Reaganomics

For the first six years of the Reagan presidency the Republicans controlled the Senate, and the Democrats the House of Representatives. Bills passed in the House with a simple majority vote had to get through the Senate with a supermajority to avoid a filibuster. After passing both Houses of Congress bills needed the support of Reagan, who with a veto could prevent the any bill from becoming law.

Alexander Hamilton’s 1791 report to Congress on manufactures laid out a six-step plan to build an industrial economy in this country and we followed it until Reagan started taking things apart.

When Reagan came into office, we were the largest exporter of manufactured goods and the largest importer of raw materials on the planet, and the largest creditor.  The consequence of Reaganomics has been that in just 29 years, we’ve become the largest importer of finished goods, manufactured goods, exporter of raw materials, which is the definition of a third world nation. Today, we’re in debt more than any country in the world. 

Post FDR and preceding Reagan, most Americans were experiencing prosperity. Today, with the exception of Mexico and Turkey, we’re the country with the highest income inequality level. Since 2000, income inequality increased rapidly, which continued a trend that goes back to the 1970s.

Republican deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy have gutted the earnings and purchasing power of the middle class and crippled the nation’s economy. This has resulted in a decaying infrastructure, cheap imports, poor health, job out sourcing, increased consumer debt, privatization of public services, free-market monopolies, a corrupt financial sector and corporate-controlled media and government.

Businesses have suffered a great blow from wealth inequality, severely damaging the economy, because purchasing power has been slipping away from the middle class and working poor.