History of the United States II / Unit 16 USH2 2307 review, 2 to 3 minutes
Reaganomics' Record
The idea
Whether Reaganomics succeeded depends on which of its results is counted, and the anchor's own judgement is mixed. On one side stand the anchor's figures for recovery: after a recession that pushed unemployment to about ten percent, growth resumed in nineteen eighty-three, averaging four and a half percent for the rest of Reagan's presidency, and unemployment fell to about five point three percent. The Yawp adds that conservatives celebrated the end of hyperinflation and substantial growth in output. Digital History records that disposable personal income per person, adjusted for inflation, rose twenty percent after nineteen eighty.
In practice
A ledger with two columns: jobs and growth on one side, debt and the incomes of the poorest on the other.
Where people slip
On the other side stand the costs. The nation ended Reagan's second term nearly three trillion dollars in debt, the anchor says; the Yawp notes that the overall tax burden stayed about the same while regressive payroll taxes rose; and the average earnings of the poorest fifth fell, Digital History records, while one hundred thousand Americans a year became millionaires. The Yawp reports critics' charge that the policies served corporations and the wealthy and widened economic inequality, and notes that the New Deal and Great Society programmes survived, battered but intact; in many ways, the Yawp concludes, the rise of the right promised more than it delivered. Two misreadings sit on either side. The first calls Reaganomics a clean success; the debt and the widening gap contradict it. The second calls it a failure; the recovery and the fall of inflation contradict that. The course keeps the anchor's judgement mixed: inflation fell and growth returned, and recession, unemployment and debt came with them.
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