Every socioeconomic graph ever
Well, that's not true. Here in the UK, for example, we'd replace "Ronald Reagan" with "Margaret Thatcher".
this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2026
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Look at that green line trickle down.
It's also when conservative think tanks came online. It's not Reagan, it's what Reagan was being told to do by "think tanks"
I think, even think tanks are just a symptom. This is just capitalism working as intended.
Oh, no, yeah, no, yeah, for sure. Just explaining why we missed the bus on the social safety net movement from Europe.
Having lived through it, it felt more like where Reagan was successful, it was a short term fix for a momentary problem, but it was sold as a permanent solution for the next 50 years. Where Reagan was not successful, they still worshiped his ass and continued clamoring for his solution because, "It was never properly done."
To see what I mean, look at the difference in the economies of Russia and China. Russia was entirely rebuilt by Thatcherites and Reaganites, and the free market reforms very predictably ended in corruption, wealth inequality, oligarchy, and dangerous overspecialization. China, starting from much lower, didn't get the Reagan/Thatcher love, and they catapulted themselves into the largest economy in the world, by some measures.
This is not to say there is no corruption, wealth inequality, etc. in China. But Russia is much worse off, all things considered, despite starting with a much stronger economy and society. It's not a coincidence that America is rapidly turning into Russia, now that the Reaganites are back in power.
I'm not convinced by your comparison to Russia and China. I don't think either of them really have anything to do with Reagan or Thatcher. I dislike them but I think their influence outside the western world is minimal.
The privatization of Russia was done before the soviet union even collapsed and was just wealth being consolidated under a different system by those in power. There was never a free market.
China was able to become the powerhouse because in the 90s Deng Xiaoping eased communist policies to allow private businesses and they entered the WTO. Even so, there has never been a free market in China either.
Otherwise, I don't disagree.
I agree with you. This is such a narrow look at two very complex countries through one itty bitty lens. China has demographic and geographic strengths that Russia doesn’t. China also has comparable amounts of corruption or more, but it isn’t as visible to the west.
Reagan and Thatcher are just figureheads of the movement, not really the source. Wealthy entrenched powerful people were the source, that used them as spring boards in their respective economies. It's not even an organized movement, just a large group of wealthy people converging on shared goals. Reagan and Thatcher are what happens when they win, not what caused them to win.
I suppose if were talking about people just being selfish assholes then yeah I feel what you're saying. My only gripe is comparing economic outcomes of very different countries with different historical context.
Reagan and Thatcher have become practically synonymous with austerity and privatization in leftist circles, so their names get invoked pretty frequently even when talking about things they had nothing to do with.
It did also help that China had 10-15x as many people. Their GDP per capita is pretty similar.
What temporary problems are you talking about?
AFAIK, neoliberalism was a psyop pushed by a few millionaires into academia and the government with the only intent of paying less taxes. There was never anything in there, just an excuse to reduce taxes.
What would the world be like if Jimi Carter had won re-election? I think it makes for a very interesting uchronia novel.
Thanks Iran
The funny thing is, a lot of people didn't vote for Carter because he wasn't perfect.
They wanted him to do more about South Africa, but his hands were tied because the US military needed South African chromium.
Instead of backing the better candidate, some people thought that letting a GOP blowhard like Reagan come in would somehow push people to the Left.
Sound familiar?
And the consequences reverberate for generations...
I had the honor of meeting some old school Communists, folks who had gone to Spain to fight Franco and been blacklisted. They told us that they'd tried to warn people to vote against Nixon in 1968, but the younger folks thought that Nixon and Humphrey were equally bad.
It seems like an unending cycle.
That must have been back when communists would still do anything besides virtue signal on the internet
It's really remarkable how Americans have sleepwalked into stagnation without even noticing it. In 1979, the US was well ahead of East Germany in terms of living standards, human rights and quality of governance. Today, it is far behind in all of these aspects. What happened? Green line went down.
There is this myth that the relative prosperity in the US in the mid twentieth century is the norm, and not result of a geographically isolated US with ramped up production and distribution while so much of the rest of the world was recovering from WW2.
Well, the recovery from WW2 didn't take that long. A big factor that isn't often mentioned is the existence of a large domestic internal free trade zone with few legal and cultural barriers to trade, in addition to plentiful natural resources. There is still nothing that rivals the US in this regard (the EU might have internal free trade in theory, but in practice there are numerous barriers), but its substantial problems in governance and large income inequality (compared to top-tier economies) more than negate these advantages.
Well, I don't think that East Germany in particular is a good example of this, it has had some very harsh changes that are not comparable to almost any other place in the world. I suppose it also applies and is more comparable, with other European countries like France or Denmark, to say two at random.
*Jimi Hendrix
That day when they crossed would've been a pretty mediocre day.
What about Nixon?
Nixon was a piece of shit, but he doesn't show up on graphs like Reagan does.
Nixon lit the fire.
Before Nixon was elected, middle class in the US was one Union job paying for a house full of kids and a stay at home wife. By 1976, a family needing two incomes was becoming common.
Nixon had a lot more on his plate. Vietnam, inflation, and the energy crisis. Also, Nixon was President while there was a powerful free press. He lit the fire, but wasn't able to really get to work. Heck, Nixon had to start the EPA because a river caught fire.
Reagan had incredible luck. He had three Soviet leaders die within months of each other while the USSR was caught in the Afghanistan fiasco. Not to mention Chernobyl, Solidarity trade union in Poland, and other headaches. He also came in at the dawn of Fox News and the cable revolution that helped him gut the Fairness doctrine and deregulate the media.