Reaganomics

Reaganomics (/reɪɡəˈnɒmɪks/; a portmanteau of Reagan and economics attributed to Paul Harvey) refers to the economic policies promoted by U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. These policies are commonly associated with and characterized as supply-side economics, trickle-down economics or voodoo economics by political opponents, while Reagan and his political advocates preferred to call it free-market economics. The four pillars of Reagan's economic policy were to reduce the growth of government spending, reduce the federal income tax and capital gains tax, reduce government regulation, and tighten the money supply in order to reduce inflation. The results of Reaganomics are still debated. Supporters point to the end of stagflation, stronger GDP growth, and an entrepreneur revolution in the decades that followed. Critics point to the widening income gap, what they described as an atmosphere of greed, and the national debt tripling in eight years which ultimately reversed the post-World War II trend of a shrinking national debt as percentage of GDP. Prior to the Reagan administration, the United States economy experienced a decade of high unemployment and persistently high inflation (known as stagflation). Attacks on Keynesian economic orthodoxy as well as empirical economic models such as the Phillips Curve grew. Political pressure favored stimulus resulting in an expansion of the money supply. President Richard Nixon's wage and price controls were phased out. The federal oil reserves were created to ease any future short term shocks. President Jimmy Carter had begun phasing out price controls on petroleum while he created the Department of Energy. Much of the credit for the resolution of the stagflation is given to two causes: a three-year contraction of the money supply by the Federal Reserve Board under Paul Volcker, initiated in the last year of Carter's presidency, and long-term easing of supply and pricing in oil during the 1980s oil glut. In stating that his intention was to lower taxes, Reagan's approach was a departure from his immediate predecessors. Reagan enacted lower marginal tax rates as well as simplified income tax codes and continued deregulation. During Reagan's eight year presidency, the annual deficits averaged 4.0% of GDP, compared to a 2.2% average during the preceding eight years. The real (inflation adjusted) average rate of growth in federal spending fell from 4% under Jimmy Carter to 2.5% under Ronald Reagan. GDP per employed person increased at an average 1.5% rate during the Reagan administration, compared to an average 0.6% during the preceding eight years. Private sector productivity growth, measured as real output per hour of all persons, increased at an average rate of 1.9% during Reagan's eight years, compared to an average 1.3% during the preceding eight years. Federal net outlays as a percent of GDP averaged 21.4% under Reagan, compared to 19.1% during the preceding eight years. During the Nixon and Ford Administrations, before Reagan's election, a combined supply and demand side policy was considered unconventional by the moderate wing of the Republican Party. While running against Reagan for the Presidential nomination in 1980, George H. W. Bush had derided Reaganomics as 'voodoo economics'. Similarly, in 1976, Gerald Ford had severely criticized Reagan's proposal to turn back a large part of the Federal budget to the states. In his 1980 campaign speeches, Reagan presented his economic proposals as a return to the free enterprise principles, free market economy that had been in favor before the Great Depression and FDR's New Deal policies. At the same time he attracted a following from the supply-side economics movement, which formed in opposition to Keynesian demand-stimulus economics. This movement produced some of the strongest supporters for Reagan's policies during his term in office. The contention of the proponents, that the tax rate cuts would more than cover any increases in federal debt, was influenced by a theoretical taxation model based on the elasticity of tax rates, known as the Laffer curve. Arthur Laffer's model predicts that excessive tax rates actually reduce potential tax revenues, by lowering the incentive to produce; the model also predicts that insufficient tax rates (rates below the optimum level for a given economy) lead directly to a reduction in tax revenues. Ronald Reagan also cited the 14th-century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun as an influence on his supply-side economic policies, in 1981. Reagan paraphrased Ibn Khaldun, who said that 'in the beginning of the dynasty, great tax revenues were gained from small assessments,' and that 'at the end of the dynasty, small tax revenues were gained from large assessments.' Reagan said his goal is 'trying to get down to the small assessments and the great revenues.'