The eight years of the Reagan administration have left an indelible imprint on U.S. economic policy. Although the term Reaganomics is employed by both the general public and academic economists, there is still no consensus as to what the overall impact of Reaganomics has been for the country. This work, a wide-ranging collection of essays and commentaries, analyzes the empirical evidence that comprises the Reagan economic legacy. By detailing that legacy's successes, such as low unemployment and economic growth, and its negative effects, including unprecedented deficits and regulatory chaos, the editors provide some tentative conclusions as to whether the Reagan years produced an economic miracle or paved the way for economic disaster. The volume concentrates on the first level of economic impacts, covering the issues of supply-side economics, the regulatory environment, monetary policy, and foreign trade. Under each topic, groups of essays and commentaries present alternative interpretations of the Reagan legacy. Tax policy and business fixed investment, the effects of supply-side policies on labor supply, tax reform and deregulation are addressed in the supply-side section; interest rates and monetary policy objectives and realizations comprise the monetary policy section; and trade policy, trade deficit, and exchange rates are discussed in the international trade section. A final essay offers an alternate view of the Reagan legacy that attempts to synthesize the divergent theories. This work will be an important new resource for courses in economics and political science, as well as a worthy addition to college, university, and public libraries.

In this concise yet thorough history of America in the 1980s, Doug Rossinow takes the full measure of Ronald Reagan's presidency and the ideology of Reaganism. Believers in libertarian economics and a muscular foreign policy, Reaganite conservatives in the 1980s achieved impressive success in their efforts to transform American government, politics, and society, ushering in the political and social system Americans inhabit today. Rossinow links current trends in economic inequality to the policies and social developments of the Reagan era. He reckons with the racial politics of Reaganism and its debt to the backlash generated by the civil rights movement, as well as Reaganism's entanglement with the politics of crime and the rise of mass incarceration. Rossinow narrates the conflicts that rocked U.S. foreign policy toward Central America, and he explains the role of the recession during the early 1980s in the decline of manufacturing and the growth of a service economy. From the widening gender gap to the triumph of yuppies and rap music, from Reagan's tax cuts and military buildup to the celebrity of Michael Jackson and Madonna, from the era's Wall Street scandals to the successes of Bill Gates and Sam Walton, from the first "war on terror" to the end of the Cold War and the brink of America's first war with Iraq, this history, lively and readable yet sober and unsparing, gives readers vital perspective on a decade that dramatically altered the American landscape.

"A report of the Urban Institute's Changing Domestic Priorities Project"--Page ii."URI 34200"--T.p. verso. Includes bibliographical references.

Michael Meeropol argues that the ballooning of the federal budget deficit was not a serious problem in the 1980s, nor were the successful recent efforts to get it under control the basis for the prosperous economy of the mid-1990s. In this controversial book, the author provides a close look at what actually happened to the American economy during the years of the "Reagan Revolution" and reveals that the huge deficits had no negative effect on the economy. It was the other policies of the Reagan years--high interest rates to fight inflation, supply-side tax cuts, reductions in regulation, increased advantages for investors and the wealthy, the unraveling of the safety net for the poor--that were unsuccessful in generating more rapid growth and other economic improvements. Meeropol provides compelling evidence of the failure of the U.S. economy between 1990 and 1994 to generate rising incomes for most of the population or improvements in productivity. This caused, first, the electoral repudiation of President Bush in 1992, followed by a repudiation of President Clinton in the 1994 Congressional elections. The Clinton administration made a half-hearted attempt to reverse the Reagan Revolution in economic policy, but ultimately surrendered to the Republican Congressional majority in 1996 when Clinton promised to balance the budget by 2000 and signed the welfare reform bill. The rapid growth of the economy in 1997 caused surprisingly high government revenues, a dramatic fall in the federal budget deficit, and a brief euphoria evident in an almost uncontrollable stock market boom. Finally, Meeropol argues powerfully that the next recession, certain to come before the end of 1999, will turn the predicted path to budget balance and millennial prosperity into a painful joke on the hubris of public policymakers. Accessibly written as a work of recent history and public policy as much as economics, this book is intended for all Americans interested in issues of economic policy, especially the budget deficit and the Clinton versus Congress debates. No specialized training in economics is needed. "A wonderfully accessible discussion of contemporary American economic policy. Meeropol demonstrates that the Reagan-era policies of tax cuts and shredded safety nets, coupled with strident talk of balanced budgets, have been continued and even brought to fruition by the neo-liberal Clinton regime." --Frances Fox Piven, Graduate School, City University of New York Michael Meeropol is Chair and Professor of Economics, Western New England College.

The fascinating, suppressed history of how JFK pioneered supply-side economics. John F. Kennedy was the first president since the 1920s to slash tax rates across-the-board, becoming one of the earliest supply-siders. Sadly, today’s Democrats have ignored JFK’s tax-cut legacy and have opted instead for an anti-growth, tax-hiking redistribution program, undermining America’s economy. One person who followed JFK’s tax-cut growth model was Ronald Reagan. This is the never-before-told story of the link between JFK and Ronald Reagan. This is the secret history of American prosperity. JFK realized that high taxes that punished success and fanned class warfare harmed the economy. In the 1950s, when high tax rates prevailed, America endured recessions every two or three years and the ranks of the unemployed swelled. Only in the 1960s did an uninterrupted boom at a high rate of growth (averaging 5 percent per year) drive a tremendous increase in jobs for the long term. The difference was Kennedy’s economic policy, particularly his push for sweeping tax-rate cuts. Kennedy was so successful in the ’60s that he directly inspired Ronald Reagan’s tax cut revolution in the 1980s, which rejuvenated the economy and gave us another boom that lasted for two decades. Lawrence Kudlow and Brian Domitrovic reveal the secret history of American prosperity by exploring the little-known battles within the Kennedy administration. They show why JFK rejected the advice of his Keynesian advisors, turning instead to the ideas proposed by the non-Keynesians on his team of rivals. We meet a fascinating cast of characters, especially Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, a Republican. Dillon’s opponents, such as liberal economists Paul Samuelson, James Tobin, and Walter Heller, fought to maintain the high tax rates—including an astonishing 91% top rate—that were smothering the economy. In a wrenching struggle for the mind of the president, Dillon convinced JFK of the long-term dangers of nosebleed income-tax rates, big spending, and loose money. Ultimately, JFK chose Dillon’s tax cuts and sound-dollar policies and rejected Samuelson and Heller. In response to Kennedy’s revolutionary tax cut, the economy soared. But as the 1960s wore on, the departed president’s priorities were undone by the government-expanding and tax-hiking mistakes of Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. The resulting recessions and the “stagflation” of the 1970s took the nation off its natural course of growth and prosperity-- until JFK’s true heirs returned to the White House in the Reagan era. Kudlow and Domitrovic make a convincing case that the solutions needed to solve the long economic stagnation of the early twenty-first century are once again the free-market principles of limited government, low tax rates, and a strong dollar. We simply need to embrace the bipartisan wisdom of two great presidents, unleash prosperity, and recover the greatness of America.

Robert Collins examines the critical and controversial developments of the 1980s and the unmistakable influence of Ronald Reagan on their making. Portraying the former president as a complex political figure who combined ideological conservatism with political pragmatism, Collins demonstrates how Reagan's policies helped limit the scope of government, control inflation, reduce the threat of nuclear war, and defeat communism. In the 1980s other changes occurred as well, including the advent of the personal computer, a revolution in information technology, a more globalized national economy, and a restructuring of the American corporation. In the realm of culture, MTV, self-help gurus, and postmodernism realized the cultural shifts of the postwar era, creating a conflict that pitted cultural conservatism against a secular, multicultural view of the world. Entertaining and erudite, Transforming America explores the events, movements, and ideas that profoundly changed American culture and politics during an important decade.