--- Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I do consider Wal-mart and Sam's vastly superior to > the NE department > chains that went bankrupt trying to compete. I > consider their investment > in inventory control very much on target: a real > investment in > productivity. But, I think that you overstated your > case....unless of > course you meant "in my lifetime" to apply to "Wal > Mart has done more to > improve the lot of the American poor than any > government program that I can > think of." If that's what you meant, and you mean > improvements over the > last 25 years, then its a closer call. It would > depend on whether one > calls Bill's fiscal management qualifies as a > program...and whether you > trust Brad's or JDG's economic judgment more. > > Dan M.
Append "in my lifetime" and you get to what I meant, yes. I think both Brad _and_ JDG vastly overstate the extent to which economic policies can be attributed to any single actor in the American system. If President Clinton had not had a Republican Congress - then things would have been very different. If that same Republican Congress had not had a Democratic President - then things would have been very different. I think "economic policy" is a little too broad to be called a program, though. I would say that the economic policies of the Clinton Administration pretty closely approximate my ideal (I would cut taxes and spending more, but I can definitely live with what we had). Also (as I think I've written here) one of the unheralded stories of the Clinton Administration was its _masterful_ handling of the 1998 Asian economic crisis. So I'm not stinting of my praise for what was, all in all, an excellent performance on that issue. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2' http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861
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