorium and they interrupted the inauguration
| coverage to announce the release of the hostages.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| :wow: emoji would fit well here.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Not magically.
|
| Carter negotiated end to the hostage crisis (Algiers Accords
| of January 19, 1981).
| lordnacho wrote:
| This actually points at a central problem with modern democracy.
| People are expected to think when they vote, but most people do
| not have the base information required to make decisions. And so
| everything descends into PR: stereotypes of righties being better
| with money, lefties being in thrall to unions, and so on.
|
| When it comes time to vote, the PR machines start up and people
| are made to pretend they are thinking objectively when actually
| we are about as prepared as we'd be at a wine tasting. The
| analogy continues, because whatever we decided we think we were
| well justified later on, regardless of what actually happened.
|
| I'm glad I read this article, it's well presented with sources,
| and debunks some quite important myths.
| remarkEon wrote:
| I do not think this is a problem with "modern" democracy, but
| democracy in general. There's always been organized mechanisms
| for convincing people to believe certain things and vote a
| certain way.
| ilammy wrote:
| I'd say the whole premise behind voting and democracy is not
| so much the people voting _for_ something they "want", but
| rather _not voting_ for something they "object". The voting
| process makes sure that the government doesn 't go into the
| direction that most people don't want it to. Aside from that,
| government can do whatever it wants (popularly referred to as
| not honoring the election promises).
| meragrin_ wrote:
| > debunks some quite important myths.
|
| How so? The chart suggesting Volcker "saved" the US from
| inflation seems to suggest otherwise. The Fed was already
| trending towards what the "Volcker Fed" did. The "list of
| significant deregulations" on Wikipedia is actually listed as
| "Related legislation". Reagan had a greater number of
| deregulation legislation listed as directly related to Reagan's
| administration rather than in the "Related legislation" so
| there is some game playing going on as far as the significance
| of each administration.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > This actually points at a central problem with modern
| democracy
|
| One explanation of why we should prefer democracy that I quite
| like goes like this: Democracy is rooted in
| the belief that more than half the people are right more than
| half the time
|
| It doesn't have to rely on everyone being smart, or even
| thinking. It only has to rely on the statistical likelihood
| that, even with all the errors and noise and lack of thinking
| and even stupidity that might manifest in any individual, if
| more than half the voters agree on something, there's a better
| chance that it's the right choice than the wrong one.
|
| THere are all kinds of holes that can be poked in this
| approach, and I sometimes do that, but fundamentally I stand by
| the basic conception that this describes.
| int_19h wrote:
| Note that, in case of a representative democracy, it's
| actually "more than half of the voters can pick a person who
| is right more than half the time".
|
| And I'm not so sure that it's the case when information
| required to make the choice is lacking, and agitprop is
| substituted instead.
| VLM wrote:
| What we have instead is identity politics, which is pretty
| toxic when mixed with democracy. Eventually we'll have to get
| rid of one or the other, and its not looking good for
| democracy at this point.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Identity politics has been a thing longer than a century at
| this point though?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > What we have instead is identity politics,
|
| I'd say that this is a glib simplification that conveys
| almost no information about the actual state of US politics
| at any level.
| [deleted]
| mikewarot wrote:
| Carter only made one major mistake, in my book. Stopping the
| reprocessing of nuclear fuel.
| aniijbod wrote:
| Americans would be utterly baffled as to why so many boomer Brits
| will see that (originally Carter and Reagan, now changed)
| headline and automatically think of George and Jack (rather than
| Jimmy and Ronald) before they click on the link.
| Lio wrote:
| Not a boomer but I take it that's a Sweeney reference?
|
| I don't really remember the show but it brings to mind people
| drinking scotch out tea mugs and shouting _" who's the slag
| what done the blag?"_ at some poor "snout".
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071059/
| KineticLensman wrote:
| "The Sweeney's doing ninety 'cause they've got the word to go
|
| To get a gang of villains in a shed up at Heathrow
|
| They're counting out the fivers when the handcuffs lock again
|
| In and out of Wandsworth with the numbers on their names
|
| It's funny how their missus always looks the bleeding same
|
| And meanwhile at the station, there's a couple of likely lads
|
| Who swear like how's your father and they're very cool for
| cats
|
| They're cool for cats (Cool for cats)"
| iso1631 wrote:
| Really? I'm not a boomer, but my parents are. I've never heard
| of a Jack Reagan or a Jack Carter
|
| Ronald + Maggie's relationship was legendary though, and
| defined the era of Boomers in their 20s and 30s.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| _Reaganland_ by Rick Perlstein covers this in exquisite detail.
| Jernik wrote:
| Every graph on this page comparing the USA and the USSR needs a
| legend, they are unreadable unless you pick them apart with
| context from the surrounding paragraphs.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| I think the article buries the lede in the last paragraph,
| contrasted with the photographs of Carter and Reagan under the
| headline. I understand the article is about dispelling myths,
| requiring us to rehash those myths. But the author sometimes
| lapses into ascribing policies to politicians too much. They are
| just different policies than are usually ascribed.
|
| Deregulation, privatization, cutting taxes, and tight money were
| all implemented in different developed countries in the late
| 1970s and early 1980s. It wasn't about personalities or parties,
| it was about reforming the postwar economic consensus that had
| run out of steam by the late 1970s. Even Mitterand had his
| U-turn.
|
| The buried lede is that politics doesn't matter that much.
| Policies are chosen more based on "facts on the ground", which is
| sobering, can be reassuring to some, and also dispiriting to
| others if you want to effect radical change.
|
| Wonks often use the phrase "moving the needle". That's about all
| politics can do proactively. Mostly policy changes are forced by
| external circumstances.
| fleddr wrote:
| Indeed, the optics of politics suggest to the public that
| choices are on the line at opposite extreme ends. Good versus
| bad.
|
| In reality, the political bandwidth of actual policy is far
| smaller. All developed nations swing from center left to right.
| Norway would be center-left, whilst Hungary would be right.
| Those are outer ends, most countries navigate a far smaller
| bandwidth, regardless of who is in charge.
|
| In the US that bandwidth is from conservative to very
| conservative. The democrats are a right wing party.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >In the US that bandwidth is from conservative to very
| conservative. The democrats are a right wing party.
|
| Nonsense.
|
| Those (both American leftists, and Europeans who listen to
| them) who say that "Democrats in the US would be right wing
| in Europe/Canada" have to (for example) then agree that all
| major political parties in Canada and every European country
| outside the UK and Ireland are right of US Democrats, because
| there is no significant opposition to voter ID laws anywhere.
| Macron's Les Republicains got elected because voters liked
| his vow to get tough on unions and union pensions, and
| privatize more infrastructure, neither of which appears in
| Biden's campaign platform.
|
| Speaking of which, several European countries have privatized
| post offices; not just telecom companies that were parts of
| PTTs, but entire postal services. It is the rare European
| country that hasn't sold off at least part of their postal
| services. The EU explicitly requires postal monopolies to end
| in member states; whether government-owned or not, EU postal
| services do not have the USPS's monopoly on first-class mail.
| Yet no major party in the US seriously talks about
| privatizing the USPS.[1] Does this mean that American
| politics is "far to the left" of that of Germany and the UK,
| both of which have completely sold off their postal services
| to private investors?
|
| PS - For another example, consider the liberality of abortion
| laws in the US versus Europe.
|
| [1] And no, it's not because of the Constitution. Article I
| Section 8 only gives Congress the authority "To establish
| Post Offices", as opposed to requiring a government-run one.
| Certainly nothing in the Constitution mandates the USPS's
| first-class mail monopoly.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| >In the US that bandwidth is from conservative to very
| conservative. The democrats are a right wing party.
|
| This depends heavily on how you measure left vs right.
|
| Immigration, abortion, culture war issues(woke/anti-
| work/anti-racism), criminal justice, covid response,
| affirmative action. The line that separates left from right
| can be drawn in very different places depending on the
| locality.
| allturtles wrote:
| As a next-level debunking, I'd like to question the frequency
| with which major trends and events are attributed so strongly to
| presidents. It can be politically useful, but it's usually
| historically questionable. The president of the U.S. is a
| powerful person, but far from an omnipotent one.
|
| Just to take one example from the article, the deregulation of
| airlines in the U.S. Check out the wikipedia article[0]. Carter
| supported the bill, but its history goes back to the early 1970s,
| and lots of other parties were involved in making it happen, most
| notably Congress, which of course had to pass the law.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_Deregulation_Act
| lindseymysse wrote:
| I grew up deep in Reagan's America in the 1980's and it was a
| paranoid, wretched time and place to be a child. The absolute
| worst thing about the Trump years is they reminded me of growing
| up in Billings, Montana.
|
| Trump has nothing as far as destruction of this country compared
| to Reagan. You want to trace the end of the American Empire --
| put that blame on Reagan and his acolytes first.
| DaveExeter wrote:
| Billings, Montana?
|
| I don't care who is the president, growing up in Billings
| Montana will always suck!
| lindseymysse wrote:
| Maybe it was the place. But it was all very wretched
| Diederich wrote:
| > wretched time and place to be a child
|
| I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and can certainly complain about
| a lot of things about that time.
|
| In your mind, what are the top few most wretched aspects of
| that time? I grew up in south central Los Angeles, and so gang
| and drug crime would be the top of my list.
| lindseymysse wrote:
| I grew up in an ultra-conservative church called the Lutheran
| Church Missouri Synod, that uses techniques like this:
| https://www.lutheranforum.com/blog/mobbing-systemic-
| spiritua... to enforce it's very narrow, literal
| interpretation of the bible. Yes, of course they are
| physically and sexually abusive, and they use mobbing
| techniques against 5-11 year olds. Of course they idolized
| Reagan like a god, also.
|
| I live in LA now and ride the bus through South Central, and
| I've lived there and I have found that place far more
| welcoming to me than I ever did back in Montana.
|
| So, YMMV and the grass is always greener. But I'm a lot
| happier in the poor parts of LA than I ever was in Billings,
| Montana.
| Diederich wrote:
| Wow that's rough, sorry you went through that growing up.
|
| South central has _enormously_ improved since the late 70s
| up through the early 90s. As a kid, I was personally shot
| up a couple of times from the street. Crack houses were
| everywhere, and the gangs were pretty terrifying.
| [deleted]
| jayspell wrote:
| I grew up in Reagan's America, and I didn't find it paranoid or
| wretched. I remember a lot of optimism around the space program
| and the fall of the Berlin wall. There were great movies, great
| music, shopping malls, arcades, and we were united as a
| country. I find few, if any parallels, to the Trump years.
| Trump is the polar opposite of Reagan in terms of communication
| style IMO.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| United? Being gay was a lot harder under Reagan and his moral
| majority, and his wretched politics around AIDS, and the rise
| of his Christian conservative warriors made any non-normative
| lifestyle hell.
| lindseymysse wrote:
| There was an open and aggressive disdain for anyone different
| back then. I am autistic as the average HN reader, and my
| home town was shockingly abusive to me. I tried not thinking
| about it for 20+ years after leaving that place, but now I
| look back at that period of my life and reel. The abuse they
| tolerated back then...
| andrewtbham wrote:
| Regarding the cold war and military spending... Everyone in the
| 80s thought Reagan was nuts because he wanted to build "Star
| Wars" a system that would shoot down all the Soviet Nukes. So the
| Soviets wasted money trying to compete with it. So at least in
| some cases, it wasn't about us spending more on the military...
| it was about tricking them into spending more.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative
| nradov wrote:
| Was it really a trick? By all accounts, President Reagan was
| sincerely horrified by the threat of a nuclear war and really
| did intend to build a working defensive system. But he was
| clueless about the difficulty of actually building such a
| system, and then the military industrial complex piled onto the
| gravy train to get lucrative R&D projects.
| mountainb wrote:
| There are tons of spelling errors in this article. I feel
| compelled to criticize something because I hate Noah Smith on a
| personal level, but am chagrinned to find that I generally agree
| with most of the arguments that he makes here along with his
| interpretation of the history. The only thing deficient here was
| that he could have improved his argument by extending it
| backwards a bit to the malignant continuity between JFK (you'll
| really trigger the boomers with that one), LBJ, and Nixon in
| terms of creating long-term fiscal problems for the US.
|
| To throw a bone to a side that I usually disagree with, Smith
| could have also productively contrasted that latter century
| bipartisan fiscal irresponsibility with the relative sobriety of
| the New Deal just in terms of deficits and long term
| sustainability. It may seem weird on the face of it given how the
| New Deal tends to be portrayed in contemporary times by both the
| left and the right, but FDR might have been the last real fiscal
| conservative of the 20th century both in terms of rhetoric and
| policy until Bill Clinton closed out the millennium. Despite what
| seemed to be bitter acrimony during the Clinton administration,
| the Reagan-Clinton years were probably the last ones in which
| there was a productive competitive dynamic between both parties.
| It was also the last time in my memory that there was serious
| discussion of entitlement reform: that was really wiped out from
| public debate after 9/11. Back then, you could credibly argue
| that the competition between the parties resulted in better
| policy thinking on both sides. In contemporary times the
| competition seems more to result in more aggressive stupidity on
| both sides: they both tend to make each other dumber to own the
| cons/libs at the expense of the public.
|
| Gives me a bad taste in my mouth to have to say something nice
| about a Noah Smith article.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Why is is it appropriate for one "nobody" to tell me they hate
| another "nobody" while discussing a decent blog post? Something
| unsaid?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Carter did a good job debunking the notion that wars create
| booming economies. The post-Vietnam economy he inherited fairly
| sucked.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The best way how to make money on a war is to stay neutral and
| supply both sides for cash.
| pezzana wrote:
| > But it was Jimmy Carter who appointed Volcker as the Fed chair,
| in 1979. Volcker was appointed specifically to do this job, as he
| was known as an inflation hawk, and Carter recognized inflation
| as America's biggest economic problem. Volcer hiked interest
| rates all the way up to 17.61% under Carter, causing the first of
| the two Volcker Recessions in 1980.
|
| The process that Volker's Fed set in motion is with us today.
| Have a gander at the historical constant-maturity 30-year bond:
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS30
|
| Zoom out to the multi-decade view and notice something: a peak in
| late-1981 and a relentless slide toward zero today. You won't
| find a multi-decade channel like this in many other places.
|
| These ever-lower long-term yields have played a major role in the
| housing market bubble that ended in 2008 and the one still
| inflating today. It could also be argued that this trend toward
| ever-lower long-term yields has been responsible the increasingly
| outlandish stock market valuations and the never-ending quest for
| yield (i.e. risk) that we currently see by institutions,
| individuals, and foreign governments.
| jollybean wrote:
| " You won't find a multi-decade channel like this in many other
| places."
|
| I see this graph in a number of places, I think it's something
| 'talked about'.
|
| The issue, I believe, is fundamentally demographics combined
| with decreasing marginal returns to tech and progress.
|
| 1970's was when the baby boomers were entering the workplace,
| and there were a lot of them, now, not so much.
|
| For decades after WW2 American industry was 'ahead' of the
| factories in Europe and Japan which were bombed into nothing.
|
| So there was a natural slowdown in growth afterwards.
|
| Then every loosening monetary policy with a big bump in 2008
| and an even bigger bump in 2021 and you have what you have.
|
| "ever-lower long-term yields have played a major role in the
| housing market bubble that ended in 2008"
|
| I think it's better to say they are an indicator of something
| material, but 'lower bond yields' are not the 'driver of
| housing inflation'.
|
| That said, I agree with a lot of the things said in the
| article.
| bregma wrote:
| I have no need to look at historical graphs. I remember my
| student loans at a 25% per annum interest rate.
| LongTimeAnon wrote:
| Can we start debunking the 1970s narrative that all genomic
| sciences are fascist and need to be banned?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| What are you talking about here? The human genome is highly
| studied and prestigious researchers are publishing about it
| today as they have been for many years.
|
| Are you perhaps talking about the various kinds of debunked
| race "science" that never bothered to look at genomes when it
| could stop at skin color?
| LongTimeAnon wrote:
| Despite being 13% of the studies, race science contributes to
| 50% of the outrage against genomics.
| bregma wrote:
| I think it's hardly surprising that the untruths spread by
| propagandists during election campaigns and by biased pundits
| don't always line up with observed facts or lived experiences.
| They don't call them spin doctors for nothing.
|
| The solution is to dig in to statements of truth for yourself
| until you uncover verifiable facts. This is true as much for
| assertions in electoral campaign literature as much as claims of
| grand conspiracies to subvert privileges through widespread
| intramuscular injections of 5G microchips. Check the references
| provided, and if there are no references then check your
| gullibility.
| mistermann wrote:
| It should be noted though, supportive evidence (or lack of) for
| any proposition does not necessarily lead one to the correct
| answer.
| bawolff wrote:
| > Militarily, though, it's worth pointing out that the USSR's big
| military defeat came in Afghanistan. And though that war lasted
| until 1989, the crucial initial decision to arm the Soviets'
| mujahideen opponents came from -- you guessed it -- Jimmy Carter.
|
| That worked out well...
| odd_perfect_num wrote:
| In that the US won the Cold War, yes, it did indeed work out
| very well. It's worth mentioning as well that most of the
| Taliban's weaponry by the time the US invaded in 2001 was
| Soviet in origin, e.g. SA-2s, SA-3s, a few MIG-21s. They were
| also receiving direct military support from Pakistan throughout
| the late 90's.
| gumby wrote:
| > But another is that successful policy takes a long time to
| work.
|
| I am familiar with a much better expression of this lesson by, of
| all people, bill gates:
|
| > We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next
| two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the
| next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.
| yyyk wrote:
| Smith has some good arguments and incomplete arguments. Since
| anyone can read the article for the good arguments, I'll note a
| few of the dubious and incomplete ones:
|
| A) When talking about deregulation, Smith looks at laws, but he
| should be looking at agencies even more. Agencies after all do
| most of the day-to-day regulation. How can Smith seriously ignore
| things like appointing Anne Gorsuch to head the EPA in 1981? At
| the beginning, Reagan nominations were known for their hostility
| to regulation, and Smith would have done better to check whether
| this was actually true.
|
| B) Arguing that Soviet military expenditure wasn't a big deal
| because they spent more in WW2 is crazy. Smith is comparing a
| peace-time spend to a total war spend!
|
| C) Oil's role in USSR's collapse is well-known. Well known enough
| to have claims by Reagan partisans that he convinced the Saudis
| to keep prices low to pressure the USSR. Is this right? Very
| debatable. But it's directly related to the thesis of the article
| and Smith completely ignores this.
| CalChris wrote:
| In fact, inflation was pretty bad under Nixon (5.8%) and Ford
| (11.05%) with some up and down. Nixon even instituted price
| controls in 1970. Carter inherited that economy. He didn't fix it
| (well, arguably his Fed Chair Paul Volcker did) but he inherited
| it.
|
| Carter and Reagan were polar opposites. Carter was a fiscal
| conservative and Reagan was a spendthrift. Reagan was when the
| deficit floodgates opened. We've repeated this fiscally
| conservative Democrat followed by spendthrift Republican ever
| since. Carter $70B deficit Reagan $175B
| Bush $350B Clinton $0B Bush $1.4T Obama
| $600B
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Yep, the spending on the Viet Nam war and the deficits it
| created were a big cause of the inflation during the Nixon/Ford
| years. Carter pushed for a balanced budget which angered enough
| folks in his party to lead to Ted Kennedy primarying him from
| the Left in 1980.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| Presidents don't have sole control over spending. Congress
| plays a large part in it.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| We like to have a singular villain to blame, it's easier for
| people to process. Reality is never that simple.
| nickff wrote:
| Those numbers don't really tell the whole truth; federal
| spending has increased almost monotonically, and the changes in
| deficit mostly indicate phases of the business cycle when they
| left. See this chart:https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2017/04/04/what-does-t...
|
| Clinton for example, left at the peak of the DotCom bubble, and
| was bouyed by capital gains tax revenue, whereas Bush left
| during the Great Recession.
| CalChris wrote:
| Reagan cut taxes (supply side). Clinton increased taxes and
| cut Cold War era defense spending in his 1993 budget
| proposal. W didn't even put the Afghanistan and Iraq wars on
| normal budgeting. That emergency spending went straight to
| debt. When Obama reversed this accounting trick, he was
| accused of increasing the deficit. Yes, everything is more
| complicated.
| cafard wrote:
| Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's summary of the 1980s: "We
| borrowed a trillion dollars from foreigners, and threw
| ourselves a party."
| CalChris wrote:
| Yep, Reagan, H and W Bush took us from being the largest
| creditor nation to the largest debtor nation.
| runako wrote:
| > Clinton for example, left at the peak of the DotCom bubble,
| and was bouyed by capital gains tax revenue, whereas Bush
| left during the Great Recession.
|
| Deficit increases under these presidents isn't as much on the
| business cycle as you indicate. For example, Clinton enjoyed
| higher capital gains tax revenue, but he also signed
| legislation to increase taxes (which obviously impact the
| deficit). Conversely, Bush chose not to include substantial
| additional revenue in his recession-era emergency spending
| plans. Both were policy choices that entirely support the
| OP's point.
|
| In fact, although Trump and Biden were not included in the
| list, they are following the same schema. Trump cut tax
| revenue and then didn't offset massive deficit spending on
| his way out the door. Biden's signature economic plan is
| stalled in part because he is making efforts at offsetting
| spending with increased revenue.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Simply looking solely at the deficit doesn't prove one was a
| spendthrift. If you cut or fail to raise taxes enough, a huge
| deficit can occur without actually spending more than the
| previous administration. In fact, it is possible to have a huge
| deficit while spending _less_ than the previous administration.
|
| In Jimmy Carter's four years, the Federal Government's spending
| increased by almost 48%. In Ronald Reagans _eight_ years,
| Federal Government spending increased only 53%.
|
| https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/federal-budg...
| CalChris wrote:
| No, you aren't accounting for inflation. In constant 2012
| dollars, US spending was $2T in 1977 and $2.2T in 1980. It
| was $3T in 1988. It was $3.5T in 1992.
|
| https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1970_201.
| ..
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's not obvious to me that it's right to inflation adjust
| the numbers here, since one of the main arguments people
| make against large government spending is that they think
| it causes inflation.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Do you really believe that when were are looking at the
| effects of deficit spending (such as inflation, debt,
| growth) the absolute number of dollars in the deficit is
| more important than an inflation or gdp adjusted number?
|
| Imagine we passed a law that only made one tenth of
| currency still viable, and reduced the size of all owed
| debts and contacts denominated in dollars by 10x.
| Effectively making the dollar 10x more valuable. This
| would cut our absolute deficit spending by 10x. Would
| this then let us increase inflation adjusted government
| spending by 10x without suffering any ill effects from
| deficit spending? The obvious answer to that is no, which
| then implies inflation or gdp adjusted deficit spending
| is a far more important metric.
| CalChris wrote:
| No, 70s inflation had nothing to do with Carter.
|
| Inflation in the 70s preceded Carter. There was the oil
| crisis. It preceded that. Nixon ordered price controls
| ... in 1970.
|
| No, 70s inflation had nothing to do with Carter's
| 'spending'. Carter's spending as a percentage of the GDP
| _decreased_ from 1977 (19.65%) to 1979 (19.18%). It
| increased in 1980.
|
| In no real universe was Carter anything but a fiscal
| conservative.
| lend000 wrote:
| Picking one deficit is very different than averaging them: [0].
|
| However I tend to agree that prior to Obama, presidents from
| the Democratic Party were the more fiscally responsible.
|
| [0] https://www.thebalance.com/deficit-by-president-what-
| budget-...
| innocentoldguy wrote:
| Clinton's "surplus" is a myth. The national debt increased
| every year that Clinton was in office and the tax revenue
| generated by his policies never exceeded government spending,
| which would be required in order to legitimately claim a
| surplus.
|
| If you look at the numbers, the Clinton "surplus" was merely
| some fancy accounting achieved by borrowing money from
| government trust funds, like social security.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > If you look at the numbers, the Clinton "surplus" was
| merely some fancy accounting achieved by borrowing money from
| government trust funds, like social security.
|
| What numbers? Care to cite them?
|
| Social Security has always held its surplus in t-bonds. Ergo,
| the government has always "borrowed" from SS. So I'm having
| trouble seeing how it was magically different under Clinton.
| And also why republican presidents don't use the same "fancy
| accounting" to make their deficits look lower.
| Diederich wrote:
| Do you have any mainstream references handy that delve deeper
| into this? Thanks!
| CalChris wrote:
| The St. Louis Fed disagrees.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=IuLV
| mikestew wrote:
| _Carter_ caused inflation in the 70s? How did that narrative get
| started given that his predecessor was the one handing out "WIP"
| (Whip Inflation Now) buttons?
| Finnucane wrote:
| I still have one of those! Yes, an artifact of the Ford
| administration.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| That's easy. He's a Democrat, and QED.
|
| I mean, that's the extent of the "logic" as far as it goes. But
| enough for votes in the ballot box. The world is too damn
| complicated. I barely can get my tv to operate, and you're
| supposed to expect me to understand the ins and outs of federal
| reserve policy, economics, and climate change?
|
| Mueller's report was damning. But the story it told was so
| complicated that only obsessed people could keep the details
| straight, and most of those people were heavily invested in the
| outcome one way or the other anyway.
|
| Feeling cynical right now i guess.
| handrous wrote:
| Judging from my Dad's trajectory, reconstructed from his
| accounts of his politics, during his adult life, from the
| 1960s-present, plus my own observations: talk radio in the
| 80s did it. 100%. Completely defined his worldview and all
| his political opinions. That was it. Long before Fox News
| came along.
|
| Rush & others said such-and-such about Carter. Day. After
| day. After day. Until he believed it.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I've heard people blame Obama for stuff that happened under W.
| Like the bank bailout (Emergency Economic Stabilization Act) /
| TARP.
|
| Those events did not happen _that_ long ago, and it 's a 5
| second search to find out what president signed those.
| lordgrenville wrote:
| Paul Sabin has written recently[0] about Carter's passion for
| deregulation, and how he balanced it with other legislative
| goals. The idea that people were "choked by regulation" was not
| exclusive to the right.
|
| [0] https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898030615000366
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| "Carter's liberal big-government policies"
|
| Yes, this needs to be debunked. I was in high school during the
| Carter years and I was into politics (seems odd for someone that
| age). There's a reason that Carter was primaried by Ted Kennedy
| in 1980: many Democrats found Carter too fiscally conservative.
| Carter was a deficit hawk. He pushed for a balanced budget and
| that upset many Democrats at the time because he wasn't proposing
| the large social spending increases they wanted to see.
|
| I think Carter is definitely an underrated president who likely
| would have been re-elected had the Iranian hostage crisis not
| happened. He was a visionary especially in terms of the
| environment and global climate change (which his administration
| began to address). But he was much more of a centrist than a
| liberal - though the center has moved to the right since his
| time.
| pstuart wrote:
| > I think Carter is definitely an underrated president who
| likely would have been re-elected had the Iranian hostage
| crisis not happened
|
| Yep. The October Surprise by Team Reagan worked very well.
| gumby wrote:
| This seems like a straw man "takedown". Are there really people
| who don't remember Carter the deregulator? Or who think the USSR
| died this way?
|
| I lived through that period and none of it was any secret --
| quite the opposite, it was current affairs in the newspaper!
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I've been following the "you're wrong about" podcast, the whole
| premise is to look back at past well known events mostly based
| on what was published at the time.
|
| It's fascinating how much the mainstream narrative deviates
| from "the facts" even with them available to anyone who cares
| to check.
|
| [0] https://yourewrongabout.buzzsprout.com/
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