Reagan a Wild-Eyed Socialist Tax-Hiking Class Warrior

This is what Obama calls Reagan:

SOURCE

Are you freaking serious? Are you serious? Seriously?

If any of you have been following my posts, you'll know how I feel about this liberal spin tactic that I refer to as:

"I know YOU are, but what am I?"

It's when liberals accuse conservatives of the very thing they themselves are guilty of, in an attempt to confuse the voting public.

What a lame, obvious ploy from Obama. If Reagan is a Socialist, Obama is Genghis Khan.

Neither side wants socialism. That's just propaganda.
Socialism takes away the wealth completely from the rich....
and there's only rich people leading us. They will NEVER install socialism. That would remove their power.
Socialism is what we need to free us from our slavery to the corporations. They would NEVER create socialism here.
Neither side is socialist, Both sides are fascist.
big difference.

reply to post by AwakeinNM

Now I am not that versed in politics, but I was curious about this notion, for I have never heard it, but upon Googlin it, I found this of interest, for definitions sake I suppose, or just an important part o the mix perhaps?

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. However, following the tax cut, the deficit soared from 2.5 percent of GDP to over 6 percent, alarming financial markets, sending interest rates sky high, and culminating in the worst recession since the 1930's.

Soon the president realized he needed new revenues to trim the deficit, bring down interest rates and improve his chances for reelection. He would not rescind the income tax cut, but other taxes were acceptable. In 1982, taxes were raised on gasoline and cigarettes, but the deficit hardly budged. In 1983, the president signed the biggest tax rise on payrolls, promising to create a surplus in the Social Security system, while knowing all along that the new revenue would be used to finance the deficit.

The retirement system was looted from the first day the Social Security surplus came into being, because the legislation itself gave the president a free hand to spend the surplus in any way he liked. Thus began a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class, especially the self-employed small businessman, to the wealthy. The self-employment tax jumped as much as 66 percent.

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. His accomplishment dwarfs even FDR's, and if today the small businessman suffers a crippling tax burden, he must thank Reagan the redistributionist. However, FDR took pains to help the poor, while Reagan took pains to help the wealthiest like himself.

Reagan's measures were similar to those that the Republicans adopted during the 1920's, which were followed by the catastrophic Depression. More recently, such policies were mimicked by President George W. Bush and they are about to plunge the world into a depression as well. Ironically, the Reagan-style socialism or wealth redistribution is about to destroy monopoly capitalism, the very system that he wanted to preserve and enrich.

archive.truthout.org...
Don't flame me bro! I am here to learn with minimum opinion.

reply to post by speculativeoptimist


Who wrote that story, though? It's filled with conjecture and opinion.

reply to post by AwakeinNM

Are you freaking serious? Are you serious? Seriously?

Thats exactly how I feel when people like you have the stupidity to call Obama a 'socialist'. By calling Obama a socialist you insult socialists everywhere.

reply to post by AwakeinNM

Who wrote that story, though? It's filled with conjecture and opinion.

Well the source is always a critical component, but I would include both objective and subjective analysis of the perspective and info for accuracy sake. And imo, some of his actions could be defined as socialist. But to call him a wild eyed big socialist seems disingenuous to me. I am just always seeking as much info on a topic as I decide what is fluff and fact.

reply to post by speculativeoptimist


Now you know why I spit when I hear Reagan's name mentioned.
I was working with 2 young kids when he got elected and I remember how much I resented the tax hikes then.
And people wonder why I turned punk for a few years.

Obama is doing the exact same thing!
Obviously names, parties and supposed ideologies don't really matter.
What matters is who's paying who off behind the scenes to sow these seeds of disaster on the American public.

Reagan also tripled our debt and increased the size of government while in office.

It was all part of the plan though.

Jude Wanninski, Republicans, and the Two Santa Claus Theory

This is why many people say that both parties are the same...but they are not....not even close....they just don't understand why.

This explains it.

Originally posted by David9176
Reagan also tripled our debt and increased the size of government while in office.

It was all part of the plan though.

Jude Wanninski, Republicans, and the Two Santa Claus Theory

This is why many people say that both parties are the same...but they are not....not even close....they just don't understand why.

This explains it.

edit on 11-4-2012 by David9176 because: (no reason given)

Very interesting. I keep trying to explain to people the very same thing. You did a great job and now if only people who can read will listen. Thanks for the link and interesting expose David.

reply to post by David9176


That was quite revealing, thanks David9176
I am surprised in that thread and this one the usual characters have not come out to defend Reagan or cry liberal media this or that. I am not saying that spitefully either, just an observation. Heck the truth is not exclusive to one party and truth can also come form one's supposed opposition. I hope we are all moving towards truth and away from partisanship.....hey one can dream right?

Calling any politician a socialist is an insult to socialists.

Just to clue some of you in, unless they advocate worker ownership of the means of production they are not a socialist. Socialism is not big government, the ultimate goal of the left is 'free association'. We only need big government because of the inequality caused by private ownership of the means of production, capitalism.

Reagan was about as far from socialism you could get. He was in cahoots with Thatcher, the worst right wing prime minister Britain ever saw.

LONDON — He called her “the best man in England.” She once said he was “the second most important man in my life.”

Ronald Reagan was president for eight of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s 11 years in office. She was the first foreign leader to visit him after his inauguration in 1981, and their strong rapport helped transform the world.

www.msnbc.msn.com...

Yeah they transformed the world by destroying the working class...

What the Tory government under Margaret Thatcher and then John Major (and Blair since) did to the public sector has been followed by all capitalist governments throughout the world. Governments have abandoned the post-war consensus in providing welfare benefits ’from the cradle to the grave’.

Capitalist governments’ abandonment of the Keynes method of pump-priming the economies to smooth out the ’normal’ ups and downs of the economic cycle was a response to the end of the post-war economic upswing in capitalism. This meant that they could ’no longer afford’ to maintain the same level of state spending as they did before.

They declared that their number one priority was to cut back the amount of the economy taken by the state.

www.socialistworld.net...

In the anarchist, Marxist and socialist sense, free association (also called free association of producers or, as Marx often called it, community of freely associated individuals) is a kind of relation between individuals where there is no state, social class or authority, in a society that has abolished the private property of means of production. Once private property is abolished, individuals are no longer deprived of access to means of production so they can freely associate themselves (without social constraint) to produce and reproduce their own conditions of existence and fulfill their needs and desires.

en.wikipedia.org...