Halloween

It was a great Halloween. I made it home by 4 to trick or treat with the kids. Steffi was the Queen of Spiders (sort of a witch costume with a spider slant to it) while Jessica was Belle. I told Jessica a couple days ago she looked as beautiful as she will on her wedding day. She looked at me with that "C'mon dad" look and said, "Daddy, don't you know brides wear white dresses. They don't wear yellow. They wear white, not yellow Daddy." (she likes to repeat things like this to make sure I get her point).

I dressed as Reaganomics, which I thought was timely since we've reached a crossing point in this economic policy. In the spirit of Halloween, I'd like to explain Reaganomics like this: let's pretend candy represents money. In traditional demand side economics, candy (money in the form of tax cuts) is given to all people, particularly lower wage earners. They are more likely to distribute this candy in the local communities (because they typically spend virtually all the money they make). Actually, 70% of our GDP is based on the candy that all of us, at every income level, redistribute back into the community (think the traditional Halloween scene - kids knocking on the door and getting candy from all the neighbors). At the end of the day, lots of people have lots of candy. Even those that gave away candy have children come home with candy of their own to share with their family. Everybody has a good time.

In Reaganomics (supply side economics), a majority of the candy would go to the top 1/2 of 1 percent of the population. But the other 99 1/2 percent of the population doesn't live in this community, so they aren't knocking on any doors to get candy. And a lot of this very small, hard working population is not interested in distributing the candy; they'd rather invest it to see if they could double, triple, or quadruple the amount of candy they have. This doesn't make them bad, mean, or someone to envy. Everybody loves candy. They were given a lot of it and they'd like to see a lot more of it.

But I guess I'm saying that Halloween is a lot more fun when everybody gets some candy.