Headlines mention Jack Kemp as Dole's VP candidate (a terrible role for him) and as a pro football quarterback. But his true legacy is the example of the generation-long boom precipitated by the passage of his Kemp-Roth bill. You have to remember (or learn, if you are young) that before Kemp-Roth the Republican Party was the party advocating balanced budgets, and the Democratic Party was continually pushing for giveaways. So the Democrats were buying the popular vote, and the Republican politicians found themselves pushing for the taxes to pay for it. Which is why Kemp criticized Dole, an old-school conservative, as "the tax collector for the welfare state."Kemp concluded that tax rates were already above the point of negative returns, and that there was no point in the "root canal economics" of attempting to out-tax the Democrats' lust to milk the Treasury. It was his leadership which changed the Republican Party to the low-tax-rate party, leaving the Democrats to worry about the inflationary consequences of their own spending. When Reagan adopted the Kemp-Roth plan, journalists and other critics began calling it "Reagan-Kemp-Roth" while mocking it. In the words of Ronald Reagan:
Now, I knew I was in for it when the hostile critics dubbed our economic plan Reaganomics. They said we couldn't do it. But while the naysayers complained, we went to work.Today inflation has fallen from more than 12 percent to 1.8 percent for the last 12 months. Interest rates are down. Mortgage rates are down. And we've seen the creation of almost 11.7 million jobs in less than the last 4 years -- more jobs than Western Europe and Japan put together have created in the past 10 years. You know, I really, though, found out our economic plan was working when they stopped calling it Reaganomics.
You have put your finger on the basic principle of Democrat Party politics and indeed the root promise of Marxism.
Something for Nothing.
It’s the oldest scam since the dawn of mankind and a very easy sell.