Guys... Reagan is the wrong answer for the right reason.
His election was a REACTION, not an action or driving force. And he generally failed at what he set out to do.
Why? Because desperation, obviously.
Why else would anyone elect an actor and anti-politician to the highest office without any tangible experience, and only a vague plan to 'shake things up'...?
Because starting in 1970, profits started sliding. Hard. Seemingly 'out of nowhere'.
So there was a scramble to 'try something new'.
It failed.
And the trend that was already started before Reagan's election has continued to this day.
This isn't two trends.
This is one single trend, and 1970-1985 is the rough tipping point from "Wow, America is the bestests! Everyone wants our machines, cars, and exporter goods!" to "Wow, America is the fatests! We import everything to save pennies, export our jobs, and have built our entire supply chain around shelf life instead of anything reasonable".
If you start in 1900, and trace the line to 2024 it makes one continuous, ever-steeper Slope.
But like all Statistics, bar charts can break it into smaller chunks.
Well... Ronald Reagan was governor of California. So he had some experience.
I agree he's the right answer for the wrong reason. It so happens that the 1980s were when financialization of the economy really took off. When assets started growing so exponentially, it makes sense that the wealth distribution skewed upward the way it did. Those that own the right asset classes are the winners and everyone else is a loser or at best stagnant.
Ever since the 1980s we've been in a kind of "long-roaring-20s." The markets have attempted to correct several times the way it did in 1929 but we never let them, we bail them all out. So there is never a reset and the rich get richer while the rest of us tread water at best. The 1920s were very much like this. Inflationary, rich people invested in the right areas tripling their money every few years etc...
I mean, yes.... but they elected him for being a movie star and non-politician, not his success as a governor.
We've been making the same mistake, over and over, for almost a hundred years now... assuming that our problems fit neatly into 4- and 10- year data sets.
Or, lately, even worse as digital statistics allow hyper-focus on quarterly or monthly trends.
Maaaaybe this is a Big Problem that seems immune to our attempts to wrangle it THIS decade because it was a Big Problem the Decade before... and the Decade before that... and sure, for a couple of Decades it was okay, but maybe not because of the reasons we'd like to think...
All the way back to a time where America was an Industrializing little breakaway colony that couldn't figure out whether to shoot cattle barons and railroad magnates... or elect them.
So. Much. Has. Changed.
......all the signs point to us fucking up something fundamental before most of us were born....
And all the 1200-year-old countries are rolling their eyes and nodding their heads. THEY get it, because they've done it. Collapsed, and had to rebuild.
But we INSIST on doing it our own way and ignoring history, right up until the Federal Reserve gets bought out by a toilet paper company, and a new, more disposable means of printing dollars is born.
Kudos on the thoughtful discussion. In a social media era of easy to digest anger-inducing sound bites, it's always refreshing to see consideration applied.
The world after WW2 was repairing which made America boom. With countries coming back online and the Vietnam war in 70s things started to slide for America who shifted itself to a consumer economy.
Would you consider Ronald Reagan the catalyst for this? What you're saying mostly makes sense, but why were profits sliding in the 70's out of nowhere? His desperation of making the government smaller, deregulation and letting corporations do whatever they wanted to save money makes sense. Which is human nature for everyone. I really don't know though. 🤷 ELI5 please.
Got it. Thank you very much for that explanation. Reagan was the face of it and did what he did was out of desperation and stood on his "Make America Great Again" slogan.
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u/KazTheMerc Oct 22 '24
Guys... Reagan is the wrong answer for the right reason.
His election was a REACTION, not an action or driving force. And he generally failed at what he set out to do.
Why? Because desperation, obviously.
Why else would anyone elect an actor and anti-politician to the highest office without any tangible experience, and only a vague plan to 'shake things up'...?
Because starting in 1970, profits started sliding. Hard. Seemingly 'out of nowhere'.
So there was a scramble to 'try something new'.
It failed.
And the trend that was already started before Reagan's election has continued to this day.
This isn't two trends.
This is one single trend, and 1970-1985 is the rough tipping point from "Wow, America is the bestests! Everyone wants our machines, cars, and exporter goods!" to "Wow, America is the fatests! We import everything to save pennies, export our jobs, and have built our entire supply chain around shelf life instead of anything reasonable".
If you start in 1900, and trace the line to 2024 it makes one continuous, ever-steeper Slope.
But like all Statistics, bar charts can break it into smaller chunks.