1. A lemming is a person who doesn't think for themselves, joins a mass movement which usually ends in total destruction, a member of a crowd with no voice of their own, one who speaks and repeats only what they have been told, etc.
2. It was on the news. Exactly. Your a lemming if you get all of your information from corporate mass media and government lies.
I think your confused about trickle down economics. You label it as a Reagan policy, but in reality trickle down economics has been around in theory and in policy since the 1920's. And yes, in theory supply-side economics works. But sadly, because of many factors that have to do with our poor economy and shaky political scene, the wealthy aren't really doing what they should with their additional money. They are putting it in banks, and not investing it in the economy. But I can't blame them, as our economy is shitty and corrupted by our political turmoil. Keynesian Economics does not work. It is based off the idea that an economy is stagnant and aggregate demand can only be shifted by government spending. This doesn't make sense because shifts in aggregate demand are in the short run. When looking at the long run, we can see that the spending that caused the shift in AD demand turn into huge deficits as they grow and grow while their costs are pushed into future taxes. Keynesian economics grants inflation, as increased government spending comes from creating money out of thine air. Inflation causes prices to rise and money value to fall... it should be easy to understand why this is bad for consumer and producers alike. And your so wrong with your assertions about FDR and the new deal. The new deal combined with terrible contractionary monetary policy by the FED turned the panic of 1929 into a full blown depression. Example, one of the New Deal polices was the Smooth-Hawley Tariff Act. It was signed into law on June 17,1930 with the hopes of stimulating the economy and saving American jobs. The act raised tariffs on over 200,000 imported goods, and increased existing tariffs by more than 50% on 3,000 imported goods. In response to the tariff sixty countries placed tariffs on American products. This resulted in U.S. trade falling to half the level of what it was before the tariff was put into place, the unemployment rate rose from 7.8% to 23.6%, and the stock market fell from 280 to 90.
FDR doubled the size of government spending between 1932 and 1940. Increased the top tax rate to 79% and increased market intervention/regulation. He also established bureaucratic price fixing cartels. Unemployment was sill 20% in 1938 under FDR, and his tax hikes caused business to postpone expansion and stop investing. There are countless studies that have been done by economic historians that have concluded that recovery would have been very rapid (3-4 years) had the government not intervened in the ways that it did, and that FDR and new deal legislation prolonged the depression by up to 7 years. Unemployment did not get lower under FDR, yet debt and deficits exploded. Government spending fell from $84 billion in 1945 to under $30 billion in 1946 (even though the Keynesians warned that this would cause another depression, which was false)... that probably had a lot more to do with the recovery than FDR. By 1947 the government was running a budget SURPLUS of 6% of GDP, released about 10 million citizens back into private markets, and had lifted most of the price controls of the new deal.
Get your facts straight son.
