Now, unfortunately, just like in Cuba, someone won because of our youth.

Let us learn from history and may it not be repeated.

Fix the unjust and that that has to be fixed and please, let freedom ring.

Cheesy, but there ya go.

Good luck, Steve!

If he keeps up taxing us, we will surely have to depend on our government. There goes the chances of creativity, there goes another Einstein, Edison, et al.

We won’t be answering to ourselves, but to our government.

Go figure.

As in “taxation without representation, etc., etc.,….”

Does anything ‘ring a bell’ with anyone?

GOD bless Reagan!!!! I’m fifty one and recently lost my mother at ninety one. Regardless, we were all fighting for the same thing…. freedom for individual rights.

I am of Cuban and Irish descent (thank you very much). Some social things are pretty much a throwaway thing… you know what I mean. Science, the arts and literary studies is where it’s at.

I am a Daly and a Byrne; I am Cuban and I am telling you that Socialism and Communism suck. There’s no other way of telling you except through experience and THAT is not a very pleasant thing.

So, in my grandfather’s name, my father’s (who fought against Castro)… gain streingth in what you have and fight to keep it.

Look to our Constitution and to our stars.

Ad astra.

According to a 2002 Treasury Department study, TEFRA alone raised taxes by almost 1 percent of the gross domestic product, making it at the time, the largest peacetime tax increase in American history.

In 1983, Reagan signed legislation raising the Social Security tax rate. This is a tax increase that lives with us still, since it initiated automatic increases in the taxable wage base. As a consequence, those with moderately high earnings see their payroll taxes rise every single year.

According to a table in the 1990 budget, the net effect of all the Reagan tax increases was to raise taxes by $164 billion in 1992, or 2.6 percent of GDP. This is equivalent to almost $500 billion in today’s economy.

While Reagan was lowering taxes rates for the top personal income tax bracket, he was raising social security and medicare taxes, among other things. In just about every year that Reagan was in office he signed into law another major tax increase. These included record setting tax increases. Reagan then, like Obama now, cut taxes overall. Obama is doing now, pretty much the same thing that Reagan was doing then: using government spending in an effort to stimulate the economy. Early in Reagan’s tenure, the bad economy coupled with his exorbitant spending budgets created a record deficit of 6% of GDP. During the Reagan years, in order to cover new federal budget deficits, the United States borrowed heavily both domestically and abroad, raising the national debt from $700 billion to $3 trillion, and in short order the United States moved from being the world’s largest international creditor to the world’s largest debtor nation. Over the course of his eight years in office, Reagan’s policies quadrupled our national debt. By comparison, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obama’s spending plans and tax cuts will result in *merely* (sarcastic emphasis) a doubling of our national debt over the next ten years. Still huge, still troubling, but proportionally speaking, not as huge or as troubling as the deficits that Reagan ran up.

The biggest difference between Reagan and Obama is that Obama is spending primarily on infrastructure, health care and education, while Reagan spent money primarily on infrastructure and the military. Obama is targeting his tax cuts to benefit the middle class, and Reagan targeted his tax cuts to benefit the rich.

Ironically however, Reagan’s first tax proposal, the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, the act that dramatically reduced taxes for the top personal income tax bracket and surged the man into super-star status with so many of his followers; that act had already previously been endorsed by the Democratic Congress beginning in 1978. Another one of the popular Reagan tax reforms, the Tax Reform Act of 1986, was in fact first proposed by two junior liberal Democratic members of Congress in 1982. Similarly, the “monetarist experiment” to control inflation was initiated in October 1979, following Carter’s appointment of Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. So, Reagan wasn’t exactly revolutionary, or swimming against the current of Democratic resistance with regard to his economic policies.

Certainly Reagan deserves credit for a lot, but he also has this tendency to take credit for things he really doesn’t deserve too much credit for (like freeing the Iranian hostages or winning the Cold War). You gotta hand it to him though, he certainly did know how to stand-in to accept the credit for other people’s hard work.

Like, for another example with regard to economic deregulation (back on topic). The deregulation of the airlines and trucking industries had already occurred during the Carter Administration, and other significant de-regulatory reforms were well under their way in the railroad, telephone, natural gas, and banking industries; all during the Carter Administration. Contrary to popular Reagan mythology, the reduction of economic regulation in the country actually slowed down after the change from the Carter Administration to the Reagan Administration. Worse, in fact, in notable cases the progress of deregulation and the opening-up of free-trade markets were stifled and even reversed during the Reagan administration, as was the case with the introduction of new import barriers.