[SAJ]

You're two administrations too late. LBJ's insistence on prosecuting the Vietnam war WITHOUT a corresponding tax increase (1st time in history, btw) AND fund his idiotic Great Society scheme (''...we can have both guns and butter...'') was the ignition to both the US breaking off the Bretton Woods quasi-gold standard in 1971 and to the subsequent grotesque inflation of the 1970s. The oil sheikhs early on made the sensible ECONOMIC decision to raise the dollar-denominated price of oil because, when gold and dollars became infungible by Nixon's decree (effectively), they saw the handwriting on the wall that the dollar would begin a rapid decline.

[neverdem]

IIRC, the beloved LBJ added a 5% surcharge to the income tax, no?

[elbucko]

You're two administrations too late.

I am aware of LBJ's policies and the subsequent inflation of both the war in Vietnam and "Poverty". I kept my remarks to the 70's for simplicities sake. However, I stand by the drift at the end of my post that I don't believe anybody really knows what is actually true and what is merely theory in economics. If the Oil Sheiks really did foresee the inflation of the 70's, they missed some other economic indicators of the 80's and 90's. In short, I believe economics is, at all levels of human experience and at all levels of expertise, essentially a crap shoot. Economists, are no more than "handicappers" with diplomas.

[BabsC]

You're two administrations too late. LBJ's insistence on prosecuting the Vietnam war WITHOUT a corresponding tax increase

Didn't he also open up ths social security funds to the general accounts to pay for the escalation?

[okie01]

"LBJ's insistence on prosecuting the Vietnam war WITHOUT a corresponding tax increase (1st time in history, btw) AND fund his idiotic Great Society scheme (''...we can have both guns and butter...'') was the ignition to both the US breaking off the Bretton Woods quasi-gold standard in 1971 and to the subsequent grotesque inflation of the 1970s."

Add another adverse effect attributable to LBJ. According to him, "currently, the federal government receives tax money and pays it into two pots. But, if we put all the money that's coming into the government into one pot, we can afford to wage both wars -- in Viet Nam and on Poverty. See? When we consolidate these accounts, the deficit in this one goes away".

And, thus was the federal government's operating budget and the Social Security Fund consolidated...into "one pot".

So, who was the worst of last three Democrat presidents? Clinton, Carter or LBJ? It is the stuff of great arguments.