Friday, October 07, 2005

two peas in an economic pod

President Lyndon Johnson thought that the US economy could support a war and his Great Society program. He thought surely there could be an economic boom in the late 1960's like there was in the late 1940's.
There wasn't. Economic growth stopped.

Forty years later another Texan thought a war could be fought, taxes cut and serious energy conservation could go by the wayside with the help of an expansive economy. Inflation returned.

Johnson tried to provide guns and butter without raising taxes. George Bush tried to serve up large tax cuts without reducing spending or addressing the nation's rapacious thirst for motor fuels, particularly gasoline.

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