Is the Right ever Right?

As I contemplate Mitt Romney's assertions that the way to solve the health care problems is through the private sector, and the way to cure the economy is through cutting government and coddling rich taxpayers, it makes me cast my mind back over the last couple decades to contemplate how the Right's policy ideas have worked out.

Perhaps some Conservative readers can comment on some policies of the right that have actually worked, but all I see from history and the data is a consistent ability to be wrong.

In the early 1980's Ronald Reagan sold the country on the notion his tax cuts benefitting wealthy folks would "trickle down" to the benefit of everybody else.  Well, the data is in.  Seems like Mr. Reagan underestimated the ability of wealthy people to find and plug leaks, because they got very wealthy while the rest got nothing other than a big jump in the National debt because of all the taxes the rich folks didn't pay.

Also in the 1980's the right began belittling those with the temerity to suggest our actions are causing climate change, a position which Mr. Romney still espouses.  Even if the cause and effect is still somewhat unproven, is the conservative response to potential catastophe to ignore it because its not 100% certain?

Beginning in the 1980's Republicans took the lead in the movement to institutionalize discrimination against gays.  They discovered it was an issue that paid big dividends for them at the ballot box, eventually playing a big part in the Republican's taking over Congress and holding it from 1995 to 2007.  It also helped George Bush get elected, and reelected in 2000 and 2004.  Now even Republican's are beginning to realize that policy is fundementally inconsistent with the freedoms our country was found on.  It more and more looks like one of those policies that is going to make people 50 years down the road ask "what were they thinking?"

Once they got hold of Congress in 1995 Conservatives doubled down on the Reagan tax cuts for the wealthy, changed the Capital Gains tax law to turn the housing market into a speculator's casino, and removed the regulations that prevented banks from using our deposits on insanely stupid and speculative investments.  By the time they were being shown the door in 2007 we were descending into an economic collapse than nearly took the whole world economy down.

In the early 1990's they beat back the Clinton effort to bring some sanity to our health care market, which for decades has been most noteworthy for its ability to suck up lots of money and provide mediocre care in return (or no care for 50 million people or so).  Two years ago they were unable to beat Mr. Obama's push for universal coverage, but they certainly made it much more complicated (and in the end probably more expensive) than it needs to be.

Let us not forget the Republican notion if we just invade Iraq and topple the regime (the same Regime Republican's propped up in the 1980's as a counterweight to Iran) we would be welcomed as heroes and create a democratic country that would solve all our problems with the middle east.    No walk softly and carry a big stick for modern Republicans.

Mitt, like most of the Republican's I know, seems a nice fellow, with a nice family and good intentions.  I just wish he, and other Republicans, would spend a little more time cultivating the ability to expand their reality beyond their own experiences and ideology.

Simple Economic Truths

Wealthy people have more money than they have needs or wants, so they save their money and invest to try to make more money.  Their investment funds economic growth.

Lower income people have more needs and wants than money, so they save little and spend a lot.  But the money they spend on needs and wants generates economic growth.

To little money to invest stifles the economy.  But so does to little growth in the spending money in the pockets of lower income people.

Republican's obsess about the first part of this equation, but ignore the second part.

Asset bubbles are an indicator that too much wealth is going to the folks who's wants and needs are fulfilled.  There is not enough consumer demand to support new business, so the folks with extra money laying around start buying up existing assets hoping to sell to someone else for a higher price.

Asset bubbles have been a hallmark of the US economy for the last decade and a half, but Republican's still don't get it.  Our economy is weak because too much money is concentrated in the hands of people whose every need and want is satisfied, and not enough is getting into the pockets of people with needs and wants.