Friday, February 13, 2009

A Successful Plan

After the disastrous presidency of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan inherited multi-year, double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment, double-digit interest rates, declining incomes and rising poverty. How did Reagan turn the economy around in just two years? According to a WSJ article Wednesday by Peter Ferrara, there were four components of the successful Reagan plan.

The first was across-the-board reductions in tax rates, which provided incentives for saving, investment, entrepreneurship and work. The second component was deregulation. Third was control of government spending. Fourth was tight, anti-inflationary monetary policy.

Times are not nearly that bad now, but Obama's plan contains not even one component of Reagan's spectaculary successful policies. What I remember is that the nation's media were constantly ridiculing Reagan, to the same extremes in which they are presently fawning over Obama.

1 comment:

Terri Wagner said...

It astonds me that Obama can't see that if he did this, he'd win reelection right now. Is he stupid, diabolical or too radical to see beyond his own ideas?