Bidenomics vs. Reaganomics

your choice

I always thought that “Reaganomics” was a pejorative invented by Democrats to attack President Reagan’s “supply-side economics.” But La Wik says the term was coined by conservative radio guy Paul Harvey.

However, it looks like Reaganomics stood the test of time, because now President Biden and his supporters are using the term “Bidenomics” to tell the American people that the Biden economic policy is making things better.

Either way, it is clear to me that “Bidenomics” is a return to a belief in demand-side economic stimulation that we associate with economist John Maynard Keynes and the idea that the way to fix the economy is with new government programs. The Biden economic policy is a massive program of increased government spending on everything from climate change to systemic racism. As such, I would say, it is bound to fail, just like the New Deal in the 1930s.

“Reaganomics,” in my view, was an attempt to restart the economy after the disastrous 1970s and its “stagflation,” with tight money and lowered marginal tax rates. Ideally, of course, Reaganomics should have included spending cuts, but according to Chantrill’s Law, government programs cannot work because you can never reform — i.e., cut — them. So it was with Reaganomics. Reagan sent spending cuts up to Capitol Hill and House Speaker Tip O’Neill sent them right back down again.

Back then, of course, all liberals and Democrats agreed that Reaganomics was a political and economic disaster waiting to happen. And cruel to ordinary Americans as well.

But, nevertheless, tight money and lowered tax rates did recharge the economy. If you read the Wiki piece on Reaganomics, it gives a lot of space to critics, and brands it as a program of “neoliberalism,” which everyone agrees is something dark and brooding.

My judgement is that “Bidenomics” will be a failure just like the New Deal, because Green policies don’t grow the economy. (And they don’t “tackle” climate change either.) It is inspired by the fundamental error of the educated ruling class that it knows what to do. Well, it didn’t work in Stalin’s Five Year Plans; it didn’t work in FDR’s New Deal; it didn’t work in Mao’s China; it didn’t work in Obama’s stimulus plans, and it won’t work now.

Why? Because nobody has a clue what needs to be done, and what not done, in the economy. But rulers always feel that they are the guys to direct traffic, and anyway, a nice big gubmint program is a convenient way for them to gift their supporters.

As an example, I read today about the Brits’ six Five Year Plans to get to NetZero.

Little known to the voting public, Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems have all signed up to legally binding five-year plans, known as ‘carbon budgets’, which stipulate a “detailed programme to re-engineer society to cut emissions by a specific amount”.

But can’t we just roll it back when the cuts start to bite? No, because

any deviation could be open to legal challenge, meaning Governments have almost zero leeway to delay or cancel extreme measures like bans on boilers and petrol cars, no matter how unpopular or impoverishing.

Roll on the revolution. Curtis Yarvin says the next regime will have to be an absolute monarchy, per Machiavelli.

To found a new republic, or to reform entirely the old institutions of an existing one, must be the work of one man only.

Nothing less will have the power to shut down the education class and its power and its programs and its sinecures in everything from education to NGOs. Maybe that’s why the ordinary middle class, the main enemy of the current regime, is instinctively attracted to Donald Trump.