Reagan stopped inflation with an incredibly tight money policy between 1981-1984, causing massive unemployment. The Republicans were willing to inflict some pretty stiff “medicine” to get it under control. Whether you liked it or not probably has to do with whether you lost your job because of it.
After that, Reagan went on a campaign to devalue the dollar, manipulating the currency along the lines of what China has been doing. Of course the Japanese used their suddenly valuable currency to buy up American assets, making us xenophobic - until that real estate bubble burst and plunged Japan into a 15-year recession (wow sounds like history repeating)
Then of course there was the massive deficit spending Reagan engineered, eclipsing anything except WWII - enough deficit spending to leave us with 20% of our national budget going to interest. Reagan’s “stimulus bill” dwarfs anything that the Obama administration tried, and Reagan got the benefit of doing it before we already had an ocean of red ink.
The stimulative effect of more than quadrupling the national debt I think is a much better explanation of any economic recovery under Reagan that “supply side economics” (which George HW Bush referred to quite accurately as “voodoo economics”)
When Republicans are in power, Dick Cheney says “Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter”, but when a Democrat gets elected, all of a sudden it’s his fault that there’s a debt.
Both Republicans and Democrats are more than capable of bonehead moves, but the Republicans are in their own league for hypocrisy, hysteria, and hate-mongering
Reagan stopped inflation with an incredibly tight money policy between 1981-1984, causing massive unemployment. The Republicans were willing to inflict some pretty stiff “medicine” to get it under control. Whether you liked it or not probably has to do with whether you lost your job because of it.
After that, Reagan went on a campaign to devalue the dollar, manipulating the currency along the lines of what China has been doing. Of course the Japanese used their suddenly valuable currency to buy up American assets, making us xenophobic - until that real estate bubble burst and plunged Japan into a 15-year recession (wow sounds like history repeating)
Then of course there was the massive deficit spending Reagan engineered, eclipsing anything except WWII - enough deficit spending to leave us with 20% of our national budget going to interest. Reagan’s “stimulus bill” dwarfs anything that the Obama administration tried, and Reagan got the benefit of doing it before we already had an ocean of red ink.
The stimulative effect of more than quadrupling the national debt I think is a much better explanation of any economic recovery under Reagan that “supply side economics” (which George HW Bush referred to quite accurately as “voodoo economics”)
When Republicans are in power, Dick Cheney says “Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter”, but when a Democrat gets elected, all of a sudden it’s his fault that there’s a debt.
Both Republicans and Democrats are more than capable of bonehead moves, but the Republicans are in their own league for hypocrisy, hysteria, and hate-mongering