Reaganistic dynamics not confirmed

* In a Sept 7 Tennessean Letter to the Editor, Donnie Allen claimed that the economic success under Clinton was due to a cut in the capital-gains tax rate (Reaganomics), specifically that Clinton's economic improvement started in 1995, the year when the capital-gains tax was reduced from 29% to 15%. These data are wrong, as can be seen comparing a plot of unemployment-rate history with a table of capital-gains-tax history.
* In fact, employment began a steady improvement in 1992, when the capital-gains tax had been 29% for five years and would remain so until being reduced to 21% in 1997. The economic improvement was largely due to a tech boom that continued until 2001, when it deteriorated rapidly as the .com bubble popped and Al Qaeda attacked us.
* There were three earlier periods of substantial economic improvement in the past half century. The first began about 1960, in the middle of a two-decade period of 25% capital-gains tax. Space-race spending may have contributed. Another improvement began in 1975, five years into a nine-year period of 35% capital-gains tax. This may have been due to a real-estate bubble that popped after 1980. Another improvement began in 1983, two years after the tax rate was lowered from 29% to 20%. This timing is consistent with Reaganistic theory; but the improvement was almost certainly due to steep reductions of interest rates after the economy had been spring-loaded by years of above-15% interest rates. Falling oil prices helped.
* The data fail to support Reaganistic theory because our economic health hasn't been capital-limited for the past half century. Reagan's tax cuts served only to enrich the already rich, thereby growing the hedge-fund industry.