Bernie Sanders lawyering up.

Ha, completely agree. You have no idea how many right wingers I've argued with who think everything is driven by money, and passion is myth. Just shows you where there minds are LOL.

@luckylucious: Much innovation come from the military and wars. That would NOT make me hunger for war just to have innovation. Silly argument. Reagan did much to hurt the middle class and the economy. Not sure why some people are blinded to that fact.

Holy crap... well said.

I remember having a very similar discussion with him on this topic before. But you said it way better than I could have said.

@LJS9502_basic: @Maroxad: @AlexKidd5000:

Its okay though I'd rather go off historical facts rather than emotional buzzfeed esque opinion pieces.

There are plenty of time periods I provided where there is direct correlation between deregulation and innovation and whether you choose to acknowledge them is entirely up to you.

Here is an example and not a rant/circlejerk that is backed up with a source;

"Airline deregulation in the late 1970s led to expanded cargo service, generally reduced cargo rates, and spurred substantial innovation in the types of services offered. In particular, nationwide overnight shipping became more affordable and virtually ubiquitous. The unanticipated nature of some of the results of deregulation in the 1970s suggests the possibility of further gains awaiting discovery in other regulated areas, including those portions of the air cargo industry that remain regulated."

Source: https://www.mercatus.org/publication/unleashing-innovation-deregulation-air-cargo-transportation

While we're at it lets talk about Reagonomics:

"His policies resulted in the largest peacetime economic boom in American history and nearly 35 million more jobs."

Source: http://www.heritage.org/taxes/report/the-real-reagan-economic-record-responsible-and-successful-fiscal-policy

On top of that the black employment rate improved greatly under Reagan, another fact.

http://cafehayek.com/2013/12/some-data-on-reagan-and-black-unemployment.html

There is also the laffer curve as well.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/laffercurve.asp

So in conclusion, basic economics and actual history basically debunks all of the buzzfeed editors of Gamespot.

And again, bring facts next time and we'll sit down with a glass of wine and speak like adults lol.

Correlation is not causation, you said two things that happened during the same time and assumed one must be the cause of the other. That is NOT a fact even if you claim it to be, you cannot prove that deregulation directly caused any of those things. You also provided us with a few select years of Americas existence and tried to make a blanket statement to cover all time.

You are also very narrow sighted for only considering corporate growth when dealing with deregulation. A country is much more than how much it can produce for how little, you need to also look at how it effects the quality of life and the welfare of the people in that country. Reaganomics turned out to be a disaster for the middle class of this country for example, no amount of corporate growth in that time is worth the side effects.

In all, capitalism and deregulation is suppose to support corporate growth and innovation but at what cost? You can't possibly expect the GDP to increase forever on a planet with finite resources, the idea is just silly.

@Nick3306:

Yeah I can:

"Airline deregulation in the late 1970s led to expanded cargo service, generally reduced cargo rates, and spurred substantial innovation in the types of services offered. In particular, nationwide overnight shipping became more affordable and virtually ubiquitous. The unanticipated nature of some of the results of deregulation in the 1970s suggests the possibility of further gains awaiting discovery in other regulated areas, including those portions of the air cargo industry that remain regulated."

Source: https://www.mercatus.org/publication/unleashing-innovation-deregulation-air-cargo-transportation

Reagonomics being a disaster:

While we're at it lets talk about Reagonomics:

"His policies resulted in the largest peacetime economic boom in American history and nearly 35 million more jobs."

Source: http://www.heritage.org/taxes/report/the-real-reagan-economic-record-responsible-and-successful-fiscal-policy

On top of that the black employment rate improved greatly under Reagan, another fact.

http://cafehayek.com/2013/12/some-data-on-reagan-and-black-unemployment.html

There is also the laffer curve as well.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms

Yawn. Is this really the best you can do? Lol.

@luckylucious: Ya yawn is right, your Reaganomics source is really biased (they even call themselves conservative lol). I could give you 100 biased sources showing Reaganomics killed Americas middle class. The black unemployment falling 2.8% over 8 years does not do as much as I think you'd like to express that all Americans are better off after Reaganomics. Try harder next time man.

I think the problem here is that some people think regulation is all or nothing. I'll be the first to admit there are regulations that are very unneeded and hurtful, but there are also tons of regulations that are needed to protect the citizens.

@Nick3306: @LJS9502_basic

Reagan recovered the economy actually;

"During this seven-year recovery, the economy grew by almost one-third, the equivalent of adding the entire economy of West Germany, the third-largest in the world at the time, to the U.S. economy. In 1984 alone real economic growth boomed by 6.8%, the highest in 50 years. Nearly 20 million new jobs were created during the recovery, increasing U.S. civilian employment by almost 20%. Unemployment fell to 5.3% by 1989."

Standard for living literally increased so again youre wrong;

"Real per-capita disposable income increased by 18% from 1982 to 1989, meaning the American standard of living increased by almost 20% in just seven years. The poverty rate declined every year from 1984 to 1989, dropping by one-sixth from its peak. The stock market more than tripled in value from 1980 to 1990, a larger increase than in any previous decade.:

Reaganomics boom:

"We call this period, 1982-2007, the twenty-five year boom–the greatest period of wealth creation in the history of the planet. In 1980, the net worth–assets minus liabilities–of all U.S. households and business … was $25 trillion in today’s dollars. By 2007, … net worth was just shy of $57 trillion. Adjusting for inflation, more wealth was created in America in the twenty-five year boom than in the previous two hundred years."

Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2011/05/05/reaganomics-vs-obamanomics-facts-and-figures/amp/

Bring sources next time?

The actual numbers arent biased now are they?

@luckylucious: You literally just linked me a forbes opinion piece that doesn't even cite where it gets its numbers from.... really man? The author literally worked for reagan lol

@Nick3306:

Peter Ferrara is director of policy for the Carleson Center for Public Policy and senior fellow for entitlement and budget policy at the Heartland Institute. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as associate deputy attorney general of the United States under President George H. W. Bush. He is the author of America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, forthcoming from HarperCollins.

He also went to Harvard, twice, but yeah someone who went to Harvard and served under the President isnt a reliable contributor.

Haha is this all Liberals have? These are actual sourced numbers and you are telling me its an opinion piece LOL

All you have is an opinion piece from a guy who worked for Reagan who didn't cite his statistics, nothing you say can help you recover from that lmao. As if going to Harvard twice means you aren't biased somehow lol.

@Nick3306:

*Recovers in 30 seconds*

"Near the end of Reagan’s second term, tax revenues received by the U.S. government increased to $909 billion in 1988 from $517 billion in 1980. Inflation was reduced to 4%, and the unemployment rate fell below 6%. Although economists and politicians continue to argue over the effects of Reaganomics, it did usher in one of the longest and strongest periods of prosperity in American history. Between 1982 and 2000, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) grew nearly 14-fold, and the economy added 40 million jobs."

Read more: Reaganomics http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/reaganomics.asp#ixzz4n1FwGZLH

"And after 1982, Reagan's faith was rewarded with a long and strong economic boom, driven by the greatest bull market seen on Wall Street since the 1920s. The Reagan Era, which began in such dire circumstances, would end up being remembered as a period of great prosperity."

"That growth continued, unabated, through the rest of Reagan's two-term presidency, marking the longest peacetime period of unbroken economic expansion yet seen in American history. (An even longer boom would occur a decade later, during a Bill Clinton presidency that largely followed Reagan's lead in economic policy.) Overall, between 1981 and 1989, real GDP per capita increased by nearly 23%; in the same span of time, the value of the stock market more than tripled."

Source: http://www.shmoop.com/reagan-era/economy.html

In conclusion, you are wrong with no sources, while I have sources from 4 different articles including a guy who went to Harvard and worked with Reagan.

Reaganamics created a recession. smh

Lmfao you arent even reading your own articles through at this point, that's the problem with posting random articles from google that you think agree with you. It is also very funny how you show the tax revenues increased but fail to mention that Reagan actually raised taxes many times in the later years because the tax revenue was flat and didn't increase like they had planned. You specifically leave out all the negatives (like a heavily increased national debt under Reagan) to try to paint Reaganomics as successful when even the best economists don't agree on how successful it was due to it having good and bad effects at the same time. Only difference is that the bad effects have lasted much longer than the good ones.

Source: http://www.shmoop.com/reagan-era/economy.html

. Real wages, which had increased steadily from 1945 to 1972 but then stalled through the stagflation era, remained flat through the 1980s as well. Unemployment declined from the atrocious highs of the late 1970s and early 1980s, but the high-paying blue-collar industrial jobs that had been the mainstay of the midcentury economy continued to disappear.

In short, the economic outlook for middle- and working-class families who depended on wages for their incomes was somewhat better than it had been during the bleak 1970s, but still significantly worse than it had been during the 1950s and '60s.

During Ronald Reagan's presidency, the wealthiest one-fifth of American households (those who naturally owned the most stock) saw their incomes increase by 14%. Meanwhile, the poorest one-fifth (who presumably owned no stock) endured an income decline of 24%, while the incomes of the middle three-fifths of American families stayed more or less flat. This uneven pattern represented a marked departure from the earlier economic expansions of the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, which had generated smaller returns for investors but raised income levels across all classes of society.

@Nick3306: Everyone and their grandma knows about the recession of 1982. Reagan was in office for a year at that point, you fail to mention the next decade though dont you.

Yawn. What you quited said Reagan helped the middle class, even if it was only better than the 70s, still more than Jimbo.

In other words, no facts? Just feelings?

I didn't say anything about the 1982 recession lol but nice try there, you did strategically forget to comment on the mass debt and tax raises Reagan had to do when he realized his own ideology was flawed. He did not help the middle class as their wages were still stagnated (income decline of 24% for the poor as said by your own article) and made sure they wouldn't continue to grow for years to come, the quote that the economic outlook was slightly better is due to the upper class doing better. Yet again you fall victim to your shortsightedness and refuse to see what happened long term, and that is middle and lower class wages have been mostly flat, if not declining while the upper class continues to rise significantly. That is why the wealth gap keeps growing in this country every year.

I'm sure you can read these graphs and see the common year where the spread began. (Bonus: Hey look, they even cited where the information came from! Pretty cool huh?) But again, these are correlations and are not to be represented as complete fact.

In other words, you are selectively ignoring the bad parts over and over and passing off correlations as causation and calling them facts when they are, by definition, not facts. I know your feelings get in the way of you looking at this objectively (even I agreed Reaganomics helped the country in multiple ways, just the negatives outweighed them) but you must look past them and think about this from all angles. Spewing opinion articles from biased sources that don't cite their stats and never address the negatives is not going to help you.

There was a recession right after reagan left office. And no, any time Reaganomics has ever been implemented, it has ALWAYS resulted in complete economic disaster. Look at Kansas.

They have nothing on him, have you been keeping up with the story? its all bullshit.

That also depends on the infrastructure in place.

Single Payer healthcare, while it works in some countries. Would have a difficult time working in other places, simply put because society isnt strucutred in a way to support it. Instantly adopting Single Payer in the US, would lead to disaster if no other changes were made to accommodate for it.

That said, I have yet to see Reaganomics work. While capitalism can work, complete deregulation and no safety net would lead to disaster, just like too much government would.

So again, ill go ahead and grant you every example youve given (all for the sake of avoiding argument here). How are you going by historical fact? At best you're citing America for a 100 year period. What about the rest of human history? Are you suggesting we went from cave men to 'Merica? For some reason, myself bringing up the rest of human history, the rest of the worlds nations who function completely opposite of what you say is needed for success, is equivalent to a buzzfeed opinion piece. And again i just go back to this being an issue about you not understanding capitalism or economics or government for that matter.

Why dont you bring up the nearly 3000 years of China being the world leaders in advancements? I mean... if you're attempting to prove something, dont you think demonstrating 3000 years would be better than 100? Or as i asked before, why not Germany or Switzerland or Japan? Switzerland has the goddamn Hadron Collider dude. If you want to talk about being at the top of advancements... there you go. You don't get much more advanced than attempting to create mini-black holes. Oh... but maybe youre really just talking about general, consumer industry right? But if you are, you're ignoring that you cant have one without the other. You want to talk about "ill bring up reality you wont!" but every single time you're confronted with reality, you shrug it off becasue it does not fit your predetermined idea. I mentioned Germany before and you said "haha go ahead" without even addressing wtf i was saying.

As for Reaganomics, i think if you're paying attention youll notice that this idea or similar ideas, are good as a temporary option. They are unsustainable to the rest of the nation aside from wall street and even then its just a matter of time until it crashes for good.

@kod: *Glances over angry rant about China and curse words*

Time to be the bigger man and address you like a civilized adult;

I am all for putting the necessary leashes on Capitalism when needed, but that also doesnt work in the long term, so striking a balance between tax cuts and Govt is an important quality leader must possess. This starts with lowering taxes for the rich so they can produce jobs but also making sure the society doesn't turn into a corporatist state which is possible but requires program expansions of medicare, social security and other investments in public infrastructure to support such ventures.

Capitalism works but also needs some necessary regulatory qualities that dont involve smothering businesses with higher taxes, it can be and has been done by presidents such as Clinton. 2008 was caused by the lousy policies of the Bush administration, mkre investments in public infrastructure are necessary once you get to that point.

Except the most stable economies in the world do this and the reason for this is because your alternative, is a delusion. This idea that if we give these people more money they will provide more jobs is a paper theory, in reality, in practice, we dont see it happen. Id be hard pressed to say you could find even a blip on a map that shows this functions on a very short term basis, but we know it does not function on any kind of long term basis and we know its not a sustainable model for any nation.

And when i say "stable" btw, every economy and nation will have its up's and down's, the point and objective is to reduce the affects of a decline on the majority of its citizens. What you are suggesting, or what you seem to be promoting, has shown to have the opposite affect.

Which all requires proper taxation, proper living wage laws and workers rights laws... these are all what? Heavy regulations.

And what about these programs prevents a corporatist state? We in America live in a corportist state and had all of this except a public option and it only took 40 years to turn a democracy into an oligarchy.

The reason for this is the inherent nature of capitalism. Its corrupt at its vary core. Its a necessary evil for a free society, but has to be extremely regulated otherwise its nature comes out, self interest takes over.

Clinton's actions caused the economic collapse we faced. His communications act, decimated small business. NAFTA decimated small business. As bad as the republicans are, Clinton might actually be worse and is the last president you want to point to. The technology boom during his administrated, actually started in the Bush administration. But was not a function of a president, it was simply a technology boom.

@kod: You can invest in those programs while still lowering taxes on the whole actually, youd be surprised how many useless programs the Federal Govt funds and how much of them we can cut to favor other programs.

Reagonomics actually produced 40 million jobs over a 20 year period as well. Its just sourced and fact at this point that the rich create jobs.

"Near the end of Reagan’s second term, tax revenues received by the U.S. government increased to $909 billion in 1988 from $517 billion in 1980. Inflation was reduced to 4%, and the unemployment rate fell below 6%. Although economists and politicians continue to argue over the effects of Reaganomics, it did usher in one of the longest and strongest periods of prosperity in American history. Between 1982 and 2000, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) grew nearly 14-fold, and the economy added 40 million jobs."

Read more: Reaganomics http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/reaganomics.asp#ixzz4n1FwGZLH

"And after 1982, Reagan's faith was rewarded with a long and strong economic boom, driven by the greatest bull market seen on Wall Street since the 1920s. The Reagan Era, which began in such dire circumstances, would end up being remembered as a period of great prosperity."

"That growth continued, unabated, through the rest of Reagan's two-term presidency, marking the longest peacetime period of unbroken economic expansion yet seen in American history. (An even longer boom would occur a decade later, during a Bill Clinton presidency that largely followed Reagan's lead in economic policy.) Overall, between 1981 and 1989, real GDP per capita increased by nearly 23%; in the same span of time, the value of the stock market more than tripled."

Source: http://www.shmoop.com/reagan-era/economy.html

These are all well sourced and unbiased numbers. Making the proper investments in public infrastructure and promoting a single payer system can co exist with a deregulated system if the proper welfare cuts, social security cuts and useless Federal depts such as the EPA are cut. On top of that you can just impose a carbon tax.

Pretty simple actually and despite your angry rants, those numbers arent lying. Capitalism produces results.

I know its the in thing to be an angry leftist right now but consider the facts first.

You've already been handled on the Reagonomics stuff, i see no need to repeat what other people have already corrected you on.

I will however point out that youve avoided the entire point. Again, even if i am to grant you everything you're saying, you are still being very narrow sighted with your examples. Examples that are so few and far between when we actually consider how many nations, governments, eras, etc. demonstrate the opposite of what youre saying, you should at leas tbe considering the idea that you are highlighting an outlier. You've also done your best to change the conversation and not focus on what youve been challenged on.

@luckylucious:

The mother of all innovation really is necessity. As well as scientific research.

Just look at the gaming industry: A good chunk of innovation comes due to percieved problems with other contemporary games and answers to various problems. The holy trinity found in RPGs came from an attempt to simulate positioning in an entirely text based game. Race'n'Chase was retooled to Grand Theft Auto, because the game had very little going for it. And Guild Wars 2 was entirely designed around what Arenanet wanted to change in the mmo industry.

As for scientific research. You can't build a computer without understanding the underlying mathematics, material sciences, physics and so on. But a computer is no good without computer science. Computer algorithms are necessary for our programs to run efficiently. Hell, some things are outright impossible to do without a good computer algorithm. The natural sciences, and computer sciences are all being researched in publicly funded universities. Funded via the government through taxpayer money. These people are not there because of capitalism. They are generally there due to their own curiousity and passion within the subject (does that also apply for you @kod?).

Needless to say, as others have previously stated. Capitalism isnt necessary for innovation, a well regulated capitalistic society can certainly help. CERN, and the Hadron Collider. I am not sure any single private organization would be willing to fund and invest in a project of such a scope. But this is where governments can step in. Governments can be great, because they can fill in niches that private individuals dont want to fill.

Both of my career paths were taken due to love and desire and not capitalism. Although the first changed because of the destruction of the music industry as it once was. The second came from a love and understanding of sciences and a desire to do something good. Its definitely not the money.... hell at this point the industry has recovered enough to where if i wanted to, i'd probably make more money going back to a record producer and engineer.

Thought as much.

I am an engineer now, but for the longest time, I was actually considering going for biochemistry, just for a desire to do something good. In many ways I regret my choice.