American Debt and Who got Us Here!

Prior to 1980 America had never reached a debt of one Trillion dollars, but with the election of  Ronald Reagan we passed that mark and then some.  When Ronald Reagan took office our national debt was a mere 900 billion dollars; give or take a few hundred million dollars. Reagan ushered in the theory called “Reaganomics” which would be later referred to as “Trickle Down Economics” (see; http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/SupplySideEconomics.html) but by either name it set in motion an approach to monetary policies that would devastate America, but I digress.

Reagan’s presidency ushered in Reaganomics which was an approach that relied on 3 key policy/fiscal foundations; tax cuts which reduced the operational capital of government, deregulation which opened up corporate welfare and corruption, and the role of government to that of noninterference (which is how Republicons referred to government protections from corporations and money’ed interests). America believed that Reaganomics would increase investments by the wealthy in the job market and in turn would stimulate prosperity for all. I refer to this as “trickle on economics” but again I digress. Reagan would  go on to deregulate savings and loans markets; he reduced taxes, increased military spending which directly led the stock market crash in 1987. The start of deregulation of banking and investment markets by Reagan,  and the administrations that would continue this approach, would come to roost later in American history but I will cove that later. This approach would take  the debt from 930 billion to 2.6 trillion in a mere 8 years or $10,058.90 per capita for a population of 258,709,873. I would again note that this had not happened since the start of America until Reagan’s presidency. The Reagan administration increased debt by roughly 2 trillion over an 8 year period which is an increase of 189% of the debt he inherent-ed; just WOW!

Reagan set the table for economic policies that would be adopted in large parts and small from this point forward. Bush Sr. (Reagan’s vice-president) would be elected in 1989 and continue the “trickle down economic policies of Reagan and would fare no better than his predecessor  Bush Sr. would lead the country to an economic collapse and end his one term presidency with the nation in debt for a staggering 4 trillion dollars or $4,064,620,655,521.66 to be exact. This result was in spite of him raising taxes in 1992 in order to curtail the disastrous fiscal policies he continued from Reagan. You would think that Bush would have learned from Reagan’s fiscal FAIL, but Republicons (I refuse to call them “conservatives”; there is nothing conservative about them) did not learn and America was fooled by slogans and propaganda that still exists today; and again I digress. I think that you are starting to see that I digress a lot, but what can I say I have a lot of un-expressed political history in my head. So now we are at the 4 Trillion debt mark. The Bush Sr. administration increased debt by roughly 2 trillion over an 4 year period. Supply Side Economics and Republicon governance quadrupled the national debt to over $4 trillion in twelve years (1980-1992) and they call themselves “conservatives”! Bush Sr’s administration governed over an increase of the U.S. debt of what would equal an 55% increase in just one term; I dare to speculate that with another term he would have nearly equaled Reagan’s debt disaster! That’s right I said it.

Blog Sharing 10/01/2012 – Post Office Defense

I am sharing my response with a person on G+ who has (hopefully had) a misunderstanding of the reasons for the Post Office fiscal challenges.

The post office is a service and not a profit motivated entity much like police departments, military, and other government services. The complaint about the government requiring the Post Office to come up with the pensions for their current and future employees for the next 75 years is a burden that is fiscally laughable. I would dare you to name a company or government entity that has this kind of onerous requirement. We are talking about funding the pensions for employees that are not even born yet much less working for the Post Office. It is unheard of and a political/fiscal poison pill that was foisted on them by the Republicons, see http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/hr6407#.

You need to understand that not one dime of federal money goes to Post Office, see http://tinyw.in/aaGL  and under paragraph (d) of Title 39, Section 101.1, “Postal rates shall be established to apportion the costs of all postal operations to all users of the mail on a fair and equitable basis.”. They are dependent on the revenue that they generate in the sale of its services. If you look at the fact that they do not receive government or tax payer money you should ask then why are they at the management mercy of Congress? To answer that question you will have to read about the history of the Post Office, In order to restructure their fiscal structure in any way, the Post Office must get the approval from Congress. I am talking about raising the price of services, what services they are allowed to offer, what routes they or times that they are allowed to run, and any and all fiscal adjustments that they could make in order to meet the ridiculous 75 funding of pensions.