I don't know that I've blamed the last 8 years on Willie anywhere. I blame the last 8 years on an unforseeable economic disaster (9-11) followed by a very poorly managed recovery plan.
In that case, you're wrong again. The economic impact of 9-11 was negligible -- a temporary speed bump that hit a few isolated sectors and didn't last more than a few months. What's biting you in the ass now is the simple rule of "what can't go on forever, won't go on forever." Eventually the chickens will come home to roost, and that's what's happening now.
Specifically, these chickens:
* The trade deficit. Released by Reagan, shooed off further by Bush and Clinton, driven off with a whip by Bush 2.
* The budget deficit. Released by Reagan, plaintively whistled home by Bush 1, caught and locked in by Clinton, driven off with a whip by Bush 2.
* Consumer borrowing. Released by Reagan, cheerfully chased off by everyone else since.
* Insufficient infrastructure spending. Reagan thru Bush 2, no exceptions.
* Growing income differentials. When they grow enough, they become unsustainable. Reagan thru Bush 2, no exceptions.
* Recovery by blowing bubbles in the economy. Bush 1 thru Bush 2, no exceptions. Eventually you run out of bubbles, and then you're S.O.L.
As stated, 9-11 doesn't have zip to do with this, other than serving as a convenient excuse to spend money on "security" -- whatever that may mean.
Trickle-down was Ronnie. For all that sponge, we went from rampant unemployment and economic crisis to labor stability and consumer confidence.
Yeah. It's known as the "business cycle," and it got going once Volcker squeezed inflation out of the system, as I stated in my long-winded post above. It would have happened under Carter 2 as well; Reagan just branded it.
Perhaps that's where PJ and I aren't quite seeing eye-to-eye. I'm putting a great deal of stock in stability in the labor force, which isn't part of PJ's charts and would be hard to put solid numbers to even if you wanted to. I haven't won any Nobel prizes, but it seems pretty obvious to me that, in a consumer-driven economy, consumer confidence is king and the primary driver (practically sole driver, IMO) in that is labor stability--I have a job today and I'm confident that I'll have that job (or a better one) tomorrow. The economic glory years under Clinton were driven by productivity improvements and stock market wizardry; labor stability steadily decreased for his entire presidency. Companies closed at the drop of a hat; jobs were continually lost to offshore outsourcing; traditional middle class manufacturing jobs were slaughtered and replaced with lower paying service industry positions.
That's a good point. I've done a fair bit of reading on that too, and the reasons for the evolution are a bit on the complex side; they have to do with globalization on the one hand and changes in society internally on the other. I'll try to make a very small nutshell, though.
In the American case, job instability was the price to pay for getting out of the 1970's inflationary spiral -- the spiral was driven by the collective bargaining of the unions on the one hand and big business on the other. The unions negotiated pay raises; big business transferred the costs to prices. This created a vicious circle that was very hard to break. The late-1970's Fed-triggered recession broke the cycle, and broke the unions with it.
However, those selfsame unions were also responsible for negotiating "GM-like" working conditions, with stable employment, pay raises based on seniority, comprehensive health care packages, and so on. And the selfsame big business was powerful enough to fix prices so that all that could be paid for.
With the unions gone, companies were free to negotiate with employees on an individual basis; with globalization, their potential employee pool went from Michigan to Chengdu. Simultaneously, Wal-Mart and its like aggregated the bargaining power of consumers -- they used their clout to pit producers against each other in order to get the best possible bargain for their customers. And finally, the globalization of finance (when stock markets went real-time, electronic, and international) meant that competition for capital went global at the same time: CEO's found themselves under much more pressure to produce bigger growth and bigger profits, in order to please their empowered stockholders.
The upshot was a triple whammy: (1) enormous downward pressure on producer prices, through Wal-Mart and global competition, (2) enormous upward pressure on profits, through the globalized finance market, and (3) loss of labor's bargaining power through the destruction of the unions.
Surprise surprise -- the USA went from lifetime employment with health care, a pension plan, and guaranteed seniority raises to short-term employment with minimal perks, raises based on productivity, and a private pension plan, if that. IOW, there goes your job quality.
You'll note, by the way, that these developments are global. There's really no way this situation could have been avoided altogether; autarky isn't an option, as Comrade Kim has shown us.
However, it would have been possible to manage the transition in a way that would have reaped many of the benefits while avoiding some of the downsides. Some countries that have managed this much better than the US are South Korea, Chile, and some, but not all, European countries; others like Japan paid an enormous price for their choices but are looking a lot better right now. And I sure as hell can't tell how Reagan's policies made the transition any easier -- from where I'm at, it looks like the exact opposite; he was exacerbating the most undesirable features of globalization at the critical instant it was getting started.
)