Here's a few more ratios you didn't mention:
"The job growth under the Reagan administration was an average of 2.1% per year, which is in the middle of the pack of twentieth-century Presidents. Comparing the recovery from the 1981-82 recession (1983-1990) with the years between 1971 (end of a recession) and 1980 shows that the unemployment rate averaged higher under Reagan (6.75% vs. 6.35%), average productivity growth was slower under Reagan (1.38% vs. 1.92%) and private investment as a percentage of GDP also averaged lower under Reagan (16.08% vs. 16.86%). Furthermore, real wages declined during the Reagan Presidency. What makes this comparison so significant is that between 1971 and 1980 the economy suffered a severe recession in 1975 whereas during the Reagan recovery there was no such interruption."
I know, I know... it's blasphemous.
If you are going to cut and paste wikipedia then copy it all, not just the select parts that fit your arguement.
Support
According to a 1996 study[29] from the libertarian think tank Cato Institute:
* On 8 of the 10 key economic variables examined, the American economy performed better during the Reagan years than during the pre- and post-Reagan years.
* Real median family income grew by $4,000 during the Reagan period after experiencing no growth in the pre-Reagan years; it experienced a loss of almost $1,500 in the post-Reagan years.
* Interest rates, inflation, and unemployment fell faster under Reagan than they did immediately before or after his presidency.
* The only economic variable that was worse in the Reagan period than in both the pre- and post-Reagan years was the savings rate, which fell rapidly in the 1980s.
* The productivity rate was higher in the pre-Reagan years but much lower in the post-Reagan years.
In the last year of the Carter Administration (1980) the US inflation rate climbed to a peak of 14.8%, the top individual tax payer rate was 78%, unemployment was 7.4%, federal outlay was 17% higher than the economy's growth rate, and the federal government grew while enacting loads of new spending programs. During this period, the US economy was the worst it had been since the Great Depression of the 1930s.[citation needed] The nation was in quite a deep hole of economic collapse when the new president Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981.[citation needed] Reagan had to devise a constructive, sound tax and monetary policy to pull the US out of its economic low point.[citation needed]
Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute stated that "no act in the last quarter century had a more profound impact on the US economy of the eighties and nineties than the Reagan tax cut of 1981." He claims that Reagan's tax cuts, combined with an emphasis on federal monetary policy, deregulation, and expansion of free trade created a sustained economic expansion creating America's greatest sustained wave of prosperity ever. The American economy grew by more than a third in size, producing a $15 trillion increase in American wealth. Every income group, from the richest, middle class and poorest in this country, grew its income (1981-1989). Consumer and investor confidence soared. Cutting federal income taxes, cutting the US government spending budget, cutting useless programs, scaling down the government work force, maintaining low interest rates, and keeping a watchful inflation hedge on the monetary supply was Ronald Reagan's formula for a successful economic turnaround. The economic principle that business expansion, jobs and wealth follow low tax rates is widely accepted. The last principle Ronald Reagan incorporated was the realization that immigrant workers are a key and vital component of the US economy.
Criticisms
Reagan's tax policies were accused of pushing both the international transactions current account and the federal budget into deficit and led to a significant increase in public debt. Debt more than tripled from 900 billion dollars to 2.8 trillion dollars during Reagan's tenure. This overspending would be continued in later presidents, with the result that debt 20 years later would jump to over 10 trillion. Advocates of the Laffer curve contend that the tax cuts did lead to a near doubling of tax receipts[citation needed] ($517 billion in 1980 to $1,032 billion in 1990), so that the deficits were actually caused by an increase in government spending. However, anonymous critics argue that the doubling of revenue is significantly smaller when looking at real inflation-adjusted figures ($1,077.4 billion in 1981 to $1,235.6 billion in 1988, measured in FY2000-dollars).[30] Furthermore, an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities argues that "history shows that the large reductions in income tax rates in 1981 were followed by abnormally slow growth in income tax receipts, while the increases in income-tax rates enacted in 1990 and 1993 were followed by sizeable growth in income-tax receipts." Specifically, the analysis calculated that the average annual growth rate of real income-tax receipts per working-age person was 0.2% from 1981 to 1990 and a much higher 3.1% from 1990 to 2001.[31]
A recession occurred in 1982, his second year in office. This was central to Volcker's campaign against inflation: applying either the Phillips Curve or the NAIRU theory, high unemployment (more than 10 % of the labor force in both 1982 and 1983) undercuts inflation. Reagan benefited from the fact that Volcker relented (shifting to more expansionary monetary policy) after inflation had largely been beaten. Further, the sudden fall in oil prices around 1986 helped the economy attain demand growth without inflation in the late 1980s.
The job growth under the Reagan administration was an average of 2.1% per year, which is in the middle of the pack of twentieth-century Presidents.[citation needed] Comparing the recovery from the 1981-82 recession (1983-1990) with the years between 1971 (end of a recession) and 1980 shows that the rate of growth of real GDP per capita averaged 2.77 under Reagan and 2.50% under Nixon, Ford and Carter. However, the unemployment rate averaged higher under Reagan (6.75% vs. 6.35%), average productivity growth was slower under Reagan (1.38% vs. 1.92%) and private investment as a percentage of GDP also averaged lower under Reagan (16.08% vs. 16.86%). Furthermore, real wages declined during the Reagan Presidency.[32] What makes this comparison so significant is that between 1971 and 1980 the economy suffered a severe recession in 1975 whereas during the Reagan recovery there was no such interruption.[33]
Another recent critique of Reagan's policies stem from Tax Reform Act of 1986 and its impact on the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). The tax reform was ostensibly to reduce or eliminate tax deductions. This legislation expanded the AMT from a law for untaxed rich investors to one refocused on middle class Americans who had children, owned a home, or lived in high tax states.[34] This parallel tax system hits middle class Americans the hardest by reducing their deductions and effectively raising their taxes. Meanwhile, the highest income earners (with incomes exceeding $1,000,000) are proportionately less affected thereby shifting the tax burden away from the richest 0.5%.[35] In 2006, the IRS's National Taxpayer Advocate's report highlighted the AMT as the single most serious problem with the tax code.[36] As of 2007, the AMT brought in more tax revenue than the regular tax which has made it difficult for Congress to reform.[35]
But hey, lets go back to that 70% tax bracket. Lets ignore the fact that the increase in military spending equally spurred the Soviets to respond in which the result was a collapse of their Union...collapsing economies generally bring about social and political change throughout history...but we'll just ignore that part. Better to spend that money on government sponsored social programs
"The changes to the federal tax code were much more substantial. The top marginal tax rate on individual income was reduced from 70 percent to 28 percent. The corporate income tax rate was reduced from 48 percent to 34 percent. The individual tax brackets were indexed for inflation. And most of the poor were exempted from the individual income tax. "
Oh the humanity...
