In 1983, the Reagan administration released a report called A Nation at Risk, which detailed the failings of America’s education system and its impact on the country. The report advocated for a vigorous federal presence in education to support vulnerable students, aid higher education, and address the needs of the most moderate means. The report also highlighted that about 130,000 servicemen and women who voluntarily leave the military would no longer be eligible for unemployment benefits.
The report also proposed that compensatory education and school desegregation programs should be expanded to include commuter students and veterans. However, this proposal was met with criticism, as it was seen as denying educational opportunities to those of the most moderate means.
The New GI Bill Continuation Act, signed into law in 1988, will remove the expiration date for programs of educational assistance for veterans of the Armed Forces. The Veterans Administration submitted legislation to Congress to authorize a 1-year extension of the Veterans’ Educational Benefits, which provides up to 36 months of education benefits payable for 15 years following release from active duty.
Republican President Ronald Reagan urged Congress to pass the veterans’ educational benefits under the G.I. Bill, as the money invested in these training and loan assistance would likely ease military-civilian transitions. Dependents’ benefits end on their 26th birthday or eight years from the veteran’s effective date of permanent or total disability rating or the veteran’s date of disability.
📹 How Reagan Ruined Everything
CREDITS: Video Intro by Ayoub: https://www.behance.net/ayoubanimator Wall Art by Tyler Varsell: https://www.tylervarsell.com/ …
What are the benefits of Chapter 35 in NC?
The Department of Defense (DEA) offers education and training opportunities to eligible dependents of veterans who are permanently and totally disabled due to a service-related condition or who died while on active duty or as a result of a service-related condition. The MGIB-SR program may be available to members of the Selected Reserve, including the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Army National Guard. This benefit can be used for degree and certificate programs, flight training, apprenticeship/on-the-job training, and correspondence courses.
The National Defense Authorization Act of 2016 ended REAP on November 25, 2015, and some individuals will remain eligible until November 25, 2019, while others are no longer eligible for REAP benefits.
What is VA military?
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) offers a plethora of programs designed to benefit veterans and their families. These include educational opportunities, rehabilitation services, compensation payments, home loan guarantees, pensions, burials, and healthcare services. Veterans may inquire with a live representative regarding any government-related matters, free of charge, and receive responses or assistance in locating pertinent information.
What support options are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at UNL?
Should an urgent concern arise outside of normal business hours, the counseling and psychological services department can be reached by telephone at 472-7450, where the appropriate personnel will be contacted in accordance with the established protocol.
What are the benefits of Chapter 35 in Nebraska?
The Post-9/11 GI Bill®, also known as the Post-9/11 Yellow Ribbon Program, provides up to 45 months of education benefits for veterans with at least 90 days of active duty service after September 10, 2001, and who are honorably discharged or discharged with a service-connected disability after 30 days. The program offers financial support for education tuition, academic fees, a book stipend, and housing allowance. The benefits are payable for 15 years following active duty release.
The transferability option allows Servicemembers to transfer unused VA Education benefits to their spouse or dependent children. The program is available for undergraduate and graduate nonresident students at the 100% rate, and only eligible Veterans or their designated transferees may receive this funding. Active Duty Servicemembers and their spouses are not eligible for this program, but child transferees of Active Duty Servicemembers may be eligible if the Servicemember qualified for the 100% rate.
What effect did the 1945 GI Bill have on American society?
The G. I. Bill, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 22, 1944, provided World War II veterans with funds for college education, unemployment insurance, and housing. The act aimed to reduce the unemployment of 15 million armed service veterans post-war. The National Resources Planning Board, a White House agency, studied postwar manpower needs in 1942 and recommended education and training programs in 1943.
The American Legion designed the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act, which was unanimously passed by both chambers of Congress in spring 1944. President Roosevelt signed it into law on June 22, 1944, just days after the D-day invasion of Normandy.
How did the GI Bill changed the American economy?
The G. I. Bill, enacted in the aftermath of World War II, played a pivotal role in facilitating the education, training, and support of returning veterans. It served to promote their engagement as citizens and enabled them to purchase homes, farms, and businesses.
Can a 13 year old work in Nebraska?
The FLSA allows individuals 16 years and older to work on farms at any time, while 14 and 15 year olds can work outside school hours in non-hazardous agricultural occupations. 12 and 13 year olds can work on the same farm with parental consent, while minors under 12 can work in hazardous jobs with written parental consent on farms not subject to the minimum wage provision. Minors can perform work on a farm owned or operated by their parents or someone standing in place of them. The Secretary of Labor has designated hazardous occupations for 14 and 15 year olds engaged in agricultural work and for younger children permitted to work on farms under limited circumstances.
How many credits do you need to be a full-time student at UNL?
Undergraduates must enroll for at least 12 credit hours to be classified as full-time students, while graduate students need to be enrolled for at least 9 credit hours during an academic semester and 9 credit hours during summer sessions, regardless of whether they hold a graduate assistantship. Full-time status can be granted to students in a thesis-option masters degree program or candidates for doctoral degrees, registered for fewer than the minimum hours required for a full program, provided they are not employed more than 20 hours per week (half-time).
Are you a veteran if you never deployed?
Individuals serving in the National Guard and Reserve without federal deployment are typically not eligible for veterans benefits, with the exception of those who were injured during training, weekend drills, or two-week summer training.
What industry boomed in Washington because of the GI Bill?
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the GI Bill prompted a considerable influx of returning veterans seeking housing and employment opportunities. Many of these individuals relocated to the Pacific Northwest, where they found work in the forestry sector.
Is Nebraska a veteran-friendly state?
The Nebraska Homestead Exemption Program provides a full or partial property tax exemption for eligible veterans and survivors of wartime. The program requires the veteran to own and occupy the homestead from January 1 to August 15 of the taxable year, and the veteran must have received an honorable discharge and served during wartime periods such as World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Persian Gulf War, and Global War on Terror. The exemption is subject to a date to be determined.
📹 How Reagan Caused the Student Debt Crisis
There was a time in the United States when public university was virtually tuition free. Where the federal and state governments …
I’m a severe Hemophiliac. When Reagan refused to take AIDS seriously because it was the “Gay Virus” almost 90% of severe Hemophiliacs also contracted AIDS, such as my self, during this time due to lax testing protocols. We were essentially given $100,000 and told to fuck off forever. Fast Forward to today, I’m 42 years old, still an AIDS survivor and incapable of working due to my health conditions. My ‘relief fund’ is entirely exhausted as they never expected any of us to survive this long. I was 2 years old when I was infected with HIV, and when I was 5 I also contracted Hepatitis C due to the same lack of real testing protocols. The Reagan administration completely destroyed my life and I’ll never be able to forgive the Republican party for these crimes against humanity.
My uncle was one of the air traffic controllers that marched on Washington and was fired. He had four little kids at the time and ended up working in a hard-labor job that would keep him away from his family for 6 weeks at a time to barely make ends meet. He was also disabled from suffering polio as a child, so hard labor was really harsh for him. Make America great? For whom?
I saw Reagan-ism as an attack on education, which proved to be the start of the dumbing down of America, the consequences from which we are still experiencing. Social Security survivor benefits helped me get a college degree starting in 1980, a benefit that Reagan immediately cut off from my younger siblings.
My great uncle passed away in 1991 from a long painful bout with AIDS. Most of his family and society cast him aside here in Texas. My great grandma and grandma took care of him in Dallas until his final breath. My grandma still tells me how doctors and state clinics stigmatized AIDS patients. He was an amazing artist and figure painter, love you Uncle Bennie.
I did six years in the Marines. My body and mind are both broken. Since I’ve left, I’ve never faced so much difficulty in my life. My PTSD and physical injuries are individual failures in the eyes of employers. I’m a young guy, so the boomers in charge tell me I have no excuse to be stressed or in pain. I can’t hold a job, I’m struggling to keep a roof over my head, I have no idea what I’m doing trying to get my veteran’s benefits, and I’ve never felt so lost in my entire life. I just have to pull myself up by my bootstraps, I guess.
I recall everyone I knew having full time jobs in 1980, with benefits. We mostly worked factory jobs. Never had to worry, even worked OT a lot. Then Reagan took office in 1981. By spring of that same year we started working 3-4 days per week then 2 days then sign up for unemployment. By the fall of ’81 most textile mills in the area were either part time or closing their doors as the jobs were moved overseas with no penalties as Reagan had lifted all restrictions on American companies seeking cheap labor, so the rich could get richer. Soon Fathers could not find full time work to support their families. Grown men were now out of work or working low paying retail jobs. wives had to pitch in and that started the downfall. Free time and low esteem led to the crack epidemic. The country has not been the same since.
THANK YOU!!! I lived through Reagan, am a white single mother of three sons who I raised with no assistance from their father or family. I put myself through nursing school and worked for 28 years as a critical care RN. I am now 66 years old, on disability, have no pension nor any help from my family. I live a simple life with my cat, I never remarried. My sons do not speak with me-they have bought into this destructive belief system. It has broken our family irrevocably, I see no solution. The people who adhere to this are not Christian. Christ himself is heartbroken I am sure. THANK YOU!!!!
My dad raised me on Reaganomics because he was convinced that the richest knew best. I got to see the CEO at my company in action and how he was a bumbling idiot, and as time went I continued to see more and more rich people being the dumbest people alive: Elizabeth Holmes’s Theranos duped so many investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars despite the outrageous claims of her product. Investors of FTX thought it was amazing that Sam Bankmanfried was in a call with them while playing League of Legends. Dude was ranked bronze. Spez, the CEO of Reddit has so little to do that he scoured the site looking for comments about himself and editing them. Stockman Rush, the CEO of Oceangate needs no introduction.
Being young during the Regan years, I remember how much my momma struggled. She was a single (divorced) mom of one, who often worked so many hours in a week, she would be exhausted on her days off. I also remember how she was unable to qualify for any type of help, that we sometimes only had peanut butter in the house to eat. When Trump came on the scene and stating all of the tropes, and whistles from Regan’s time, I knew it was all about the wealthy and corporations all over again.
Wait a second. My Pa went to work at a blue collar job at ei dupont shortly after he returned from the Korean War. His job provided a good pay check, matching savings, stock by in, medical, dental, 2 weeks of vacation a year and a very safe work environment (at time his plant was certified as the safest factory in the world) My mom stayed home and took care of the kids. He could buy a new car pretty frequently, he bought some vacation/retirement property and he could send his kids to college. When I was in my twenties he told me he lived in the Golden years of the factory worker. And I laughed at him. At that time corporate taxes were 90%. But rather than spending that money on taxes, corporations invested that money back in the company and its employees. After Reagan cut corporate taxes to 30% there was no incentive for corporations to take care of their workers. Capitalism ran a muck and all the profits went to the top tier CEOs and VPs. I’m 67 now he’s 94. There are no blue collar jobs like that in America anymore. The retirement health insurance is gone, the life insurance he paid for 60 years was canceled. The promise of America is gone! THAT’S WHAT CAPITALISM WILL GET YOU!!
I was raising little children and working as a skilled tradesman during the Reagan administration. There were two intentionally caused recessions at that time that forced tens of millions of American workers, the majority of whom were husbands and fathers, out of good paying jobs. My customers were very wealthy and so I was able to support my family. But, tens of millions of middle-class mothers were forced to go back to work in numbers America hadn’t seen since WWII. The term “latch-key kid” was invented during the Reagan admin. Millions of young children were forced into looking after themselves after school while their mothers were working instead of being home when schools let out. The long-term negative effects of Reagan’s voodoo economics on our culture and society have been devastating. The proliferation of drug abuse, declining levels of higher education in the American work force, increasing dependence on welfare, food stamps, etc. Reagan was NOT a conservative. He was a destroyer of the American middle-class as it had been thriving and growing since the late 40’s through the 70’s. He promoted isolated examples of welfare fraud to destroy public assistance at the same time his trickle down economics were destroying the middle-class incomes of many millions of American families. Trickle down economics is a mask for the autocratic rule of oligarchs. Reagan used his movie star fame to put a trusted face on the conceited domination of the wealthy few over the many, a throw back to the very abuses of power that America’s founders rebelled against.
Thank you for this! I am now 72 and have been screaming this virtually my whole adult life. My wages have effectively never gone up, I’ve always been chasing debt and the day the unions let him fire the air traffic controllers and they all went back to racism/sexism/church, was the day they died. We should have had a nationwide sympathy strike then. We didn’t. And now people vote against themselves!
I remember the Reagan years, when all the clothes, necessities, toys, etc. It said made in the US; ten years later, it was already one in four, 15 years later, one in ten, and now, one in 20–25, it is practically a rarity. When you destroy unions and sell your industrial base for scrap, these things often happen. Ronald Reagan was the best investment of people with money in history.
I don’t normally try to influence how my kids feel about things, I give them facts and let them draw their own conclusions as they age, but recently my 13 year old was helping my mother in law put some of her books away on her book shelf, and she handed him a Ronald Reagan book and said, “He’s one of the best president we ever had.” And I couldn’t help myself. My son turned and looked at me, and I shook my head, “no”.
When one President leaves office, he talks to his replacement alone in the White House for a few hours to discuss the state of the Nation. I remember Jimmy Carter saying when he sat down with Reagan to discuss topics/issues on the state of the Nation, he could tell Reagan had no clue what he (Carter) was talking about. I always thought Reagan was just a figurehead for Big Business and Wall Street. The fact that he closed all the Mental Facilities, threw vulnerable people on the street and cut rehabilitation funding in prisons pretty much says it all.
Agree with everything you said. I’m 70 so lived through Reagan and remember his “Voodoo Economics” and the middle and lower class economy being negatively effected by the “Ray Gun” . Never voted for him myself but sadly not enough voters saw him for what he was. Make no mistake, our current democracy is very fragile and will remain so because a very large portion of the population is so easily misled.
As a non-american all of this is fascinating. It explains the behaviours of my own politicians at the time. When you are from a poor country people look up to the developed economies and think: This people have objectively better lives and they do all this stuff. We must do the same so we can be like them. So in a way Reagan not only ruined lives in the US. But internationally.
Just a point to note: Jimmy Carter inherited a truly screwed up economy, had to contend with the consequences of past administrative foreign affairs failures, and a press that just loved pretending his drunken brother was part of his administration. He started social programs that helped people get jobs, housing and a chance in life. He endorsed unpopular fed policies that eventually resulted in reversing the out of control inflation he inherited. It was the lingering effects of Carter’s policies that turned the economy around, not anything Reagan did. People don’t realize that economies the size of the U.S. economy do not turn on a dime. It takes a lot to move them and a long time to see the effects of even huge events.
I was a kid during this. And I watched the beginning of what would become America today. It’s been a long game, and one that has made foundational changes that are hard to reverse. In that way, they were smart. They knew what to do over time, like changing the courts, to cement these changes. We’ve lost generations and lives to this way of thinking and even more to come. From AIDS to COVID and the merging of religion with law, we’re seeing the horrible results and reversing it is going to be difficult but it must be done. Younger generations have seen the result of this in the worst ways, from school shootings to being constantly broke, it’s a warped way to govern that puts 90+% of the population into wage slavery, denies reality, and puts people in power with no concern or knowledge of the people they are supposed to represent.
Regan made it acceptable to be a semi-fascist. As someone that practices law, has studied economics and political science, I can 100% agree that his economic and social policies are devastating to people to this day. I never thought of this until you did this article, but the star of “bed time for bonzo” as a republican president is eerily similar to the host of the apprentice becoming president.
I’m a Brazilian lawyer and I’m obsessed with your articles. So much in common between our countries, especially the ever so frequent conservative reforms and the far right approach to the evangelical christians. Brazil, the biggest catholic country in the world, is set to have a majority of evangelical christians by 2030. I can tell you they want to impose their theocratic agenda. 6 years of Jair Bolsonaro and Michel Temer presidency and it felt like a theocracy, our social security and labor protections were absolutely dismantled, and I fear they were only rehearsing for what’s to come, if we don’t organize ourselves better.
Air traffic controller here (and proud union member.) Just a little addendum: While Reagan fired the PATCO controllers, Bill Clinton allowed many of them to be rehired in 1993. I worked with a few them during my career. However, in the mid-2000s Bush 43 attacked controllers again, hiring union-busting experts, lying about our wages to the public, and imposing (with the collusion of a Republican Congress) a “contract” that our union never signed that slashed our pay 30% and imposed a bunch of ridiculous work rules. I was hired during that time and it wasn’t fun. Obama, however, corrected that nonsense.
I was a struggling young man just trying to get by during Reagan’s great subversion of the American middle class. Looking back, the most amazing aspect of it all was his uncanny ability to actually make the very people he was screwing over like it, and then go down in history as a savior. I even voted for him the first time around, but soon afterwards was ashamed to admit it and didn’t do it again.
The whole “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” mentality really makes me angry. Anytime you criticize these economic policies, you get called a “socialist”. You get called “lazy”. And worst of all, it’s the working class people that believe in this crap. It’s almost as if they’re proud of being a serf.
The attack on the middle class was deliberate. One of the Conservatives’ favorite economic theorists (can’t remember his name) posited that the middle class has a destabilizing effect on society; ergo, to create a more stable society, one must weaken the middle class. Everything they’ve done is with that goal in mind.
Nice, thoughtful article, but I was disappointed that there was no mention of Iran-Contra. And the Reagan years weren’t 100% bad; he did succeed in working with Mikhail Gorbachev in reducing nuclear arms among both American and Soviet forces, and the Montreal Protocol was signed too. In my mind, Trump is far, far, FAR worse than Reagan. I thought of Reagan as short-sighted, and also cold, but I never thought of him as a freakin’ criminal con artist.
I swear the more I learn about Regan, the more disgusted I become. He might not have single handedly ruined this country all by himself, but he was absolutely the figurehead for the worst aspects of conservatism that have only grown increasingly worse. Seriously, all those charts for before and after his presidency are telling of the frighteningly real impact his legacy has had on this country.
As the kids say today, word. I’m old enough to have seen the effect of Reaganomics and the people that proposed it. I saw firsthand people being turned out onto the streets, mostly the mentally ill, after Reagan closed a lot of the mental health facilities to “save money”. And then, when people started to lion eyes, the man, even Obama, it just made me ill. Thanks for this!
He did more damage than so many people realize. I’m glad that you’re telling the Truth…. the Truth that needs to be told!! I was born in the 50’s…. I watched and lived the damage he inspired. People need to know. 🙏❤ Please cover the close of State run Mental Hospitals. All these facts need to be a part of every school curriculum! Thank you!!😊❤
Reagan did so much damage. Here’s a little story: My grandmother, who lived from 1895 – 2005, had gone to Vassar and majored in American history, must have been on some sort of list (for longevity?) and received a birthday card from Reagan one year (don’t remember which one). She wrote back and said that Reagan was the worst president this country had ever had. I loved her for that.
My parents were pro-Reagan in the ’80s. My dad ended up going out of state to find work. I was a teen in the ’80s and didn’t really pay attention to politics. It was until the ’00s and later that I started to learn how awful his policies were and how they are still affecting us today. He closed mental health hospitals (which were pretty bad and needed reform), but they had no where to go so people in need of mental health services ended up on the street and homeless, or in prison. Mental health services were decimated and it’s taken decades to rebuild the infrastructure. We’re still not where we need to be with services. Reagan teamed up with anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly of STOP ERA “fame” and derailed the ratification of the ERA in the ’80s. Reagan meddled in South American politics and sold weapons to people who shouldn’t have had our weapons. Then decades later, people are surprised that so many refugees are fleeing their country in South America. The list of things seems endless that his administration effed up.
I was a railroad conductor for UP for 10 years till I got injured on the job. It is unionized but the rail labor unions are really weak now and they basically capitulate to what the company wants every time a new contract comes up to be signed. It’s very bad for train crews and now the public because railroads want to run trains with only ONE person where there used to be 5-6 man train crews.
My dad was in the UAW strikes back in the 80s when Harvester, Caterpillar, John Deere, ect. were fighting to keep their union in their factories. I was too little to know what was going on but I remember mom being worried sick that some jackass would pull a stupid move and cause violence on the picket line. Union busting hurts families.
The best documentary on the effects of Reagan’s economic policies was made by a French filmmaker, Louis Malle. In God’s country, you see him visiting the same prosperous middle-class farming town twice, once at the beginning of Reagan’s terms and years after the implementation of his policies. It is insane!
I had to tell a co worker that HR is NOT your friend. She had been sexually harassed for years because the boss knew she had a sick child and had to have the job for insurance. The entire management of my division had been set 10 years before in a “situation” involving company vehicles, prostitutes, alcohol and police. They all backed each other and were beholden to each other because they all “had the goods” as enablers or participants in whatever took place. It was disgusting. Every woman who tried to defend herself, legally, was reprimanded and demoted. My co-worker started keeping a big knife in her desk in case she was left alone with the harasser and he decided to take it up a notch.
You remind me so much of my sister. She was a lawyer and worked for labor union law her whole life. We lost her 3 years ago during the pandemic . A great loss for us all. My family was one of few in Kansas that was Democratic pro labor . We always asked ” What’s the matter with Kansas” as people all around us voted against their own self interest. Reagan was the worst. I also naively found out that HR is not for the betterment of the employee but the employer. After years of working as an RN doing 8 hour shifts, suddenly we were required to work 12 hour shifts. I don’t know if you know what this can do to a body but the first week my great toenail turned blue and fell off. I had to retire early due to osteoarthritis in knees and back. A labor union would have helped to have a say in our working conditions . Thanks for giving voice to a whole generation left behind.
That doesn’t mean that Reagan did ruin everything. There is some positive to the administration. Like making a large economic come back, making America more respected, and helping speed up the process to make the USSR collapse and end the cold war. Sure, reaganomics wasn’t great, along with some scandals, but he helped get America get back on track, and weather or not you like him, one thing is true, he redefined what we think of America. And that is certain. Btw, I dont think Reagan was the 80s versian of Trump.
My favorite new podcast, because what Leeja does so masterfully, she opens up several other dimensions in thinking and consciousness, besides her intellectual, knowledge and language abilities for us to learn, build from and have more context, nuances, if not for encompassing the spirit of an era, maybe then for questioning it, tear it down
For those who haven’t already, check out Greg Palast’s farewell to Reagan, June 6 2004: Killer, Con-Man, Coward, Good Riddance Gipper …”I remember as a student in Berkeley the words screeching out of the bullhorn, “The Governor of the State of California, Ronald Reagan, hereby orders this demonstration to disperse” — and then came the teargas and the truncheons. And all the while, that fang-hiding grin from the Gipper.”
Leeeeejaaaa—I confess, I “watch” most of your articles without visuals while doing other tasks so I don’t know how late to the party I am, but this two-camera setup, with a sidelong glance to punctuate your most poignant points: LIVING. So much slayage. Little mini goosebumps every time. I’m an OG and the production quality improvements, when the production quality was so on-point from the jump, just staggering. perusal this website grow along with its important messaging brings me so much joy. Keep slaying, kween. 💙
KUDOS Leeja!!! You did in 25 minutes what I’ve spent hours trying to explain to Regan lovers…. Furthermore, he was a “Cliché” President. From the line during the debate – when the issue of age came up – I won’t take advantage of my opponent’s youth and inexperience; to “Where’s the Beef” and he even tried to get Bruce Springstein to allow him to use “Born in the USA” as a campaign theme in ’84 until Bruce sent him the lyrics and he realized it was a protest anthem. You have a new fan. I’m liking and subscribing.
i lost interest as soon as you mentioned trickle down economics. firstly, no self respecting free-market economist has ever referred to their theories as trickle down: it’s an attack used by keynesians to attack supplyside economics. supplyside economics focuses on the production of goods and services, rather than spending. the basis of reagan’s economic theories is if taxes are lowered and deregulation occurs, they will be able to expand their services and produce more goods, providing more prosperity and affordable goods to consumers. the hope is innovation and production, not for the wealth to “trickle-down”. before attacking someone’s economic theories, actually analyze what they believe.
Reganomics was a complete myth. His tenure saw the rich get richer and richer. The trickle down never happens. The only path to prosperity is enabling working and middle class to have disposable income that they can participate in the economy. Everyone benefits from this. Only a tiny fraction of society benefits from policies that enrich wealthy people
I got suckered into the Reagan thing and voted for him the first time. Didn’t take long for me to wise up. The veil came off the entire Republican philosophy at the time of the Air Traffic Controller strike when Ronnie “the stupid” fired them all. I was a union member at the time and i got some much verbal abuse for my vote. So embarrassing. LOL. . . I started paying attention to political at that moment. Have never voted R since then. Today at 77 I’m almost apolitical. We’re getting screwed all the way around but less screwed by Democrats who at least pay some sort of lip service to working people. Buried in Biden’s first economic bill that was passed was a provision to fully restore the pensions of my union that we were forced to give up after the crash of ‘08. You think a Republican would have done that for workers?. . . LOL. Glad i found this website.
A co-worker told me that Reagan was the best ever. I didn’t want to say anything, but after that I couldn’t stop telling her that he was the worst president for the working class and his stupid policies. Thank you for your information, I couldn’t say it better. People are still falling for trickle down economics and tax cuts for job creators.
I’m 54 so I’ve had to be at the mercy of greedy corporations my entire life. I really hope that Generation Z will change everything including preventing MAGA Republicans from ever having power and organize unions! Our healthcare is run like a business and The United States is a shooting gallery . I know that won’t change in my lifetime. I only have hope in Generation Z to change this. Thank you for this article! I took an economics class in college when I was really young and we covered Reaganomics. It had a lasting impact on the rest of my life and reiterated why I will always vote for Democrats.
I’m a retired blue-collar worker and Reagan did more damage to my livelihood and welfare than any president in my lifetime. It disturbs me that some of my family thought he was a great president. I was 20 years old when he was elected and I knew absolutely nothing about politics or economics, but I didn’t know a lot about human nature. And when I first heard the theory of Reaganomics and trickle-down theory, I was flabbergasted at the sheer stupidity that anyone could possibly think it was a good idea for the middle class.
I laughed at that when he came out with trickle down. I knew corporations and the wealthy were too greedy for it too work even though I was a high school student. It was also a laugh that Reagan helped end communism. All he did was show up in Berlin and say “Mr Gorbachev tear down this wall.” Pissed off East Germans did that, not Reagan.
As an early GenXer, I was in HS and College during Reagan’s Presidency. Even then I knew it was BS and my first vote was against him. Then I had to emerge from college into a constant cycle of regular recessions that put my generation 2 steps back for every step forward. More people need to recognize how bad Reagan was for this country. Until then, we are doomed to this endless madness.
even as a kid i hated phrases like ’pulling yourself up by your bootstraps’ because thats impossible to do also like, did nobody realize that ‘trickle down’ means only drops make it down because the water is held at the top? it didnt work economically but it sure worked perfectly language wise. its just the surprised pikachu face meme
“Ronnie” was the first and most influential arch-villain, in political form, in my young life. It would take at least another 60 minutes added to your excellent 24+ minutes to begin to examine the damage done by this smarmy, grade D actor. P. S. Many have always believed that the “trickle-down” enthusiasts never really believed their ridiculous theory, they just wanted the rich to get richer…Period!
Thanks, Ms. Miller, from another real live lawyer. Excellent recap of Reagan’s decimation of American democracy. I think you cannot overlook Reagan’s desire to be more wealthy himself as a motivation. I think I remember a statement by him about how he paid too much taxes. I think the unequal society and antagonism we have now is just what Reagan wanted.
For my mother the last straw was ” ketchup is a vegetable” that sent her over the edge. She’d been a public health nurse and had seen the effects of the Great Depression’s near starvation that affected so many people. She was DISGUSTED that a man from a family that suffered in that time could take apart everything FDR did to bring us into the modern world with public works and support systems, but the nutrition issue, the CHILD nutrition issue – that was IT!
One month after Reagan took office, I was audited by the IRS, along with thousands of other graduate students earning $5K a year for teaching 2 freshman courses. Our university had tried to make that pitiful salary go a little further by declaring part of it a stipend, therefore non-taxable, but Reagan’s IRS had been given a mandate: squeeze the poor and powerless but leave the rich alone. So the Gipper’s taxmen took $200 to $300 plus fines from each of us, which REALLY hurt, especially those with kids, and that was just the first of many times I would feel something warm and wet trickling down on me from on high.
I was very young when Reagan was in office but I remember him. It seems vegetables were a theme of his administration from wanting ketchup to be a vegetable in school lunches to actually becoming a vegetable in the late 1980s. Thankfully, he had Nancy beside him to call psychic Jeane Dixon and astrologer Joan Quigley for advice on his daily calender. Qugley later wrote a book saying “never since the Roman empire has an astrologer has such a priminant role in the government.”
You missed something, something I was aware of because I had dropped out of pre-med to take care of my three younger sisters, when my mom became terminally ill with an autoimmune disease. Back in Reagan’s tenure. Between Reagan’s delay in recognizing AIDS, and the patent fight between the Pasteur Institute and Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute, and their pissing match over the patents for the first blood tests to detect AIDS, coupled with Reagan’s silence, spelled a death sentence to 50% of hemophiliacs. You see, the clotting factors are extracted from multiple donors, I recall at the time checking and I believe it was about 20 donors per treatment. Which gave you an exposure over a year equivalent to hundreds of donors. So if you wonder why the numbers of hemophiliacs alive today are so much lower for those born before call it 1992, as Hepatitis C killed a fair number that AIDS missed. Hepatitis C also became a disease of drug addicts, gay people, and gasp – those filthy foreigners/illegal immigrants Of course it killed lots of other people, and along with AIDS it killed thousands and thousands of children with hemophilia. You might consider that the bycatch of the culture wars…
I still remember Election Night 1980, perusal the returns come in after I had voted absentee for Jimmy Carter. What a disaster—not just Reagan, but the Senate went majority Republican for the first time in 26 years because of 12 flipped seats (amazingly, the House stayed in Democratic hands even after 34 seats flipped red). For years afterward, I felt like I was living in a bad dream, and when the airport was named after him and the post-mortem hagiographies started, it had the feel of a “wrong timeline” alternative reality. Thank you for your cogent analysis of what was REALLY happening. I’m happy to read that you’ll be covering Iran-Contra (and anti-communism, generally) in another installment. The only other thing I would have wanted to see here is the undoing of the FCC’s “Fairness Doctrine”, which, even before the internet and social media, helped to unravel our nation’s shared sense of reality.
Reagan also pressed NASA admin so hard to to launch Challenger, so he could talk to the crew in orbit during his State of the Union address, that they sent it up despite the loud warnings from people who knew better. Those seven people died so that he could try to have his own moment like Nixon moon call.
Love this. Absolutely LOVE this. I’ve been pointing out that Ronald Reagan was easily one of the WORSE presidents we’ve ever had. Others would be Calvin Coolidge, his buddy Herbert Hoover. Both of whom directly caused the great depression and of course Reagan based his entire ‘trickle down economics” on Calvin Coolidge and Hoover….Wait….wait….Calvin Coolidge and Hoover did trickle down economics which lead to the great depression in a Boom then bust cycle. Ronald Reagan did trickl;e down economics which led to a recession and a boom then bust cycle. Then George Bush Jr did trickle down economics which caused a recession but would of caused another great depression if it wasn’t for tax payer’s money bailing us all out. Creating a boom then bust cycle…..and Thatcher in the U.K. did trickle down economics which also killed the economy. Then Liz Truss in 2022 did trickle down economics and this time it destroyed the economy IMMEDIATELY. So there was no boom and then bust. Just BUST…….gee, I wonder what’s going on there? Nah, must be some bizarre coincidence. Another “one of the worse presidents” was the teapot scandaler president Warren Harding. “I double dog dare you to find a person or a president who is more culpable for the current social, political, and economic instability then president Ronald Reagan.” Ya, you had to put the word “More” culpable then Ronald Reagan….but a runner up would definitely be Bill Clinton and George Bush Jr. Also Ronald Reagan saying “Make American great AGAIN.
With Reaganomics, it became quite acceptable for austerity measures to happen on a yearly basis (along with surprised faces when a few politicians try to do the opposite). For me, I am pretty sure if Reaganomics didn’t happen, we wouldn’t be seeing the mental health crisis that has been happening since covid started (alongside the constant mental health crisis that nonwhite people are experiencing, even if they don’t want to admit it). This is why we see a rise in crimes happening almost everywhere, people are desperate enough to do evil things because the governments of today are failing us all…
I grew up during the Reagan years on welfare. I remember my mother being so angry at his claims about welfare queens. Especially when we were barely getting by each month and still had to borrow money from friends to make ends meet. It’s crazy to me that fake Christians loved him when he would be the priest that left the beaten man on the side of the road.
I love your website. 2 things, I was in junior high when Reagan first got elected. So.. about 12 years old. And at 12, I remember thinking 🤔 to myself how weird it was that the hostages in Iran were released almost immediately after the election. I just kind of cocked my head at that one. Didn’t smell right. Recently, some reports came out about that very thing. Then, while shopping around online for lower auto insurance rates, I dove down a rabbit hole by typing ‘what does your credit score have to do with your driving record’? Especially when you have a perfect driving history? Well — turns out that was made possible by Mr. make America great again also. Before Ronnie was president, it WAS your driving record that determined what rate you paid. He was an asshole for many reasons. 😡 I’ll never understand why people remember him as such a phenomenal man. He wasn’t. He was a sell out, a racist, a fraud and a fear monger. Complete loser who called his wife “Mommy”. How fn weird is that!?
It’s painful to hear this, but thank you for saying it! I have held the same view of Ronald Reagan since 1980 when I was 18 years old and saw with horror the changes that started to happen right in front of my eyes. Who remembers James Watt? This was the man Ronald Reagan appointed as the head of the EPA who tried to dismantle the agency from within. Because there was still a functioning Congress – with liberals, moderates and conservatives in each party – there was enough consensus across party lines that Secretary Watt was stopped. Fast forward to Trump’s presidency when the EPA was practically shredded from within, and no one dared to object in the Republican Party even though this was about clean water to drink and clean air to breathe. But the corrosion had begun, and the love of wealth without charity became the new normal. Suddenly the poor were the problem, not poverty. Suddenly you were unpatriotic if you were not in favor of a military budget that drained funding from social and human services and education. Reagan brought back the same tactics that were used by Joseph McCarthy – which had destroyed so many lives in the 1950s – to demonize liberals and liberalism. And except for Mario Cuomo, Ted Kennedy, and a handful of other politicians, the majority of Democrats ran from the ideals that had become part of the fabric of our society since Franklin Roosevelt. And these politicians share accountability for how much we lost during those years. Reagan also violated the ethics of his office by trying to circumvent Congress, hence the Iran-Contra affair where he diverted money from the sale of arms to Iran, so that he could support the “anti-communist” forces in Central America.
This was a great article, Leeja, but I’ll take your challenge. Roger Ailes. Roger Ailes came out of the Nixon Administration with the absolute certainty that what happened to Nixon could never be allowed to happen to a Republican president again. He was determined to insulate his party from consequences, and set about doing it in the grand tradition of propagandists everywhere. He convinced Rupert Murdoch that his ideas would make money, and got himself hired as the head of Fox News. He also heavily supported right wing talk radio – like Rush Limbaugh. Ailes’s entire goal was to create a right wing information ecosystem that would put power in the hands of the people he felt should have it, and he did that by building on and widening existing divisions in America. I can’t say he’s more responsible than Regan, but he’s at least as responsible. Honestly, Regan, Ailes (with Murdoch as his moneyman), Falwell and Atwater are really the fearsome four on this topic. They fed into each other and here we are. Trump is their legacy; he couldn’t have done the things he did without them.
When I was in 9th grade, I remember my history teacher told me he didn’t like Reagan growing up. Even though he was a kid with a limited knowledge of politics, he told us he just didn’t like him for the fact that the D.A.R.E. program and other youth-connecting groups encouraged by him would go to his school and interrupt recess time and art class. A few years after highschool, and now I see why.
I admit I knew all this (experienced it first-hand as a kid living under the poverty line while he was in office), but my disgust for the man has been burning so fiercely since I was ten-years-old, that I regularly tune into any website willing to intelligently bash him. I know that’s not rational, and I am awful in that way, but… the dude made the rest of our lives a constant struggle and I don’t think I’ll ever truly recover or get over that.
I was in my early twenties when Raygun came to power. I had a great unionized job. All of a sudden, paycheck after paycheck started to shrink. It went on for quite a while. At that time, I was young, busy & didn’t care about politics at all. Years later, that changed. I dove into educating myself as I become disabled. Thanks to Democratic policies & FDR’s New Deal, I would support myself with SSDI. Always a Democrat, this time I registered & have been voting every damn chance I get! I learned Raygun raised my taxes 11 times all while drastically lowering taxes on himself & his greedy rich friends! Little by little, over the decades, I saw Americans struggle more & more–in every age group! Raygun openly preached to Americans not to trust OUR own government! More and more of OUR own government was being privatized like defense contractors, CMS & Medicare, & USPS, to name a few. My family moved to California in 1960. My older sister was able to get a 4 year degree at CSUN WITHOUT incurring any debt. College was pretty much free except for books & class fees. Then Raygun became governor and changed that for the worst. Student debt is ubiquitous, now.
I remember my grandfather, a WW2 vet, would cuss at Reagan on television. As a teenager, I remember the first time I became aware of shady politics. It was when a televised announcement from Reagan telling Gorbachev to “tear down that wall” speaking of the Berlin wall, of course. Thing is,.. like three days earlier, the east and west Germans had already started and had knocked down a large portion of the wall by the time Reagan made his statement. Also the USSR was collapsed and no longer controlled East Germany, Poland, well, you know, like the entire Eastern Soviet block as well as several southern regions. It may have took a few years to break free of Soviet influence, but the wall coming down was a symbol of freedom for millions that was the kickoff. Reagan was days late, and still acted like he had told Gorbachev to do it. He had nothing to do with it at all. But church idiots everywhere rallied behind Reagan like he saved Europe…I understood at that moment why my grandfather couldn’t stomach that SOB. Well anyway, that’s how I remember Reagan. Second rate actor turned crooked Republican Politician.
I have a article that I made in the 1980s that was about how bad it was and how so many farmers were going under because of RR. There was a band playing country music and I remember one’s name he called himself TERRIBLE TEECE and he said “it’s hard to have a song in your heart when you don’t have any money in you pocket “.
Graduated from high school in 1982; while there, also excelled in electronics through vocational training. However, the only thing I could get job-wise is bagging groceries in a locally owned franchise supermarket. The owner’s sons and cousins were pretty much who I could consider typical “Reagan Youth” with college degrees. Especially on slow days, I always got poor shamed by them. Tried changing places of employment, especially due to my knowledge of electronics, but was always denied. Never even considered for any technical job, so many Reagan Youth back in the day, wishing to keep guys like me in my place.
There’s something that bothers me about taxation. It’s not required for federal spending. All the programs, or any plan really to invest in citizens can be done if there’s a drive to do it. There’s money for it. It just doesn’t happen. It goes to defense and global policing. Or to revolving door homies and their corporations. I actually think FOCUSING on taxing rich people is a distraction from actually getting important things done.
Just found you and subscribed. It’s about time this is all laid out and the facts are clear and evident. I voted for him and joined the Marines over the Iran hostage situation. It wasn’t long before I wanted Reagan and Bush imprisoned. This was absolutely the beginning of the end of government by and for the people. And also the last time I voted for a Republican. Thank you for your efforts to inform those who are not aware of the truth of how we got to where we are now. Semper Fidelis
The basic reason for higher standards of living is productivity growth. All income levels increased in step with productivity growth forever until Reagan, when mid to lower incomes go flat and the economic benefits of the continued productivity growth have gone entirely to higher incomes, and the higher the more.
Under what economic theory does increased productivity require an increase in the minimum wage? I can understand tying minimum wages to inflation or something like that, but why productivity? Isn’t it true that most of the productivity rise since the 1950s has been due to capital investment? It’s a fantasy to believe that minimum wage workers have become extremely more efficient due to their own efforts or something when in reality it has been due to machines, technology, and other capital investments made by their employers.
Fine commentary Leeja. As a college sophomore in Economics 101, I understood the lop-side of supply side. My mother always said,(ya know!?) ” he’s an actor.” She could see right through the pose. So it made sense to me even at that age. I saw Trump -Ronnie2.0 coming but never imagined he’d get elected, and cause this much damage which is still in progress. The thing about Power is it’s powerful. And Reagan had the audacity and lack of insight to scorn drug addiction. Trump’s addiction is undergoing a god awful withdrawal. Well deserved I say.
It’s important to note that there are many credible reports that Regan was in severe decline by his second term of office and was no longer competent, but propped up be people using him to accomplish their goals. Many argue that he was never the same after being shot, and this was the trigger for his decline, much of which were hidden from anyone outside of a small inner-circle of advisors.
I’ve seen several of her talks now. A main theme she has is the negative influence of Christian nationalism in America. I agree. I was born in 1957, but I didn’t vote for or against Reagan. I voted in the 1988 Republican primary in favor of Bush because Pat Robertson had cast his hat into the ring and I didn’t want a religious nut running the country. I’ve been voting against Republicans ever since. I never know if Democrats really have my best interests in mind, but its quite obvious to me that the Republicans don’t.
I lived thru it. I saw all the horrible things he did. I thought his “trickle down economics” was an April Fools joke. Ketchup is now a vegetable thanks to Ronnie. He saud he was make suure that eveone had a job! He failed to mention that, that meant every one had to have a job to survive. Thats when housewives had go to work and leave our children to daycare centers. His damage has never ended.
A couple years ago I met up with a friend of mine I hadn’t seen in 20 years because he joined the Air Force right after high school. While catching up, we started talking politics and it was interesting because he was very conservative when it was younger. Not anymore. Whole conversation centered around how Reagan ruined everything LOL
Are we serious? I’m not rich and probably never will be, but taxing wealthy people at 70% is absolutely unfair. I’m glad Reagan addressed that. I’d feel like a piece of shit if I praised the fact that wealthy people are being robbed of their earned money when I won’t even suffer the same fate. Imagine if they told you that next year, 70% of your income would be taken as tax. Would you still be so glad?
Lol, reminds me of when I had to take an extra class in summer school helping in the Library before Senior year. I was talking to the other girls about the failures of Regan when the new Librarian interrupted about how she was a Regan Girl and blah, blah, blah. I lit her up with facts that my mom had told me and that I had read about. She pursed her lips and couldn’t say crap. I was the only one who knew how to catalog the books and guided the other girls, yet she gave me a B and them As, lmao. Had the class actually counted, I and my parents would have gone to war. I laughed in her face, though.😂
Re: All these claims from this article and such. At a very young age I was able to pinpoint exactly “The Beginning of the End”. The exact moment was when President Ronald Reagan declared: 1) “TOMATO CATSUP AS A VEGETABLE” in the public schools. Then along came: 2) STAR WARS! NOT the movie, I assure. With the redefining of the: 2) Tax Laws. 3) YADDA-YADDA on every single other B.S. slap in the face on everybody else in America. While, but not limited to: 4) Allowing Oliver North to take THE largest fall in military history of the United States of America. The ONLY crime that Oliver North committed: For exactly following his Commander in Chief’s order to the letter. I have more commentary here. Because it’s all true. Besides this article, do your research. Please. Save our America. Please. With blessings, prayers & forgiveness. Please.
I stopped at 2:33 because I already know about Reaganomics. Even though I was 10 years old at the time, Reagan was in office. It doesn’t hurt to do history. Whether it’s in simple form or in detail, it doesn’t hurt to know your presence. But I felt Reagan personally because my mom was a waitress when he passed Reaganomics. And that’s why your waitresses expect tips. And the business owners get away with paying the waitresses $2.90 an hour instead of minimum wage and they get to keep their tips as Fringe benefits. Because of Reaganomics, my mom had to collect more from welfare and she had to become a bartender because she couldn’t survive being a waitress anymore. so when a waitress gives you an attitude for a small tip, tell him to blame it on the Republicans. Because all these people they don’t pay attention to politics they just want their trickle down tax cuts that fixes everything.
This was one of the best explanations of chaos within right wing politics I’ve seen. You all are both thorough and factual while delivering relevant information. I find myself researching public records of the time coupled with news articles. Your platform is much needed within our society for the safety of democracy or the preservation of it. Thank you!
I’d already posthumously hated him for quite some years (he was well before my time) because of how his administration had botched / deliberately mishandled the AIDS crisis, and how he was a proto-Trump, how his “war on drugs” was really just against racial minorities, and much more recently because of how he and his coddled Israel regarding Lebanon in ’82 despite their growing list of systemic atrocities. I’m sure what you’re gonna reveal will just paint an even more bleak, maddening picture.
Guilty as charged. Great stuff, with excellent supporting evidence. In the UK we had a similar phenomenon during that disastrous decade (Thatcher) with similar, not identical, “ideological” origins. Looking back on it, though, I conclude that both countries, and probably the non-Anglo world as well, were a petrol tank waiting to blow. Reagan and Thatcher were particularly pernicious accelerants, but they couldn’t have got anywhere if there hadn’t been vast swathes of the population willing and more than ready to suck up the neo-con snake oil. Apart from anything else, it’s important to understand what the Anglo world felt like in the late 1970s. In the UK (it may have been different in the USA) there was a sense that society was in fact collapsing, really grinding to a halt, economically, not just societally as we might feel now. You mention an average of 400 strikes per year in the USA prior to 1980: perhaps it felt the same for quite a lot of Americans? History seems to show that such conditions, i.e. naked economic fear, usually breed demagogues, extreme ideologies and worse…
The belief Reagan is solely responsible for the current level of inequality is hyperbolic is incorrect : Reagan did 4 major acts which have had a permanent effect 1. Changing the balance of power between the populous and the mil 0.1% by a factor of 4 to 5. (Weight of campaign contributions from the populous and the mil.) He did this by (a) Applying crushing taxation to the financially weakest : one month after his inauguration, tipped waitresses were paying so much tax, they were working for the benefit of the IRS, not themselves, students were fined and suffered a massive loss of income due to increased taxation. (To achieve this, he had to have arranged the changes in the runup to the inauguration, and signed the paper immediately after his inauguration. ) (b) Relieving taxation on the mil 0.1%. (The proportional change was the greatest of any President) (All subsequent Presidents were the servants of the mil 0.1 % ) 2. Refusing to pay the national debt, resulting in a national debt heading towards $ 34 Trillion. (The origin of QED is Reagan) 3. Being a pretend President, he made acceptable Presidents too stupid/demented to be in control. (Trump & Biden should have been dismissed immediately as incapable. ) ( Tip O’Neale regarded Reagan as the worst President ever, he was uninformed, and merely sent people to the appropriate departmental head, allowing the Bush family to control the US. ) 4. Most significantly of all, crushing the transition away from Fossil Fuels initiated by President Carter.
Germans perfected capitalism in 1930’s as a final solution to the Great Depression. They called it ‘national socialism’. Nationalism served by force as patriotism, slave labor, (yes the economic force capitalists love it), strong army, strong leader, extreme racial policies etc. Many, many, many Germans, Italians and even Americans loved it. Then came 1943, 44 and 45.
I was just a kid, but I could sense an uprightness to the 80’s compared to what felt was a simpler, less materialistic and sex, drugs and rock and roll of the mellowness of the 70’s. Now, I know that it was the moral majority and the puritanical values that they infused into mainstream society. That’s just my perspective. Also, soon after he was inaugurated, my school lunches were adversely affected, in terms of their costing 50% more, and getting a whole lot less for it, and not balanced. I was so put off by his utter lack of compassion. He was the “Let them eat cake president “, kinda sadistic or narcissistic or something. Now that you have informed me about the union busting, I can understand why job security was more common for those of the boomers generation and older.