Re: RE: Supply-side economics

[Rob Schaap <carob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

... So the rich triumphed.  Yet they did so without resuming their former
positions of social obligation, without resuming their former posture of
industrious restraint.  And therefore they failed to recreate either the
dynamism of the late nineteenth century or the illusion of their own
indispensability.  A patina of legitimating economic argument, known as
supply-side economics, laid the ground for Reaganism by claiming there would
be an enormous rise of saving, investment, and work effort, that these would
be 'unleashed' just as soon as tax codes were rewritten to improve the
structure of incentive.

Nothing of the kind occurred ...

The supply-siders left an ideological vacuum.  Since their collapse, there
has existed no frank statement of a doctrine asserting bluntly that private
control of private assets, concentrated in a tiny elite of the population,
should become again the sole criterion for voice in economic affairs.  And
yet the alternative propositions are also so weak that this precise position
has prevailed in practice ...

(Jamie Galbraith's *Created Unequal*, page 186)

And on that note, a hearty thanks to all Penpals for a beaut 2000 in
cyberspace, best wishes for a dissolutely ethanolic festive season, and see
yez all back here a few weeks hence, eh?

Love,
Rob.