----- Original Message ----- From: "John D. Giorgis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Brin-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, January 18, 2002 6:48 AM Subject: Presidents RE: Corruption in a Democracy
> At 12:16 AM 1/18/02 -0500 Gautam Mukunda wrote: > >>Not to get into the argument, but I actually think that Woodrow Wilson was > >>the second-worst President in American history, after only the pathetic > >>James Buchanan... > > > >I think LBJ belongs below Wilson somewheres...... > > > >JDG > > > >Not even close. For the Civil Rights Act of 1968 _alone_ LBJ gets into my > >"near-great" Presidents list. Screw Vietnam. Yes, he botched it. He > >wasn't alone in that. His efforts on behalf of racial justice - that is, > >the eternal attempt of the United States to redeem itself from its original > >sin - are so much more important that Vietnam shrinks into insignificance in > >comparison. > > Yes, the Vietnam is a big strike against him, but there is more. > > Most important is The Great Society, which probably has produced the least > bang for the buck of any government program in US History. Indeed, it was > the massive spending combiantion of The Great Society and The Vietnam War > that produced the economic debacle of the 1970's. Let's look at some numbers. The growth in GDP per year from 1970 to 1980 was 3.2%. From 1980 to 1990 it was 3.2%. The improvement of the economy under Reagan was a myth. It felt that way because the people with the highest income, and thus the highest visibility, took in virtually all of the income improvement of the '80s. Source: http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/dn1.htm Guns and butter were expensive, and trying to run Viet Nam and the Great Society was a mistake. But it is simplistic to assume that this was the cause of inflation in the 70s. I'll give another source: the step function increase in oil prices in 1973. Within a matter of a couple months, we went from paying $3/barrel to $12/barrel. The amount we paid for oil changed from 1.3% of GDP to about 5.4% of GDP. Again, late in the late 70s/early 80s , oil went from about $14/barrel to $35/barrel, changing the fraction of GDP spent for oil from about 3% to about 7.6%. Then, from 1981 to about 87, oil prices fell by almost a factor of three again, and the fraction of spending of GDP on oil dropped to under 1.5%. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/oildep.shtml http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm Now, lets look at the inflation rate during that time: 1963 1.3% 1964 1.6% 1965 1.1% 1966 1.9% 1967 3.4% 1968 3.4% 1969 4.6% 1970 6.2% 1971 5.2% 1972 3.4% 1973 3.7% 1974 9.4% 1975 11.7% 1976 6.8% 1977 5.2% 1978 6.7% 1979 9.4% 1980 14.0% 1981 11.7% 1982 8.2% 1983 3.5% 1984 3.6% 1985 3.3% 1986 3.7% 1987 1.0% 1988 4.1% 1989 4.6% 1990 5.1% 1991 5.4% 1992 2.5% 1993 3.1% 1994 2.4% 1995 2.9% 1996 2.7% 1997 3.1% 1998 1.4% http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/historiccpi.html I think it is quite reasonable to agree that the inflation from '65 to '70 is associated with guns and butter. But, it is very clear to me that the big kicks in inflation in the '74 to '75 timeframe (after the Yom Kipper war) and in the '79 to '82 timeframe are associated with the tremendous rise in oil prices. Further, since the US imports much of that oil, the available wealth for spending in the US took a dip each time the price rose. IMHO, that is what triggered the price/wage spiral. One other note on this is the gift Reagan was given with the tremendous deflationary drop in oil prices from '82 to '87. > As for Civil Rights - every President has their achivements, but on this > issue a lot of credit has to go to Kennedy as well. Johnson had the courage to give the Solid South to the Republicans (at least as far as presidential elections go). I posted a few months back on what a sea change that was. Dan M.
