ARMAGEDDON(ALMOST)OPERATION ARCHER ABLE ON CSPAN 3 TODAY, 4:55

MUST SEE VIEWING. Author Nate Jones on the almost ARMAGEDON event that eventually brought Pres Ronald Reagan to Rejkavik and the summit with Gorbachev that almost abolished Nuclear Weapons in our lifetimes!
                                                     

                                                     

ABLE ARCHER 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise that almost triggered Nuclear War

BN

                                                         

Too easy, even today, to make a mistake, a misperception that will destroy Humanity and the World!

Reagan's Diary tells us how very near we came to The End.

ABOLITION IN OUR TIME BEFORE WE ARE OUT OF TIME

                                                      

The Great Stagflation and Modern America

The United States has faced a series of major economic issues in its history, the two most commonly discussed are the Great Depression (1929 to 1942 arguably) and the Great Recession (2008 – 2009 officially) but between those two is a lumpy, difficult to fathom, general economic decline that ran from 1971 until roughly 1982 which could be considered the Great Stagflation.  It was the hallmark of the 1970s United States economy, with a solid impact on the British economy as well.  Within the United States it was caused by an intersection of several different policy issues, economic impacts, and major events, such as the two oil shocks that took place in that decade as OPEC reduced oil production in response to the United States’ position towards Israel.

Nixon, who had a very loose concern for domestic economic issues, made the problems worse when facing the gold crisis of 1971.  Briefly the United States pegged the dollar to a fixed conversion rate and other currencies were fixed to the United States dollar.  During the early 1970s the dollar ended up being worth less in actual goods and services than its fixed gold value, leading to other nations beginning to convert their dollar holdings into gold.  Nixon nipped that problem by simply ending the gold conversion of dollars “temporarily” and then imposing price controls to take the sting out of the sudden devaluing of the United States dollar as foreign governments dumped their now non-convertible dollars.  This was fine for Nixon, he was facing re-election in 1972 and he simply wanted domestic voters to feel that their paychecks remained the same, it didn’t matter to him what happened to the economy post-1972 as much, he simply planed to fix it then.

One of the impacts of this, and other factors such as rising foreign competition that cut the United States share of global trade, spiked inflation rates.  This combined though with an unusual factor, as rising inflation eroded the buying power of domestic wages in the United States, organized labor was powerful enough to demand wage increases from companies to offset the inflation.  This reduced the amount of capital available for investment and the economic instability and uncertainty that rising inflation caused discouraged many businesses from entering into any major investments.  This led to economic stagnation, the production of goods and services simply didn’t expand to meet the growing money supply, which caused shocking inflation rates.  (During the height of the crisis inflation rates of 10% were not uncommon in a single year.)

Normally economic cycles tweak the system, but the events of the 1970s reshaped the United States economic and political landscape.  First, rising inflation pushed up the tax brackets which working and middle class employees were taxed at, as the brackets were not indexed in the 1970s to inflation.  So although the relative buying power of a paycheck remained the same, the bite taken out by state and local taxes went up for many workers, reducing their overall net pay.  This combined with many states reporting record surpluses due to the revenues taken in, and a resistance by those state governments to return the surpluses to the voters.  (California was notorious for this, socking away much of the surplus for future anticipated shortfalls or new programs once the economy settled down.)  Property taxes shot up as well, as the paper value of homes skyrocketed due to inflation and people saw their property tax bills rocket upwards, further reducing their buying power.

The result was a general tax revolt across the United States as citizens, in state elections and in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan and a Republican Congress, demanded their tax burden be lowered.  What made this shift particularly unique though was that prior to the late 1970s and early 1980s the United States populous had been less leery of inflation, and higher taxes, and more leery of the government reducing its safety nets.  By the height of this crisis the United States citizenry had changed their demands, inflation control and lower taxes were more critical to them than safety nets, especially safety nets that seemed to re-route funds from middle class pockets to the poor, minorities, and immigrants.

Which state governments, and the federal government, responded to with great gusto.  The federal government, and state governments, slashed social welfare programs aggressively and changed the regulatory client to make the government more pro-business.  This combined with a focused effort to reduce the power of organized labor and allowing unemployment to spike, and a sharp early 1980s recession, to crush inflation.  In many ways since then the United States as a nation has not looked back, and other nations have followed its model, focusing on tight government services, reduced social support for the lowest portions of society, and keeping the tax burden controlled.

Sources:  Wikipedia articles on stagflation, the Nixon Shock, and the 1973-1975 recession, Investopedia article on the Great Inflation of the 1970s, Dollars and Sense article on the 1970s economic crisis, and chapters from The Seventies:  The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics by Bruce J. Schulman

Book Review: The Man Who Sold The World

Title: The Man Who Sold The World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America
Author: William Kleinknecht
Publisher: Nation Books

I read this book about a month ago and I’ve been meaning to post a brief review of it, I purchased it a year ago because it promised to examine the legacy of Ronald Reagan and the actions of his administration and how Reagan’s actions as President of the United States undermined the culture, economy, and political system of the United States.  The author attempts to prove nothing less then Ronald Reagan, or at least those he put in power, deliberately engaged in a series of policies that were intentionally designed to transfer wealth into a smaller pool of hands within the United States, destroy the environment of the United States, and undermine economic organizations and regulations that protected small businesses, small towns, and individual consumers within the United States.  One of the major central arguments the author puts forward is that culturally Reagan undermined the idea of government competence with any sphere of society in the United States and also undermined the idea of community as a guiding force within the United States culturally.  Specifically Kleinknecht argues that Ronald Reagan, in his campaign for the Presidency as well as his administration, emphasized the ideal of the individual over the community, personal gain over societal gain, “me ahead of you” to put it crudely.

The problem however is that Kleinknecht in his book dabbles more in politics and in crafting an opinion then in actually reporting the history of the domestic policies of the Ronald Reagan administration, more critically he misses the target of his subject and instead drifts over a wide range of accusations against various conservative forces that took a leading role in the federal government while Reagan was in office.  Kleinknecht though does not limit his proof to that period, instead he draws upon events that happened while Reagan was in office, George W. Bush Sr. was in office, and William Clinton was in office, attempting to use all of these to prove a more broad hypothesis that conservative elements in the United States, since 1981, have engaged in a constant series of policies that have undermined what Kleinknecht argues are core values of the United States.  Specifically Kleinknecht argues in favor of federal regulation of markets and business, federal control and limitations on the economy, and returning the United States politically towards a system of federal control closer to that of the 1960s and 1970s then the system the United States currently operates under.

All valid outlooks to hold and argue but not matters of history – they are matters of policy and politics.  The line may seem a fine one to draw but Kleinknecht avoids dealing with the history of the Reagan administration directly and instead grapples with the ideology of the Reagan years, but even that task is not attempted in a neutral tone.  Kleinknecht has a point to argue, that Reagan and those Reagan brought into power undermined Kleinknecht’s ideal vision of the society of the United States.  If you are looking for a book documenting the history of the United States in the 1980s and the massive cultural revolution it underwent, a topic of considerable complexity and breadth, this is not a book I can recommend as a starting point.