Ronald Reagan, 40th president of the U.S, actor, and Governor of California. Love him or hate him, everyone can agree he left a massive impact on the U.S as President. Even now, his actions as President haunt us.
Can’t afford healthcare? Fox News making Thanksgiving awkward? Drowning in student debt? All of these things can be linked back to Ronald Reagan.
Now some of you may be thinking, “Who cares? Politics don’t affect me. I wake up at school/work and I come home,” and that is exactly what Reagan would’ve wanted you to think. He believed in the philosophy that you are in charge of your own destiny. If you succeed, that’s on you. If you fail, that’s on you. And this philosophy became the guiding mantra not only for Reagan’s presidency, but for the Republican party for the next 40 years and onward. Now, this thought process is (in my opinion) quite flawed but we’ll get into that later.
In the 1930’s, America went through the Great Depression, the worst economic disaster in history, caused by an unregulated stock market. This is when the government said enough is enough, the government should regulate business so this doesn’t happen again and help people to get out of this depression. This is when we start to see safety nets being implemented such as unemployment insurance, food stamps, housing aid, and welfare programs so people can get back on their feet. A hand UP, not a handOUT (this’ll become relevant later).
Then, a couple things happened that really set the stage for Reagan to become President. Economic crisis, distrust in the government after the Watergate scandal, and a highly televised war that made people question the government’s spending. Sounds kinda familiar right? Regardless, when Reagan took office, America was experiencing stagflation. High inflation combined with high unemployment, double whammy. So, in short, the economy was stagnant, the Watergate scandal of 1972 severely impacted the people’s trust in the government and the people yearned for a President that was honest and knew what he was doing, or at least looked the part. This disillusionment with everything set the stage for Reagan to shrink the role of government, not expand it. He wanted to “Make America great again.” Sound familiar? Yes, Regan’s campaign slogan was also, “Make America great again”. His former experience as an actor enabled him to give long and dramatic speeches just like Trump. Reagan was also the first influencer President who would do sponsored content for General Electric and Trump was the first reality TV President. I mean, the similarities are insane.
Reagan was the first president to straight up lie. Sure other presidents might have exaggerated the truth but Reagan was flat out living in his own bubble. One of his most popular lies that still exists today is the so-called welfare queen. A welfare queen is a woman, typically black, who abuses the welfare system funded by your taxes, and extracts it for all it’s worth. Remember the welfare system? Food and housing programs were created to get people back on their feet after the Great Depression. This lie was based on the case of Linda Taylor, a woman who used 80 names, 30 addresses, and 12 social security cards to get food stamps and vet benefits for her 4 nonexistent dead veteran husbands. She allegedly cheated the welfare system out of $150,000. Now, Linda Taylor did exist and she did defraud the welfare system but certainly not out of $150,00 (about $600,000 today), but instead it was $8,000 (about $25,000 today). But it was too late, the myth of the welfare queen out to steal your money led people to believe that social programs were wrong and that we should cut them.
So, let’s find out what Reagan DID cut and how it affected people in the 80’s and us today, beginning with housing. Before Reagan, the federal government used to build a lot of housing. This created a large supply of housing, thus because of supply and demand housing was cheap, yay!!! I mean people could buy family homes off a single salary, can you imagine it?? You could buy your own home on your own income and annoying roommates and greedy evil landlords were nowhere to be found. And all this changed because of, you guessed, Ronald Reagan and his philosophy. If you want a house, it’s not the government’s responsibility, it’s yours. So, Reagan cut public housing programs and the Department of Housing and Urban Development saw a 40% budget cut during his presidency. This massively shrunk the housing supply and now a family home costs 3 kidneys and a piece of your liver, becoming a luxury rather than a necessity.
As we all know in the 60’s and 70’s there were lots of protests, civil rights movements, women’s movements, and the anti-war movement. College protesters were getting a little too smart and actually expressing their displeasures with the government, like the war in Vietnam and women and minorities protesting for equal rights and equal pay. This was a problem in Reagan’s eyes because he thought that “An educated, healthy and confined nation is harder to govern.” Before Reagan, education was seen as a human right (just like housing) but the issue was that now people were becoming too educated and demanding more (rights) from the government. So Reagan’s advisor said exactly this, “We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow to go through higher education. So, you know the drill, Reagan cut government funding to public universities AND in California when he was governor, he stopped making colleges free. He didn’t say that people were too smart. That would be insane. He said you’re in charge of your own life and if you can’t afford college, that’s on you for being a broke bum. Colleges had to make money somehow, so they started to charge students for tuition. Reagan also made it easy for people to get a loan around this time so colleges increased cost even more. So you guessed it, insane rates of student debt in the US, yay!!!!!!
Trickle down economics, Reagan’s magnum opus, the STUPID STUPID STUPID thing that still haunts the US today. The belief that cutting taxes for the wealthy and the corporations will lead to them saving money and that’d save that money and use it to hire more workers and create new jobs. So the wealth would “trickle down” to the middle class, get it? So pause, what is the middle class? Before Reagan, the rich were taxed at 70% so the not so rich could save and move up. The middle class consisted of people who weren’t filthy rich but could still afford to buy a house, support a family, go on vacation and in some cases even have a second family. And what did Reagan’s trickle economics do? MAKE EVERYTHING WORSE. Because the rich hoarded their wealth, it made the divide between the rich and middle class horribly wide. Still the Reagan tax cuts persisted and the rich went from paying 70% to a messily 20%. But his wealth gap was great for Reagan because when you’re too busy trying to survive, you’re not too focused on what the government is doing. Before Reagan, the average CEO made 36 times more than the average employee. Now the average CEO makes about 400 times more than the average worker.
Surely someone’s gotta stand up to this? That’s where labor unions come in. Why do they matter? Because unions stick up for workers rights, standing up to those corporate big wigs and all that. Unions are meant to bargain with employers and protect you from mistreatment. IF the union is strong. And unions used to be strong, before, you guessed it, Ronald Reagan. Before Reagan, union membership was at its peak, as in, 1 in 3 Americans were part of one. Unions brought about the 8-hours work day from the SIXTEEN hour work day. Let me say it a little louder… S I X T E E N. Unions also introduced the 2 day weekend that we know and love today. Along with those we also saw the end of child labor laws. Yet Reagan hated unions. He hated when people spoke up for themselves. This was especially prominent when PATCO, the union of air traffic controllers went on strike and since they were technically considered government employees, they weren’t allowed to strike. Reagan demanded that they return to the office or otherwise they’ll lose their job and 90% of them did not return, as one on strike does. So, in August of 1981 Reagan fired close to 12,000 air traffic controllers. Which is absolutely insane because today Newark has like 3. So, after Reagan absolutely slashed the PATCO union, America’s confidence in the labor movement was gone like the wind, just poof, gone. Prior to Reagan’s presidency, there were about 200 to 400 strikes a year. By the 80’s that number averaged to about 187 and in 2017 there were only 7 strikes. Makes you wonder if Reagan hadn’t absolutely obliterated unions would we have 3 day weekends? Higher pay? Paid parental leave?
Doctor appointments. I know, I know, just the thought of it pains your wallets. But why? Why don’t we have proper health care like the majority of first world countries? Reagan. Remember Reagan’s motivation to cut social programs, saying that people rely on them too on the government? You’re in charge of your own destiny and it’s on you if you fail or succeed. Somehow that logic applied to healthcare as well. Reagan cut federal funding from both Medicare and Medicaid and here’s what exactly changed; before Reagan, whenever a hospital did a surgery or treatment, Medicaid companies would pay that exact cost plus a little bit for profit. So, if a surgery costs $5,000, insurance would pay $5,000. BUT because of Reagan’s cuts, they lost money to cover full cost. So, instead, no matter how much treatment costs, Medicaid can only cover a fixed amount. So let’s say Medicaid pays $1,000 flat, no matter if it’s a cold, a surgery, a check up, whatever. If the hospital completes the treatment for under $1,000 they make money. If the hospital completes the treatment for over $1,000 they lose that money. In order to cover their losses, the hospitals began charging for everything. Office visits, blood tests, seeing a doctor, so literally everything. Also, now instead of taxes funding health insurance, private companies are funding it and private companies llloooovveeeee putting profit first.
I’m going to skip his horrible & awful response to the AIDS crisis because that’s its own can of worms. But just know Reagan ignored it for six years and called it a “gay disease”. So, in summary, the only good thing to come out of Reagan’s presidency is the hardcore punk scene and all the music that took after it.
