HOW REAGANOMICS WAS SOCIALISM AND HOW IT SCREWED YOU AND ME

Ronald Reagan, the asshole who thought it was best to take from the poor and give to the rich.
You think I wrong? Read on and you'll see what I'm talking about.

From Truthout:

Reagan: The Great American Socialist
by: Ravi Batra

Socialism has been much in the news for some months. Recently, some GOP stalwarts charged President Obama with preaching the heresy. John Boehner, the House minority leader, characterized Obama's stimulus package as, "one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment."

"Socialism" is a pejorative term in American politics and needs to be carefully examined. It usually refers to increased government control over the economy, or policies that promote the redistribution of wealth.
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.......Obama's plans will transfer wealth from the rich to the poor, whereas Reagan's bills transferred wealth from the poor and the middle class to the opulent. In fact, Obama's measures are puny, whereas Reagan's were massive. If the Democrat is a "small" socialist, Reagan was the Great American Socialist.

Let's go back to the early 1980's. In 1981, Reagan signed a law that sharply reduced the income tax for the wealthiest Americans and corporations. The president asserted his program would create jobs, purge inflation and, get this, trim the budget deficit.


Well we all knew that wouldn't work and didn't work, so he carried on with the rape of the working class and the poor.


In 1986, Reagan slashed the top tax rate further. His redistributionist obsession led to a perversity in the law. The wealthiest faced a 28 percent tax rate, while those with lower incomes faced a 33 percent rate; in addition, the bottom rate climbed from 11 percent to 15 percent. For the first time in history, the top rate fell and the bottom rate rose simultaneously. Even unemployment compensation was not spared. The jobless had to pay income tax on their benefits. A year later, the man who would not spare unemployment compensation from taxation called for a cut in the capital gains tax. Thus, Reagan was a staunch socialist, totally committed to his cause of wealth redistribution towards the affluent.

How much wealth transfer has occurred through Reagan's policies? At least $3 trillion.

The Social Security hike generated over $2 trillion in surplus between 1984 and 2007, and if it had been properly invested, say, in AAA corporate bonds it could have earned another trillion by now. At present, the fund is empty, because it has been used up to finance the federal deficits resulting from frequent cuts in income tax rates. If this is not redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, what else is?

Thus, Reagan was the first Republican socialist - and a great one, because his wealth transfer occurred on a massive scale.


This is where it all started, the destruction of an affluent middle class. The spiral downward has continued til today. The Reagan Revolution brought this about, with the help of the neocons and the Reagan Democrats who turned their backs on the rest of the working class and the poor.