“Explain again how one can link the deregulation and tax cuts of Reagan with the Clinton and Obama administrations, and financial decline?”

Clinton’s major deregulation was tossing out the last remaining remnant of the Glass-Steagall Act, which enabled banks to go on the speculative spree without the necessary leverage that was in large part responsible for the Great Recession. Like Clinton, Obama figures that if Wall Street is happy everybody is happy. He’s not very concerned with Main Street, despite his rhetoric.

“As the son of a business owner, we’ve seen nothing but an increase in regulation and “stealth taxes” (state and government “fees”) since the Clinton years. It’s made my father want to get out of his small business… such increasing regulation is the economic peril, not “tax cuts and deregulation”.”

I don’t doubt it. I’ve heard the same from friends who own small businesses. In the last thirty years, both parties pay lip service to small business, but they deregulate big businesses and neglect oversight, then we get disasters like Massey and BP. Meanwhile, the states are even worse about giving breaks to big businesses and raising fees on small ones.

“when the average wage of government workers is nearly double that of private sector, that’s a growth killer. You’ve got all these government regulators making big bucks and contributing very little in the way of innovation or productivity”

I think that number is exaggerated, but government workers do get the perks that come from unions, which have dramatically disappeared in the private sector over the last thirty years. It’s true that the wages that government pays drains the public through taxes that pay for the wages, but firing a bunch of government workers today is only going to slow the recovery. The much, much bigger drain on the government is entitlement and defense spending. Those are the two that need to be focused on.

I remember being scandalized back in 1982 or so when we still feared the Japanese, and I read that the average Japanese CEO made 6 times as much as his average worker while the American CEO made 32 times as much. Then I read a Wall Street Journal article in 2003 or so saying that the American CEO now made 400 times more. I don’t think American CEOs increased their productivity or innovation that much more than they had before, but they were much better at gaming the system.

Timothy Noah ran a nice little series on the subject last year (http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/entry/2266026/).

Explain again how one can link the deregulation and tax cuts of Reagan with the Clinton and Obama administrations, and financial decline?

As the son of a business owner, we’ve seen nothing but an increase in regulation and “stealth taxes” (state and government “fees”) since the Clinton years. It’s made my father want to get out of his small business. It’s convinced me never to try and found one. When 52%+ of American GDP comes from small business, and that’s also where most of the growth comes from, such increasing regulation is the economic peril, not “tax cuts and deregulation”.

Finally, as Lou Dobbs pointed out over a year ago on CNN, when the average wage of government workers is nearly double that of private sector, that’s a growth killer. You’ve got all these government regulators making big bucks and contributing very little in the way of innovation or productivity.

You’re quite right that capitalist reforms have succeeded in China. The numbers in my 2/24 post refer to the United States, which I thought was clear from the context of the conversation.

Certain forms of capitalism are very good at creating enormous wealth for some individuals. Other forms of capitalism are very good at creating wealth for the middle and working classes. In the third quarter of the twentieth century in the US, we had a model that grew the middle and working classes, but we abandoned that model under Reagan and his followers, including Clinton and Obama, and the impoverishment of both classes was the result even as the US produced more millionaires.

So if your standard of success is the production of millionaires, then stick with the policies that have guided the nation these last thirty years. But if your standard of success is a healthy middle and working class, then you’re going to have to look elsewhere.

Utterly untrue. You need to try actually checking your facts against the political screed of your choosing:

Capitalist reforms and deregulation led to between 500-600 million people being lifted out of poverty in the last 30 years in China alone. Since Chinese growth is so intimately coupled with the American economic system, we bear some credit too. And let’s emphasize again that such a number is nearly twice the population of the United States.

Not to mention that the number of millionaires and billionaires worldwide has expanded dramatically, over the last 30 years (there were around 10 million of them in 2007), though it fell by 2.5 million in the last 2 years (which would also seem to contradict your claim about things benefiting the wealthy).

Finally, even the source below–which is disappointed with the level of poverty alleviation–
admits there has been a 10% decline in it.

http://www.globalissues.org/article/4/poverty-around-the-world#WorldBanksPovertyEstimatesRevised

By the way, aphorisms and clichés belong to two different categories of analysis. An aphorism can be clichéd or fresh, while a cliché can never be fresh and can describe any number of speech-acts, aphoristic or not.

Or in this case, sloppy thinking. Thus, you see fashioning new economic policies as a “rush to fix something.” Meanwhile, you want to rush in and impose fiscal conservatism, a “solution” that would begin its own “problem.” If you’re going to think in clichés, you might employ them even to your own rash ideas.

In the meantime, the facts are clear that the last thirty years of deregulation and tax cuts have benefited the wealthy and diminished the working and middle classes.

Please disregard any comments by C. Ehrlich. Your thoughts are eminently more cogent and worthwhile–even as cliches–than his weak “ad hominem” blatherings.

I’ve found the discussion quite fascinating. I do, however defer to what Christ has to say on the matter (hence my quoting of Him) before historical precedent.

That may be the case in the West, where the decline of centralized secular authority in the 5th century created a vacuum, but in the East, the empire continued to administer the law, and both the Codices Theodosianus and Justinianus governed marriage, drawing upon earlier Roman law, Christianized to some extent through the influence of disciplinary canons which were given force of law within the Eastern Empire. Thus, civil law governed the criteria for valid marriage, including consent, consanguinity and existence of preexisting contracts (which included betrothals), grounds for divorce (strictly limited under the Christian Empire), disposition of property and children, rights of widows and divorcees (e.g., protection of dowries) and so forth.

As recounted by John Meyendorff, in his book “Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective”, until the 9th century the Church did not directly concern itself with any of the social ramifications of marriage and divorce. It taught what it taught, allowing the state to handle the mundane aspects, and focused its effort on dealing with the after effects of a failed marriage or the death of a spouse.

In contrast to how the doctrine of marriage evolved in the West, the Eastern Churches continued to hold to the ancient doctrine of the absolute indissoluability of marriage as a sacrament that perdured beyond the grave. Since there could be just one sacramental marriage in a lifetime, the Church did not perform “second marriages”, either of divorcees or widowers. Instead, as I noted, such persons had to procure a civil divorce, and any person wanting to remarry would have to do so in a civil ceremony.

Only after Emperor Leo VI dumped responsibility for all aspects of marriage onto the Church did the Orthodox Church develop a “Rite of Second Marriage”, which was not sacramental, had a definitely somber and penitential tone, and which required the parties to abstain from communion for a period of three years for a second marriage and five years for a third; fourth marriages were prohibited in accordance with the canons of St. Basil the Great. This is the canonical discipline of the Orthodox Church to this day.

After the Fall of Constantinople, the Patriarch of Constantinople was made leader of the “Rhum Milet” under the Ottoman Sultan. Thus, he was both civil and spiritual leader (in theory) of all Christians under Ottoman rule. Orthodox marriage regulations thus took on the aspect of civil law as well, albeit modified by the Ottoman laws of marriage (derived in part from Sharia), which (a) prohibited the marriage of Muslim women to Christian men; but (b) otherwise required the wife to take the religion of her husband; and (c) required children to be raised in the faith of their father. These laws still govern marriage in the Muslim states of the Middle East (as a member of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, this has particular interest to me).

The Kyivan Rus’ received Byzantine culture and Christianity as a turnkey operation after the conversion of St. Vladimir in 895. So, they, too, followed the Byzantine marriage regulations, though ruling princes often interfered in their application when it inconvenienced them. In the Slavic lands, therefore, the Church did control all aspects of marriage until the time of Peter the Great, who, as I indicated, reorganized the Church along the lines of the Protestant national churches of Germany, in which Church and state were essentially indistinguishable, since the former was a part of the latter.

“Turn your frown upside down.”

“dead as a doornail.”

“another day, another dollar”

“Cleanliness is next to godliness.”

“Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”

I so eagerly await the “fundamental” truths Mr. Koehl will extract!