When in doubt, blame Reagan -- all-purpose ethos of liberal radio host Thom Hartmann.
Anyone listening to Hartmann's program, among the most popular in that increasingly desolate landscape known as liberal radio, won't wait long before he slams Ronald Reagan for all manner of economic sin.
But in his ardor to disparage the Gipper, Hartmann has a tendency to get the specifics wrong.
For example, during a memorable anti-Reagan rant in 2014, Hartmann claimed Reagan invaded Grenada -- in 1983 -- to deflect attention from the stock market crash, which took place in 1987. Capable though Reagan was, he never did master that enviable skill of turning back time.
Hartmann got the chronology wrong again during a conversation with a caller to his show on Jan. 21 --
CALLER: The thing is, the Republicans want you to believe that if you cut taxes from 50 percent to 25 percent, they'll get more revenue. But in fact the Laffer Curve tells you that if you cut taxes from 50 percent to 25 percent, you lose revenue.
HARTMANN: Right, and this is exactly what happened, by the way, you know, if you go back and you look at the history of the Reagan tax cuts, the first tax cut was from 74 percent down to 50 percent and that was in -80 what, -2 or -3? And it wasn't until '87 that he got it really, you know, way down there and, and when he did, what did we have? The largest stock market crash since the Great Depression and, and the country went into a recession. ... And not only that, he had to jack up taxes on working people which I think contributed to the recession, doubling the payroll tax and, you know, generally adding all kinds of taxes.
Got that? In Hartmann's dubious recollection, the stock market crashed under Reagan -- "and the country went into a recession." Notice how Hartmann's narration is devoid of dates, since including them would demolish his premise.
During Reagan's presidency, the market crashed in October 1987. If this was the cause of the next recession, as Hartmann suggests, it must have been one of those delayed-reaction downturns-- because it didn't start until July 1990, nearly three years later.
Yesterday's Wall Street Journal ran a story under the headline, "Warnings Mount, but Recession May Not Come to Pass." The story included a chart with three bar graphs for declines in stocks, corporate profits, and industrial production from 1945 to the present day.
The graph showing drops in stocks includes this illuminating fact next to an arrow pointing to the market crash of '87 -- "Decline of more than 25% with no recession after." (emphasis added). Along the same lines, the graph for corporate profits indicates that the '87 crash resulted in a "decline of more than 10% with no recession after" (emphasis added again), the only times this has occurred for both stocks and corporate profits since the end of World War II. Moreover, the graph for industrial production showed barely a bent from the '87 crash.
Hartman also claims that Reagan raising payroll taxes "contributed to the recession," implying this was done in response to an economy that tanked. But the payroll tax hike was negotiated by Reagan with House Speaker Tip O'Neill in 1983 -- four years before the market crash. Hmm, perhaps Reagan was actually trying to divert attention from his invasion of Grenada ...?
On the bright side, it's not often you hear a liberal point out that high taxes will worsen a recession.
