Democratic historian Arthur Schlesinger dismissed President Ronald Reagan’s belief that the Soviet Union was nearing economic collapse. On his trip to Moscow in the early 1980s, Schlesinger claimed to have “found more goods in the shops, more food in the markets, more cars on the street – more of almost everything, except, for some reason, caviar.”
As late as 1984, Democrat economist John Kenneth Galbraith declared: “the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast to the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower.” Countless other Democrats were enthusiastic of big government operation in whatever format.
A best seller and the most influential economics textbook in the United States since World War II was Democrat Paul Samuelson’s Economics which included a graph plotting the economic growth of both the United States and the Soviet Union. The American output was above the Soviets, but its predicted growth was slower than the Soviets.
The idea was that American free-market capitalism could not possibly compete with a system managed by the best socialist minds. With the incredible wealth of natural resources in the Soviet Union, economists believed it was only a matter of time that collectivist economics surpassed American output.
In each successive Economics’ edition over the years, the graph forecasted that the Soviets would overtake American economic growth approximately twenty years in the future. By the 11th edition of Economics (1980), the graph still showed quicker Soviet growth compared to the United States. However, the Soviets were no closer to overtaking the Americans.
It was confusing, but for some odd reason the Soviet economy failed to surpass the American economy. So, Samuelson advanced the date of intersection. It was not until the 1985 edition of Economics that Samuelson finally eliminated the bogus graph.
The previous year, Reagan’s economic policies had some success when he won 525 Electoral College Votes in the presidential election. The Democrats were a little behind with their 13 Electoral Votes. However, Reagan failed to be victorious in all 50 states; he only won 49.
At this point, the Soviet Union was not the success that Democrats believed. As the world’s first socialist society, the Soviet Union experienced considerable economic stagnation because of economic inefficiency. Revealing is a saying among Soviet workers in the 1970s: “As long as the bosses pretend they are paying us a decent wage, we will pretend that we are working.”
Before the self-destruction of the Soviet economy, there were ample statistics available to prove the inefficiency of the Soviet system. In the 1970s, approximately 34 million people of the Soviet Union’s population of 250 million produced the nation’s food whereas only 4.3 million of America’s 220 million were in food production.
Another difference was that the Soviet Union did not produce enough food for its own people while the United States produced a surplus for export equal to 25 percent of total Soviet production.
A comparison within the Soviet Union itself is also instructive. Agricultural workers on government collectives had permission to have private plots in which there were no taxes; using less than one percent of total Soviet agricultural land, these workers produced 27 percent of the total value of Soviet agricultural production.
Democrat economists often get roughed up by reality and empirical evidence. In the 1970s their approach to stagflation (stagnant economy and high inflation) was a political disaster. Welcome Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980. More recently Democrat economist Paul Krugman predicted that a Trump presidency would have a terrible effect on the stock market. Oh, oh! Also interesting was Democrat praise for and admiration of Venezuela not too long ago.
I understand the appeal of seeing Democratic delusions as a source of entertainment. But as an economic historian who cares about job creation, wealth creation, and the reduction of poverty, I would prefer that Democrat economists took up another line of work. There is a time and place for fantasy. I bet their imaginations would receive a warm welcome in Hollywood.
Sources:
The Cross and Reaganomics (2013) and America’s Failing Economy and the Rise of Ronald Reagan (2018)
Initially published in The Conservative Prof.
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