John McAdams Part 2

[Jim DiEugenio]

Interesting connection you make between McAdams and the rise of Reaganism, Jim. In the early 1980s I spent a few years running around with my hair on fire trying to impress upon people just how disasterous Reagan was going to turn out to be.

I felt he was the anti Kennedy president in far too many ways so i can see why McAdams would be a perfect fit with the people that took over power at that time.

I agree with that. Reagan was the anti-Kennedy. And if you read either the Bernstein book, Promises Kept, the Harper and Krieg book John F. Kennedy: The Promise Revisited, or DOnald Gibson's book, Battling Wall Street, you will see just how progressive and effective Kennedy's economic policies were. See, when Kennedy was president the effective corporate tax rate was about 25%. Today its less than half that. Because crazy Ron actually thought corporations should not pay any taxes at all. Because he said, look if you pay taxes on your stock, that's enough. But then, Crazy Ron also wanted to lower that one, the capital gains tax.

What did all these have in common? They switched the tax load from the rich to the middle class. Thus began the gutting of the middle class in America. Which eventually led to 2007-08 near collapse of the economic system.

Kennedy was not a globalist. He wanted to reward companies for investing in America. He also was, as GIbson shows, a Keynesian. And he firmly believed in increasing productivity and efficiency.

Those three books really explain Kennedy's economic ideas. Although the Harper-Krieg book is very hard to get today.

Kennedy's economic ideas were so effective that they carried well into the Johnson years. It all came undone because of the costs of the Vietnam War. Which introduced the plague of stagflation.

The Reagan-Thatcher belief in Friedman and Hayek have brought this country to the brink of economic bankruptcy. I mean the latest city to declare is San Bernardino. But this was always their plan. To bankrupt the public sector so it could not control the private sector. Which was a warning issued by Galbraith many years ago in The Affluent Society.

So its no surprise that McAdams, who is anti-Kennedy to his fingertips, would be from the Austrian School.