Do your lectures ever leave you sad? The promise of supply side economics was that if we cut taxes, undermined labor unions, and deregulated industry, we'd have more jobs, more consumer choices, and higher growth.
We've had forty years to test this theory and a lot of data has come in. The results are unequivocal: there's no relationship between taxes and jobs, growth was higher under the Keynesian years when taxes were higher, and we've often had less choice and more monopoly.
The share of income going to the top 1% has increased significantly with the reduction of tax rates, CEO pay has exploded, and the share of workers belonging to labor unions has declined to around 10% of the work force. It used to be above 30%.
Bank bailouts were extremely rare during the Keynesian years when banks were more regulated.

Health care and education costs have gone up.

Student loan debt is now over $1 trillion.

All these trends are related.

Reaganism was an UPWARD redistribution of wealth.
Personally, my own sadness stems from two factors: the general malaise and suffering that is currently in the air, compounded by the fact that knowledge of the post-war Keynesian economy allows us to envision different possibilities.

We've got to get out of the Reagan paradigm.
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