Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    President Ronald Reagan's Initial Actions Project
    President Ronald Reagan's Initial Actions Project
    President Ronald Reagan's Initial Actions Project
    Ebook85 pages49 minutes

    President Ronald Reagan's Initial Actions Project

    By Arthur B. Laffer and White House Staff

    3/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    When Ronald Reagan took office, he was facing an economic downturn similar to the one our country is currently experiencing. Key members of Reagan’s staff prepared an Initial Actions Project, which takes every branch of government, including Congress, into consideration, and offers a clear and concise blueprint of how Reagan’s economic policies were achieved. As a model for President Obama, who is dealing with the daunting demands of a nation in turmoil, the significance of this report has never been more timely. History proves that President Reagan’s policies led to economic growth; will President Obama overturn this invaluable legacy? Only time—and history—will tell.

    Featuring a special Introduction by Arthur B. Laffer, who also worked in the Reagan White House, President Ronald Reagan’s Initial Actions Project puts the IAP action plan in perspective and provides valuable insight into the most important economic issues of our time.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThreshold Editions
    Release dateApr 28, 2009
    ISBN9781439165935
    President Ronald Reagan's Initial Actions Project
    Author

    Arthur B. Laffer

    Arthur B. Laffer, Ph.D. is the founder and chairman of Laffer Associates, an economic research and consulting firm.  A member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board for both of his two terms, he invented the Laffer Curve and triggered a world-wide tax-cutting movement in the 1980s.  Dr. Laffer received a B.A. in economics from Yale University and received a MBA and Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University.

    Read more from Arthur B. Laffer

    Related to President Ronald Reagan's Initial Actions Project

    Related ebooks

    Business For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The 1970s Weren’t What You Think

      Jul 11, 2022

      The 1970s Weren’t What You Think
      12 min read

    • Article

      Time for a Modern-Day New Deal

      Jul 21, 2020

      Time for a Modern-Day New Deal
      11 min read

    • Article

      Institutional Amnesia

      Jun 24, 2021

      A MONG HIS MANY quotable remarks, Milton Friedman’s observation that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” stands out. Friedman’s claim was not just that excessive growth of the quantity of money was one of several causes of infl

      3 min read

    • Article

      Ideology + Competence = Success

      Nov 24, 2022

      LIZ TRUSS’S PREMIERSHIP was short, but the debris — misjudged ideas and shattered reputations — may take years to clear. According to William Hague in the Times, the message was that “ideology is dead” and “it’s competence we need now”. In his view,

      3 min read

    • Article

      Get Your Portfolio In Order

      Mar 1, 2023

      Get Your Portfolio In Order
      6 min read

    • Article

      Inflation, Remixed

      Sep 15, 2022

      Inflation, Remixed
      17 min read

    • Article

      Dissection Of A Doomed Doctrine

      Oct 27, 2022

      IF YOU HAVE SPENT ANY TIME in leftist spaces over the past 20 years, you’ll have heard repeatedly that the cause of our many social and political ills is neoliberalism. It is rather like the experience of the great social anthropologist, E.E. Evans-P

      4 min read

    • Article

      Move Over, Markets. Big Government Is Back.

      Apr 8, 2021

      Big government has been out of fashion for 40 years. Now the authorities everywhere are using state spending to prime the post-pandemic economic pump.

      3 min read

    • Article

      What Is Supply-Side Economics? Four Decades Later Wikipedia and Academic Economists Still Don’t Know

      Nov 1, 2020

      It is difficult for truth to emerge anywhere. History, politics, science, medicine, crime and punishment, any academic subject, neighborhood gossip—wherever one looks, falsehood abounds. It is no different for supply-side economics. It has been four

      6 min read

    • Article

      Economic Story Hour

      Jan 23, 2020

      Economic Story Hour
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Markets in the Age of Trump

      Nov 12, 2016

      AS THEY SAY IN THE MARKETS, PAST PERFORMANCE IS no guarantee of future returns. Donald Trump’s surprise presidential victory has turned the markets, which have run at record highs for the past few years, upside down, with precipitous drops on electio

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Cause For Celebration

      Sep 30, 2020

      A Cause For Celebration
      15 min read

    • Article

      Malignant Monetary Monocentricity

      Sep 1, 2020

      The monetary authority of the United States, the Federal Reserve, is widely perceived to be independent of politics. Founded with the relatively limited intention of formalizing the interbank clearing system, it would soon morph into a true central b

      26 min read

    • Article

      The Big Idea: Do Governments Really Control Their Economies?

      Oct 17, 2022

      “It’s the economy, stupid.” That was the constant refrain of strategist James Carville when talking to staffers on the Clinton campaign back in 1992. Thirty years on, it remains decent advice to political aides. As Liz Truss is discovering, if voters

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for President Ronald Reagan's Initial Actions Project

    3/5

    2 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      President Ronald Reagan's Initial Actions Project - Arthur B. Laffer

      Threshold Editions

      A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

      1230 Avenue of the Americas

      New York, NY 10020

      Introduction copyright © 2009 by Arthur B. Laffer

      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Threshold Editions Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

      THRESHOLD EDITIONS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

      ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-6593-5

      ISBN-10: 1-4391-6593-9

      Visit us on the World Wide Web:

      http://www.SimonandSchuster.com

      Contents

      A SPECIAL INTRODUCTION

      BRIEF MACROECONOMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

      PRESIDENT REAGAN

      PRESIDENT OBAMA

      SUMMARY

      SECTION I OVERVIEW

      INTRODUCTION

      INITIAL STRATEGIC CONSIDERATION

      CONCLUSION

      SECTION II ROOTS

      THE 1980 ELECTORAL MANDATE: FRAME FOR GOVERNING

      THE PRESIDENTIAL OPPORTUNITY TO LEAD

      CONSENSUS AND COALITION BUILDING

      SECTION III POLICY INITIATIVES

      ECONOMIC POLICY: A NEW DIRECTION

      LEADERSHIP AND DEVELOPING THE ECONOMIC PROGRAM

      FOREIGN POLICY AT THE BEGINNING

      STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES

      EARLY INITIATIVES

      INTERNATIONAL CRISES

      DOMESTIC POLICY: THE ECONOMIC IMPACT EVALUATION PHASE

      SECTION IV HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

      A SPECIAL INTRODUCTION

      by Arthur B. Laffer, Ph.D.

      [S]hould the economy remain in its current disarray, the administration could quickly lose control of the economic policy agenda. By summer, ignited by a weak economy, the Congress could press for a host of measures to stimulate the economy generally and to shore up particularly weak sectors such as autos, housing, thrift institutions, and small businesses. Under such circumstances, the administration could easily find itself on the defensive…. We would essentially be reduced to reacting to events and congressional initiatives rather than shaping the economic agenda.

      FINAL REPORT OF THE INITIAL ACTIONS PROJECT FOR PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN, JANUARY 29, 1981

      LARRY SUMMERS, DIRECTOR of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama, should be issuing such a warning for today’s top policymakers instead of succumbing to the exigencies of the crowd. The above quote actually derives from a little-known policy blueprint that President Ronald Reagan followed during his first six months in office. Put together by Richard Wirthlin and David Gergen (my Yale classmate), the Initial Actions Project (IAP) is a report worth studying to compare the styles and policies of the all-time hero of conservatives, President Reagan, a man I still refer to as the Real President, with the newly anointed liberal hero, President Obama. The similarities between early 1981, when Reagan took office, and early 2009 are uncanny.

      Before delving into the IAP, let me walk you through some economic history of the United States. I am an economist, and it’s obviously in my nature to judge a society by its economy, but that really should be how we all judge our society. Bad economics produces all sorts of collateral problems. The first of all goals is always economics. If a nation has a strong economy, the rest will fall into place. But with a bad economy, all hell breaks loose. Bad economics is the breeding ground for all sorts of other problems society faces. Unemployment is a waste of our precious resources, causing misery and personal indignity.

      As is common practice in my profession, the world of political economics is divided into four all-inclusive grand partitions: fiscal policy, monetary policy, trade policy, and incomes policy. There’s substantial overlap and ambiguity when it comes to the details of which actions go in which category, but the broad boundaries should be fairly understandable.

      Fiscal Policy

      FISCAL POLICY ENCOMPASSES the domain of government spending and taxing, whether at the federal level or at the state and local levels. And in this arena, the conceptual framework of just how fiscal policy works has been turned upside down since the mid-twentieth century. How fiscal policy actually works is discussed later.

      Monetary Policy

      MONETARY POLICY IS more narrowly focused on Federal Reserve policies regarding money supply, prices, and those sorts of arcana. It is unquestionably an incredibly important part of the equation. Yet because it is, at least in theory, supposed to be beyond the realm of the administration (the president nominates Fed governors, but the Federal Reserve Board is an independent body), I am going to touch on it only briefly. The story of monetary policy is the story of wisdom lost, then reacquired. Using Star Trek

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1