Revisiting the Reagan nightmare

"Now that he is safely dead, let us praise him." poet Carl Wendell Hines wrote of Martin Luther King Jr, after his assassination. Ronald Reagan has been "safely dead" for just under seven years, but the economic impact of his policies remain with us. In a sense, it's highly appropriate that the centennial of Reagan's birth falls upon us in the midst of a economic nightmare from which it is uncertain when–or if–the nation will awaken. Though we will be inevitably awash in conservative praise and hagiography of Reagan, his 100th birthday is also an occasion to remember how America's long economic nightmare began. It's a story told many times, but it bears telling again, and again, as David Johnson did last year as he explained how the "Reagan Revolution" came home to roost. He even told it in charts. As Dave said in his post. take a look at a chart of almost anything, and you'll notice that right around 1981, things take a sharp turn in the wrong direction–that is, for just about everyone but the wealthiest 1%. Conservative policies transformed the United States from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation in just a few years. And it started with Reagan.