Nobody is perfect, so everyone all makes mistakes. Human created history and even historical failures. Some people believe that we usually repeat what we did wrongly before. It sounds similar to the British author George Bernard Shaw’s idea: “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.” However, in my opinion, that idea is completely not correct, because we must learn something from the mistakes we made in the past, so that we would not do them one more time at the present or in the future.
In my essay, I will use three examples from American history (from 1877 to the present) to disprove George Bernard Shaw’s statement. They are all the mistakes which the American made in the past have not appeared until today.
Firstly, “Vietnam
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Bush used to say a sentence which was very famous and seemed as his promise. That was “Read my lips: No new taxes”. However, in June 1990 Bush abandoned his “Read my lips. No new taxes” campaign pledge and acknowledged that new or increased taxes were necessary. Many Republican conservatives were critical of this shift, and his popularity ratings fell immediately. (8) On March 4, 1992, he said: “I thought this one compromise, and it was a compromise, would result in no more tax increases. I thought it would result in total control of domestic discretionary spending. And now we see Congress talking about raising taxes again. And some in Congress are talking about trying to break down the spending caps. And so I'm disappointed and given all of that, yes, a mistake.” (9)
Let’s talk about an example of kept promises. Barak Obama promised to Extend the Bush tax cuts for lower incomes and he kept his word. He extended the Bush tax cuts for those making less than $250000 (couples) or $200000(single). (10) He promised to Create an Advanced Manufacturing Fund to invest in peer-reviewed manufacturing processes, and once again he kept his word.
As a president, it would be terrible if that president broke his promise to the public. Once he says something, he had better follow and do exactly the same as what he said. If not, his words will become unreliable. Barak Obama was the 44th president of the United States, and it seemed that he learned a mistake from the 41st president or we can say, from the
When Ronald Reagan became the president of the United States in 1980, he took on the worst economic mess since the Great Depression. The United States was involved with the Cold War with the Soviet Union, mortgage rates were two and a half times that of the amount in 1960 (15.4%), seven million Americans were unemployed, the national debt was $934 billion dollars, and tax rates skyrocketed as high as seventy percent (Reagan, “The State of the Nation’s Economy” 290). Reagan’s predecessor Jimmy Carter planned to fix this dreadful economy of the 1970s with a tax increase of fifty billion dollars, whereas Reagan knew that the best way to fix the economy was with tax decreases. Under the Reaganomics program, “tax rates were to be cut by thirty percent. Tax revenues were to be reduced by forty-four billion dollars in 1982 and eventually result in a $500 billion reduction over the next five years. Never before in the history of the nation had a president proposed reducing taxes by so much for such a long period of time” (Wilson 25). Reagan’s tax cuts involved a greater decrease for the wealthy, but everyone else also received massive tax relief. Reagan’s idea was that when the
We learn our mistakes so we don’t make those same mistakes
Even though Reagan was very confident about his economic plan many others were weary of his ideas. George W. Bush Sr. proclaimed Reagan’s economic ideas as ‘Voodoo’ economics believing Reagan’s policy would not live up to its predicted outcome; ironically enough Bush and his son both adopted these policies during their presidencies. Many important congressmen had many fears in Reagan’s policies, they believed that imposing such tax cuts would raise inflation and cause higher interest rates. The public on the other hand, praised these
"Taxation, he declared, violated the principle that the right to earn your own keep and keep what you earn was what it meant to be free" (Foner pg. 1050). To right this wrong, "in 1981, Reagan persuaded Congress to reduce the top tax rate from 70 percent to 50 percent and to index tax brackets to take inflation into account". (Kaitlyn Miller
history though is that we can learn from our mistakes, and make sure that nothing like this ever
The difference between Dallek and Jenkins’s views was that while Jenkins believed that Reagan was not starting a revolution and only gave form and direction to it, Dallek thought that Reagan started the revolution and the long term effects of the presidency were not good. Dallek said “some of Bush’s biggest failures are traceable to Reagan’s controversial approach to tax cuts, business regulation, national security, and social issues.” This, however, is hard to prove true because Bush’s presidency was driven by foreign policy and he raised taxes from where Reagan had lowered them to. The Berlin Wall fell early in Bush’s presidency as well as the Soviet Union and also Bush militarily occupied Panama during his tenure. Bush negotiated weapon limitation treaties with Russia and intervened in the Gulf war when Iraq refused to pull its forces out of Kuwait. Bush was more focused on foreign politics rather than domestic policy. Although the aftershock of the crisis of 1987 may have affected Bush’s chance to win the election of 1992, Bush did not seem to make a large attempt to revive the economy during his presidency. The crisis of 1987 happened in Reagan’s presidency so it could be said that the crisis caused Bush to fail but Bush did not act to bring the economy back
Due to this, Reagan had his own ideas on how to stimulate the economy. Reagan was influenced by Muslim philosopher Ibn Khaldoon who said “when [tax] rates were high, revenue was low and when [tax] rates are low, revenue is high” (Reagan 231). There were four main prongs of Reagan’s economic policy: cutting the money supply, cutting tax rates, curtailing the burden of regulation, and reducing the amount of growth of the federal deficit (Weidenbaum). One of the first things Reagan did was initiate a hiring freeze of federal employees while he straightened out the current financial situation (Schwartzberg 82). Due to his own personal experience with a ninety-four percent tax bracket, Reagan supported lower taxes because he discovered that higher taxes lead to lower incentive to work (Reagan 231).
From 1981 to 1989, Ronald Reagan was a great leader for America. Least Importantly, Reagan campaigned very hard to become president. Reagan Worked hard and didn’t give up. During one of his debates, Reagan appeared tired and very confused. Many papers stated that Reagan was too old for presidency. Although the press used his age against him, he said, “I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponents youth and inexperience” (Kent 72). One fact that gave Reagan an advantage was that he was going to deny Mondale’s pledge to raise tax to pay for new government programs. Furthermore, Reagan was good because he wanted to help the government and economy for the people. According to Kent, Reagan cut tax rates for the people by 25%.Throughout
A big part of being president of the United States of America is either fixing the taxes or maintaining them the same. When a U.S. citizen is going to vote for their president they see what that president’s tax policies are like. Every president goes into office with a different idea for their tax policies, especially between a democratic and a republican. President Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan’s tax policies are different because they cut and raised taxes differently, different tax regulations, and how much money they put into programs but they are similar in the aspect that they were both fighting a financial crisis.
The only credibility threat that was directly addressed was when he stated that "he has no more campaigns to run for, so he was buckling down," then the Republicans all led a rousing, standing, applause, and he addressed them with a quick comment of ,"I won all of mine." Showing his competitiveness and was his way of directly addressing a public
With the tax cuts on high income nationwide, oil companies were still paying on Windfall taxes. This was started by the previous administration where oil companies were taxed on the excess of profits they made. Oil companies raised prices due to production cost, supply, and demand. Reagan sought to decrease the oil windfall profits tax in order to eliminate the energy crisis that happened only a few years earlier. In 1988 he ended the Windfalls profits tax all together. He wanted to provide government as a service to the states and people of those states. Businesses did not need to worry about taxes from this and taxes from that. In short he wanted the Nation to see less government.
Human beings make mistakes; sometimes they learn from their first mistake, sometimes they learn after
It was one of the few issues released by his campaign, but he rewrote it earlier this year. For individual taxes the
President Bush's implementation of the invasion increased his approval rating from 60 percent to 76 percent in just one month. By November, the majority of the American people, 70 percent felt that the US should wait before going to war. On October 20, President Bush stated his 1988 campaign pledge, "no new taxes." People were no longer interested in the Gulf a few months after Bush's speech, but were becoming more interested in domestic policy.
The quote “those who not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” by philosopher George Santayana. This quote is really true because, when you don't remember what you did wrong in the past you continue doing it in the present. When you do it you have more several consequences.