Don’t forget the war on drugs
I was here but barely too young to vote at the time (not that it mattered since he had so many people enthralled like trump has done). No, I will never forget how he (along with some others like Newt Gingrich) ruined everything, so just as I was getting started in adult life, things were already starting to go to hell and it hasn’t stopped since.
Reagan really was the beginning of the end for this country, and though a couple times it looked like we might, we were never able to turn things around. And now here we are, experiencing the culmination of his work of turning America into a kleptocratic oligarchy.
TBH, the mental hospitals were a mess and rife with abuse.
But rather that invest money into improving them, he got rid of them by branding it “de-institutionalization”. Made it sound like he was freeing people.
In (very) broad strokes, the US basic current modern collapse timeline is like: Nixon --> Regan --> Fairness Doctrine --> Glass-Steagall --> Patriot Act --> bank bailout --> tea party to maga --> current fubar lyfe
goddamn fucking reagan
I was going to post something similar but yeah. Almost every Behind the Bastards episode that touches these topics, there is a straight line from Nixon to Trump.
The TL;DR: Republicans hated how people generally agreed with the facts surrounding Nixon and decided to do something about it. Instead of reporting conservative-slanted opinions, they instead wanted to get rid of facts all together.
You don’t have citizens united in there, which I would argue is one of the largest modern causes of our current situation. Had citizens united not been vomited into the world, we might have been in a slightly better place without a decade and a half of practically unrestricted corporate propaganda shoved down our throats. I’d bet that trump wouldn’t have won in 2016 if it wasn’t for the unlimited funding he got (along with billions in free advertising from the “news” media).
Need to squeeze Citizens United in there
thank him for no-brakes neoliberalism. i wish this piece of shit had only ruined his own shitty country but instead we were forced into his insane bullshit too.
It took many years before people found effective antivirals to help people infected with AIDS. No nation had effective treatment.
Congress approved the budgets that created all of that debt. Congress was controlled by the democrats the entirety of his time in office. Congress approves of all tax legislation. It’s almost as if the democrats aren’t any less inclined to support the wealthy.
Congress dropped the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% and gained more tax revenue when it was set to 70%. This is because the brackets at that high of a level heavily incentivized rich people to engage in tax evasion or tax avoidance schemes. Removing this high tax rate made the government more money because fewer people cheated on their taxes. This has only worked once and there’s no reason to believe further reductions to the top rate would create similar revenue increases.
The missiles sold to Iran were non-functional. The bigger problem was either using the profits from the sale to fund the Contras as we were destabilizing a foreign power for the crime of wanting less capitalism.
What Reagan’s real crime was setting Americans against their own government. He was able to push through the destruction of a huge portion of the safety net we had for people under the guise of cleaning up corruption.
This macro is a mess.
Congress dropped the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% and gained more tax revenue when it was set to 70%.
anyone have a source for this claim of increased revenue? if so, was it just a temporary effect with longer term structural implications? besides, wouldn’t the solution to evasion have been increased enforcement? taxes aren’t just about revenue, they’re a redistributive force in the economy and arguably their main purpose isn’t to fund the government but to prevent the obscene accumulation of wealth and reduce inequality.
your argument falls flat upon historical analysis. if high tax rates were bad, and lowering them ‘fixed it’ then explain all the massive social benefits from 1940-1980:
Taxing the ultra rich is how America funded higher education, built the highway system, funded social welfare, uplifted 2 generations, built a global manufacturing and technology economy, and created a prosperous middle class. this all happened before Reagan and coincide with top marginal rates between 50-95 percent.
inequality has skyrocketed since Reagan and the policies which dismantled new dealism. I hate the Democrats who helped facilitate the rise in inequality and the gutting of social welfare programs (Clinton especially) but to claim that reducing the top marginal rates was an unequivocal good thing is a pretty extreme narrowly focused claim. those who say so based on a loosely held ‘I’ve done the math’ argument are merely using a rhetorical gotchya - it’s not a sufficient socioeconomic historically supportable argument. if it was, show me all the benefits that increased tax revenue provided from 1990-present. I’ll wait.
low tax rates are precisely how we got to people like Trump, Musk, Buffet, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Thiel and the incredible rise in number of hundred millionaires and billionaires who are now destroying our social safety nets even more so they can flatter their egos and act out middle aged divorced guy power fantasies.
inequality is why people can’t afford things and is presently the single biggest problem of our society. taxes do make a difference in combatting that. Regean had a role in creating this system, whether you like it or not.
the power to tax is the power to destroy. we build prosperity by keeping oligarchs in check.
anyone have a source for this claim?
This was the 1983 tax cut. The longer term implication was people realized Laffer’s suggestion that there is a top rate that is so high it promotes evasion, avoidance and fraud was demonstrated to be likely true. A negative outcome was the GOP claiming further cuts would do the same when there’s no reason to believe it would.
taxes aren’t just about revenue, they’re a redistributive force in the economy and arguably their main purpose isn’t to fund the government but to prevent the obscene accumulation of wealth and reduce inequality.
Presuming this is a serious statement, why do you think this is the case instead of them funding the government which is what taxes have always been about? We didn’t care much about wealth inequality until the last 200-300 years. The ruling class has always cared about taxes.
if high tax rates were bad, and lowering them ‘fixed it’
It didn’t “fix” anything. The higher rates led to lower tax revenues. The cuts provided more.
then explain all the massive social benefits from 1940-1980:
1946-1980 as 1940-45 are war years and aren’t as great.
The US made up roughly 40-55% if the total GDP of earth in that time. As WWII destroyed the industrial capacity if most nations the USA and to a lesser extent the Warsaw Pact nations were the only ones manufacturing heavy equipment. By 1980 most of the world has either developed for the first time their own industry or revoltp what they had. This massive gap between the US population and everyone else is why things were so good.
inequality has skyrocketed since Reagan and the policies which dismantled new dealism. I hate the Democrats who helped facilitate the rise in inequality and the gutting of social welfare programs (Clinton especially) but to claim that reducing the top marginal rates was an unequivocal good thing is a pretty extreme narrowly focused claim.
There’s no “good/bad” in economics because it’s social science not a religion or moral code. I said it brought in more tax revenue which is accurate.
Inequality has skyrocketed because of anti-union sentiments and the fact that between 1991 and 2003 1/3 of the total labor pool of earth could suddenly be hired by Westetn companies (the fall of the USSR, liberalizations within China and India moving away from socialist economic policies drove this).
those who say so based on a loosely held ‘I’ve done the math’ argument are merely using a rhetorical gotchya - it’s not a sufficient socioeconomic historically supportable argument. if it was, show me all the benefits that increased tax revenue provided from 1990-present. I’ll wait.
No one is saying this. Your grasp on this history is flawed. You even have gone so far as to suggest taxes aren’t primarily about funding the government which is frankly “novel”. I wouldn’t be taking any kind of authoritative tone on this subject if I were you.
I have to work but I’ll tackle the second half later.
So the solution to people committing massive tax fraud is to lower taxes? Not to throw them in jail? 🙄
Tax fraud, tax evasion and tax avoidance are not the same thing.
Cutting the higher marginal tax rates caused more people to move money from less stable economies with looser banking regulations to US banks which resulted in increased tax revenue taken in.
Blah blah blah. Your solution is to let criminals keep ripping us off instead of doing something about it.
As I said last time “Tax fraud, tax evasion and tax avoidance are not the same thing.”.
No one proved anyone broke the law so there were no “criminals” to pursue. I was nine when this happened so I didnt make any decisions here.
Did anyone else know that they recently made a film about this fucking filth?
They were obviously trying way too hard to control the narrative of this fucking piece of shit, but to also spark some kind of patriotism in all those old fucks who fell for reagan’s bullshit lies, and now trump’s bullshit lies.
I almost wanted to go and rip their little signs they had for this movie straight out of the ground. Ugh. Disgusting.
Dennis Quaid is a piece of shit.
Jack Quiad is a fun actor at least. I enjoy his work.
Looking at the IMDb listing, is this shedding Reagan in a good light?
Or is it a documentary on how he completely fucked up?
Libs showing their fascist imperialism even when trying to distance from themselves from their right-wing allies. Crying about iran while supporting genocide. How much did reagan send to the zio regime?
History has a liberal bias if you care to read instead of listen to TV all day.
If they’re saying “lib” and not “liberal”, then it’s sure not from American TV.
And you’re paraphrasing a television character.
Am American, and “lib” is used every day by MAGA on social media. Just go to X and scroll for a whole couple seconds to see overwhelming proof it’s a MAGA culture war talking point.
I’m not against shitting on liberals either, but there’s clearly a much bigger world wide problem of private equity Fascism that needs solved, and liberals have already been fighting that enemy (albeit not winning that fight). This makes them your friend whether you like it or not.
But solidarity isn’t going to happen if you’re too busy complaining about liberal bullshit to fight with them when needed instead.
Nazis are now in the White House and a Fox News host commands the biggest army in the world.
And that wasn’t even the first 90 days of this dumpster fire.
So I’d rather spend the little time we have left before polical arrests happen to work together than spend time bitching about the history of our possible allies.
I voted for Biden, and was deeply critical of his team. But without question he would be a better President now than Trump is.
Imo words critical of liberals in the US are wasted. Trump will be far more critical of them in the long run, so I’d rather spend my time making allies instead of grandstanding while they’re being publicly admonished.
The next step is them getting arrested, so the time for making allies isn’t long.
Am American, and “lib” is used every day by MAGA on social media. Just go to X
That’s not on TV then, and no I will not go on X. Here on Lemmy, “lib” is used overwhelmingly by leftists. This person complaining about imperialism and right-wing allies is not regurgitating MAGA culture.
Making allies is a great idea. We’re not going to make allies by accusing them of watching TV (like Stephen Colbert) all day.
“National debt” obscures the practical consequence. National debt is just money that has been added into the economy but not taxed back out.
It’s not necessarily bad to ramp up spending, if that new money has somewhere healthy to go. (Mega projects like Medicare For All or the Green New Deal would be prime candidates.)
So where did it go?
Well, take a look at Reagan’s reign from 81-89…
There’s the problem.
precisely. the distribution of wealth is a more important indicator of economic health than simply looking at the national debt or total tax revenues. imo we need to increase taxes on the ultra rich, not because we need to reduce the deficit but because taxes prevent the obscene accumulation of wealth (and the resulting regulatory capture epitomized by modern American oligarchy).
I think we need an entirely different economic model, where there are hard limits on income, wealth, and assets. I don’t mind people being wealthy, but that definition should be something like: “I am a CEO, I get paid twice as much as a waitress. I own a very nice house, a small yacht, and spend time riding horses at the country club. My husband works as a mechanic, and only makes $10,000 less a year than me.”
It would require a huge rethink on economy, the nature of wealth, implementing a strong UBI, and replacing the dollar with a fresh currency. Still, I think a complete replacement of how things were done would be key for America to become a nation worthy of the people who live in it.
…and this chart stops at 2012
Reganomics. Trickle down economics. Only thing that trickles is piss and shit.
formerly known as the horse-and-sparrow theory: the idea that feeding a horse a huge amount of oats results in some of the feed passing through for lucky sparrows to eat.
And he sold those missiles because Congress had made it illegal to fund rape/murder squads in Nicaragua.
The money was off the books and then sent to the death squads killing innocent farmers.
Unlike Nixon, Congress was not willing to impeach, so Regan denied everything and only a few staffers were prosecuted.
Bush Sr pardoned them.
Republicans: not even once.
And Oliver North’s gold remains buried under a home in Langley
They also were smuggling Crack into the states to fund the contras (who are terrorists)
Yes they were.
The contras were elected to government so…
They were elected after they murdered the opposition.
Would you vote against the guys that would rape your wife and kids while you watch and then lock you all in a burning building?
The guys that have the support of the US government and the CIA?
Yes but you corrected me by using the past tense when I wrote that they were currently terrorists.
Ah, I am not educated on their current status. Only their actions in the 1980’s.
And even better… he was a Christian.
Was he Christian tho? Or did he just tell people he was?
Seems like it’s in the political playbook to claim you’re a Christian to gain all the support of people who lack critical thought.
The deinstitutionalization and movement to prison was something that began long before Reagan. Really goes back to the end of ww2 and Kennedy. though reagan definitely accelerated it by a great deal by decreasing budgets substantially and increasing incarceration rates significantly
Reagan was a monster though. What a great day it was when he died
For more information, lookup the impact of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on mental health services in the United States.
Thanks for that info
He wasn’t elected until 1980. Look at your graphs again.
Yes, the massive fall of deinstitutionalization began in the 60s as indicated on my graph? And as I said it began long before him? I don’t understand what you are disagreeing with
Even the incarceration rise started before him in the early 70s. He just is the one that turned this to a million with the war on drugs
My bad I didn’t even see the text above it. Just underneath it. Ignore my statement.
TBH, some of that deinstitutionalization could be written off to being gay no longer being a mental health issue, etc.
That’s actually inverse to this. Homosexuality formally entered the dsm in 1952 which made institutionalization for it more common, not less, although institutionalization certainly existed beforehand (eg ww2 draft would decline for homosexuality and basically refer to conversion therapy)
This is the “lavender scare”. Much of the anti lgbt rhetoric today roots back to this era - that homosexuality is something to be pathologized, it can be cured, it is deviancy, a threat to national safety (lavender scare and red scare being analogous, thought process being all the men turning queer would make us a nation of sissies ripe for being taken over by the commies, basically. Lesbian erasure from this narrative was totally a thing (although they still got the abusive treatment)
As a result they got shock treatment, aversion therapy, and even lobotomies. This was through the early 60s and it wasn’t until 1973 that the diagnosis was formally removed. Obviously conversion therapy still happens today but the state sanctioned institutionalization form was mostly over by the mid to late 60s, though it took some time to die out in certain regions
A blight on our country and on the history of our mental health system. Disgusting
The shock treatment thing never fully went away it’s just used on gay teenagers at concentration camps their parents send them to now as opposed to being a state ran thing
Yes conversion therapy never fully went away although some states have banned it and others have banned the use of shock as aversive despite allowing conversion therapy to continue
To clarify: there are several things people refer to as shock therapy
Ect or electro convulsive therapy is sometimes called shock therapy. This is not conversion therapy. This is evidence based for treatment resistant depression and bipolar disorder. This has an ugly history but the modern version can be very helpful if you’ve had years of no success with treatment. That said this should be something that you discuss and consent to
Conversion therapy is a form of Aversive conditioning. Shock therapy in this context is using electricity as the aversive stimulus. This is a behavioral conditioning technique to pair stimuli. It is theoretically simple and essentially based on the work of Pavlov. I take a thing you like and consistently pair it with something aversive. Eventually you associate the thing with the aversive.
So I may show you gay pornography and give an electric shock. But any aversive can theoretically work: I could show you two screens: gay pornography on one and gory death shit on the other. I could get one of those air horns and blast it to surprise you. Etc. modern conversion therapy goes way harder than this, they’ll do weird fucking shit like put a pressure sensing ring on your cock and show you hot guys, then introduce the aversive when you tingle.
Do you see the issue here? They believe they are making gay pornography aversive to you. But what’s really happening is that they are making expression of sexuality aversive. In the weenie monitor example it becomes getting an erection. This is because the people doing this are not only monsters, they are shitty at their job. They do not understand (or more likely willfully misunderstand) basic risks of what they are implementing and they also do not plan for basic realities like generalization (eg if I make homosexual erotic content aversive to you what’s to stop you generalizing that disgust to all erotic content? That’s a risk they’re willing to take, apparently, and a part of informed consent I bet money they do not explain (amongst many many other things))
Conversion therapy is torture. Aversive conditioning in general is. Anyone who does it should be in prison. They are monsters who care more about their agenda than their clients well being (which they likely do not care about at all)
He was terrible, and perhaps worse: he was so popular. He got two terms, then his vice president got a term. So popular it seemed to be (to me) that he was the reason we ultimately got stuck with the “Third Way” democrats, which is when the working class was finally completely abandoned.
He really screwed us all
Reagan broke the unions. The group that literally funded labor and the Democrats for decades upon decades. Third way Democrats arose out of necessity from the fall of the unions. They didn’t abandon the unions anymore than the unions abandoned them. The unions became unable to fund them like they used to. And Democrats now be holding to corporate donors became unable to support humans like they used to.
Yes and no, I’d say on that. Reagan really worked against unions, I agree. And democrats are always worried about how they are going to get paid. But there was a real turn toward “market solutions” for problems that had traditionally been addressed by government during this period, and I don’t believe it was entirely due to corporate bribes or financing. When Bill and Hillary attempted to change healthcare with corporate partners, I think it was more from their genuine belief that that was a new, better way forward. They were wrong, and I am sure that they benefited in terms of contributions, but I think it came as much out of their beliefs about the unpopularity of former democrats and the perception of economic malaise in places like England as it did from union weakness. The democrats could have helped rebuild the unions. They did not (and here I think you are right, because as time went on they really began to be paid well to forget the unions)
It was due to the success of fascist propaganda and Reagan’s overwhelming win. It rattled Democrats badly. Causing them to change their tac a bit. That and labor abandoning Democrats thinking they would teach them a lesson as well. It was a culmination of really bad choices that people still make to this day. Because they haven’t learned.
His administration was when the republicans really started running with the idea of fucking with people’s minds. “Morning in America” turned a shitload of former Democrats into republican voters who voted themselves and their children into a shithole they’d never get out of.
See also; “The Southern Strategy”
Yeah, maybe. I mean, the republicans at this time did start to resonate with the public, but I think it had more to do with the times and with Reagan himself.
Reagan was much more likeable than the likes of Goldwater, Buckley, or any other figure at the time. And he was attractive to the evangelicals, which became a whole new arm (with issues) of the party.
Also, of course, the economy of the 70s was just right for a party that could lean into hate, fear, & greed.
Reagan, though. He could sell all of it in a way that few others would have been able to pull off. I remember wondering at the time how he could draw so many in. People just liked him, horrible as he was.
Oh there’s no maybe about it. Reagan - “an actor?!” was the perfect foil for photo ops and propaganda. His lickspittle Michael Deaver created them such that as wikipedia says,
As Deputy Chief of Staff, Deaver worked primarily on media management, forming how the public perceived Reagan, sometimes by engineering press events so that the White House set the networks’ agenda for covering him.
Which was a quantum leap from the flashbulb-handshake photo ops of the earlier presidents.
He coincided with Mtv, cable television, and the nascent seedlings of Fox News. Every demented rapist presser where Orange Julius presents stacks of binders filled with blank paper is drawn from the work Deaver did with Reagan.
Also remember that while Reagan had more public office experience than the demented rapist, he wasn’t trained on anything - he wasn’t a lawyer, didn’t study foreign policy, wasn’t in the military - he was an actor. And so while he was a conservative at heart most of the ridiculous idiocies were pitched to him and pending any kind of ok were run by evil toadies, just as it is today.
So yeah, he was probably nice enough as a neighbor or something, but as a President he created huge waves of evil we’re still getting hit with today. (And which were called out at the time, btw.)
A lot of younger people simply don’t know that the age we all consider the golden age of middle class America (40s-70s) was so because we TAXED THE FUCK OUT OF THE WEALTHY. As we should.
If we do not return to doing so, our quality of life is going to continue to decline indefinitely.
TAX. THE. FUCKING. RICH.
DON’T VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT DOESN’T RUN ON TAXING THE RICH.
Conversely, I think most of the county would rabidly support anyone who ran on that platform… Even most Trump voters
Not even the Democrats could do this with a Democrat controlled Congress and presidency
many of them are dinos, shills for the gop anyways, wouldnt have gotten anything done anyways.
i think there are shills in both direction and the leftist shills, bernie and aoc, are shilling… again… for the democratic party even though neither will be the next nominee
They wouldn’t want to do that because it would not serve their self-interests.
Do you honestly expect the fox to prevent itself from guarding the henhouse?
yet, americans think that they’re a valid alternative to the rebublican wolves nonetheless
American politics are two billionaire children in a trenchcoat trying to emotionally appeal to two groups by claiming one group is oppressing the other group into poverty through two millionaire children in a trenchcoat making claims that they keep saying through a bullhorn funded by billionaires, until you either burn somebody’s Tesla or hate that a Black person can get into Harvard with lower test scores than an Asian.
We deserve the fall of Rome and anyone who disagrees is problematic to a fucntional society.
deserved or not, it’s coming and can only be delayed by another welfare state like fdr did during the depression
couldwantThe democrats are cowards, the republicans are evil. If there ever is another proper election in the US, vote independent.
it worked for mexico almost 10 years ago.
that is, until we regime change them… again.
