[lbo-talk] Americans think about the public option

[Wojtek S]

[WS:]  I think you give the Reaganites too much credit, Charles.  The US
standards of living are in a slow but steady decline since the 1970s, and
downwardly mobile societies tend to espouse a conservative political
outlook.  So controlling for that generally conservative trend, Reaganites
do not seem to add much value of their own.  They did not even cut
government social spending, (see my calculations of inflation adjusted
government social spending increases by administration at
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArE2VA3WdmNAdEc0eTRKS25qSUJJODZFbUd6MGpwT0E&hl=en)
let alone Social Security.

If I were to name the most successful Repug administration after WW2, it
would be - ironically - Bush jr.  In a sinister and repulsive way, to be
sure, but very successful indeed, if we measure success by pursuing an
agenda in spite of the built in inertia of the US political institution.
Nobody else as able to pursue such a radical foreign policy agenda,
undermine so many civil liberties at home, give so much public money to
cronies and lead the Congress on a leash like a puppy throughout the whole
process.

Wojtek

On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 5:00 PM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:


> Anyway I am at about page 130 something pages in Michael Perelman's
> Confiscation, of American Prosperity: From Right-Wing Extremism and
> Economic Ideology to the Next Great Depression (2007), were he has
> spend most of the text detailing out the history of this take over of
> the American mind or whatever you want to call it.
>
> -clip-
>
>
> And for anyone who is somehow still skeptical of how the Right has
> created the conditions, please pick up Mike Perelman's book. It is a
> great history of this battle and how it has changed the US.
>
> CG
>
> ^^^^^^^
>
> CB: Reaganism has certainly been a successful counter-reform movement.
> When you say change the US, do you mean reverse tendency of the New
> Deal/Great Society , and the state of the American mind underpinning
> those reforms ?  Hard to believe that the Democratic Party achieved
> anything to some's liking (smile).
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