The Economy After Reagan

Ever since the end of the Great Depression, Americans have taken a rising standard of living as their birthright. Each successive generation has enjoyed more disposable income, more leisure time, a greater stock of material possessions and a wider array of government supports than its predecessors. In a way few Americans understand, the nation’s ability to maintain that record is threatened by disturbing factors in the world economy. Making the hard economic choices required to keep the United States growing and to permit all groups within the population to share in that prosperity is the fundamental challenge of the post-Reagan era.

In some ways, the accomplishments of the eight-year presidency of Ronald Reagan will support George Bush’s efforts to achieve continued economic growth. President Reagan presided over an economic restructuring that caused extreme pain to many Americans, eliminating millions of jobs and forcing the shutdown of thousands of companies. In the process, however, it left the nation with a more mobile workforce and a more modern industrial plant. Reagan’s attacks on government spending left Americans with reduced expectations of their government’s capabilities, easing the political pressure on his successor to offer expensive new government-funded programs to cure social ills. And due to the cautious policies of the Federal Reserve Board and the absence of unpleasant price shocks during his term, President Reagan is able to leave to his successor both an unusually low unemployment rate and a relatively low and stable rate of inflation, perhaps the most welcome gifts of all.