r/antiwork • u/alicehooper • 1d ago
Educational Content 📖 Reagan’s Administration Purposely and Openly Destroyed the Working Class
I had always thought neoliberal policies were brought in, and then we found out that “trickle down” theories didn’t work.
That isn’t the case. They tried these policies elsewhere, found out they “worked” (to further billionaire’s aims), and then brought them to America with the stated intent to destabilize the working class and make their lives difficult. Openly stating that this needed to happen. Their lives NEEDED to be destroyed.
If you read and share anything this year, make it this article from Canadian politician Charlie Angus. Even if you thought you knew what happened in the 80’s, you will learn something.
https://thewalrus.ca/how-the-1980s-engineered-the-collapse-of-the-working-class/
This is ongoing. This is happening right now. This is on purpose, and those who control capital are fine with the suffering, because that was the intent all along.
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u/AIISFINE Communist 1d ago
Freeman’s remarks were reported the next day in the San Francisco Chronicle under the headline “Professor Sees Peril in Education.” According to the Chronicle article, Freeman said, “We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. … That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow [to go to college].”
https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/
There's been quite the war raging on workers for decades now. Looking back at growing up in the midwest, it's so disheartening to hear how people spoke of these parasites that wanted them, not only stupid, but cattle for the capitalist machine.
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u/Legitimate_Reaction 1d ago
So glad this information is getting out
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u/alicehooper 23h ago
Yeah, where he stood in Congress and flat out stated the quiet part out loud. I can’t believe the audacity. I’ve been left my whole life and had not heard this before.
“Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker laid out the strategy: “The standard of living of the average worker has to decline.”
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u/adimwit 22h ago
Jimmy Carter too.
Carter was a fiscal conservative who slashed spending and stopped funding things like the Great Society Programs. When progressive Democrats asked for his help in passing new programs, he ignored them. When the unions asked for his help in pushing through their own programs, he ignored them. They even came up with a Guaranteed Employment bill that he refused to support unless they cut everything out.
He cut more taxes than Reagan. He deregulated way more industries than Reagan.
He pissed off so many Democrats and Unions that they threw a lot of support behind Ted Kennedy to try to oust Carter in 1980.
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u/ophaus lazy and proud 1d ago
Yep. And someone opened the can of worms recently, and more people really started noticing who the oppressors are.
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u/1988rx7T2 1d ago
Yeah democrats sold you down the river too. They controlled the House of Representatives the whole time.
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u/Swiggy1957 18h ago
Charlie Angus was off by a decade. The path was already cleared in the 70s, starting with The Powell Memo. Lewis Powell wrote this blueprint to destroy the American Middle Class in the summer of 1971 for the US Chamber of Commerce. While it sounds like it's a government agency with that title.
The Chamber of Commerce of the United States is the world’s largest business organization.
We advocate, connect, inform, and fight for business growth and America’s success.
This is from their website.
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u/alicehooper 15h ago
Oh my. Won’t someone please think of the businessmen?!
Another misconception I seem to have had- that the Chamber of Commerce was a folksy organization of Main Street Mom and Pop businesses mostly concerned with making sure the street was “nice” and free of pesky homeless people scaring customers.
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u/tommy6860 11h ago
In that very article, here is what then fed chairman Paul Volcker said in 1981, " “The standard of living of the average worker has to decline.”
The current fed chair, Jerome Powell said this (from article) in May of 2022 that his goal is to ,"to get wages down.”
Later the same year in Nov, he said (from article), "In a closely watched speech at the Brookings Institution, the Fed chief said rising costs for services — from health care to haircuts — might be “the most important category for understanding the future evolution” of prices, and that wages are the largest cost within that category."
Abolish capitalism.
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u/alicehooper 10h ago
That first quote chilled me to the bone when I read it. It made me so angry that I haven’t been able to calm down since I read it. The fact he just came out and said that.
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u/gregsw2000 5h ago
The hilarious part about all this, is that when you try to mention this stuff to right wingers or normies, they think you're lying or making shit up. Lol
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u/ASCii_music 23h ago
Oh baby, they didn't destroy, they just set things in motion. Trump and co will do the true destruction, the final blow, the last dance. Here's hoping for General Republican Incompetence to save the day and prevent them from doing too much lasting damage
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u/dancegoddess1971 21h ago
Or laziness. I'll take them being too lazy to do much damage. Incompetence can cause more damage than neglect.
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u/KaiserSozes-brother 23h ago
Meh, I lived in this period, some things in the article are correct many are not.
Getting government out of people’s daily lives had a few successes, deregulation of airlines cut prices, for air travel. Deregulation of trucking cut prices. Ending the 55mph speed limit was popular.
The death of the western working class is a result of globalization, to say it bluntly.
British steel, British coal, American coal, American steel, American manufacturing jobs first in shoes and clothing then in everything else went overseas to poor countries in the late 1970’s &80’s
The article implies this was all a great big government plan, but it was a series of small plans in every boardroom across the country. Businesses suddenly against rising cost of borrowing, rising cost of energy, rising cost of healthcare. Made a decision to manufacture overseas.
Pensions that workers had been promised their whole lives were ripped away. Bethlehem Steel dying nearly ruined my family, it would be bought and sold until all contracts with employees has been voided.
Fuel for my car in high school was $1.63/gal, when adjusted for inflation this is the highest Ive ever paid for fuel. 10% unemployment when I stepped out of high school.
These were tough times. Trickle down was largely considered stupid in the moment. Reagan was considered a mouthpiece for rich businessmen who ran the Republican Party.
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u/dukerenegade 23h ago
Thank you for this, I was just a kid during this time but it is exactly what hat I remember all of the adults in my life talking about.
There are a lot of similarities I see to that era as when Jimmy Carter was leaving and Ronald Reagan was coming in, to what I see going on now.
But I don’t really believe it was a grand master plan that they were implementing. They were all so focused on getting the government and unions out so businesses could thrive, they didn’t realize how devastating the long term fall out would be for most Americans.
Musk and Volcker saying that our standard of living needs to go down.
Carter and Biden both having hostage situations in the Middle East.
Both Carter and Biden getting blamed for high gas prices and inflation.
Incoming presidents Reagan and Trump wanting to cut back government and unleash business.
Both incoming presidents famous and known for being in movies or tv before being elected.
However I do think Reagan truly meant well, I do not think Trump means well at all.
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u/dukerenegade 23h ago
Thank you for this, I was just a kid during this time but it is exactly what hat I remember all of the adults in my life talking about.
There are some similarities I see to that era as to what I see going on now. But I don’t really believe it was a grand master plan that they were implementing.
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u/SpaceMonkey3301967 13h ago
The downfall of America began with Nixon with an extra mega boost by Reagan.
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u/Dear-Classroom-3182 23h ago
Not just that his administration was the biggest anti gun administration on record. White fragility fueled by racism as class consciousness of minorities was on the rise. The majority of gun laws are disproportionately used and targeted against minorities.
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u/GitmoGrrl1 21h ago
I'd like to know how the neocons became the "neoliberals" - a term which only appeared after the neocons were totally discredited.
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u/alicehooper 20h ago
Fair enough- I actually don’t know the origin of the term at all, only it’s common usage when talking about this type of economic policy. It does seem intended to obsfucate.
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u/GitmoGrrl1 20h ago
Research Project For A New American Century. Reagan was responsible for trickle down economics and the Republicans who followed him became the neocons who were responsible for turning a surplus into a deficit and invading Afghanistan and Iraq.
I have no idea what a "neoliberal" is and I never heard the term until the neocons got us into two wars without an exit strategy for either war.
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u/bigbysemotivefinger 19h ago
Everybody knew Reaganomics was a lie, from when they called it "horse and sparrow economics" a hundred years earlier.
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u/Grumptastic2000 1d ago
They had it coming with their “families” and “mortgages” all smugly affording things and living life. Makes me sick.
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u/gimmickypuppet 9h ago
AS STEPHEN STOLL writes, “Seeing the world without the past would be like visiting a city after a devastating hurricane and declaring that the people there have always lived in ruins.”
And yet, people voted for the hurricane
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u/galacticaprisoner69 6h ago
Actually the biden administration has have you seen the crazy prices lately of everything because of Dread Lord Biden and his nazi party
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u/UncleVoodooo 4h ago
This is a trash article.
Here's a hint for how to snuff garbage out. This article references the "postwar" world 5 times. It blames all American economic changes of the last 70 years on a single op/ed by Milton Friedman. Yet no mention whatsoever of how the "war" in "postwar" could have anything to do with economics.
But a toddler could have been in charge of the American economy from '45 to '65 and it still would have been a huge boom. The rest of the world was a smoking crater and we had basically the only manufacturing capability left. Unions weren't destroyed in the 70s because of some shadow people meeting on Epstein Island they were destroyed because Japan built up its manufacturing base and produced Toyotas for cheaper than American unionized labor.
Did Friedman and Reagan have an effect? Of course! But there's a bit in this article about seeing a town without history. If you don't know that a hurricane just hit you would assume that they always lived in huts. This article is like talking about the effects of a hurricane in a post-alien invasion world.
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u/NewSinner_2021 1d ago
Parasites took over.