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.