1945-1973: Ultra cheap energy (gas below $1). Global manufacturing competitors either destroyed by WWII (Germany/Japan) or not yet integrated or developed (China/India/3rd world).
Consequence: America was manufacturer to the world, i.e., jobs, jobs, jobs. Consumer demand was at an all time high. Government ensures middle class solvency through a network of programs which puts more dollars in middle class wallets. This demand forces the capitalists to invest and add more jobs (in order to capture the extra money in middle class wallets). This is often called the golden age of American capitalism. It was the period of America's greatest, longest economic growth - and it took place during a time when government was heavily involved in the economy.
1973-1980: Cheap energy goes away temporarily - leading to terrible inflation (followed by stagflation: high inflation accompanied by zero economic growth and high unemployment). Global competitors start to cut into our manufacturing pie. The great postwar period of economic growth ends. The Republicans blame government spending, high taxes, and regulations for destroying incentives, efficiency, and jobs.
1980-2001: The Reagan credit boom - an unprecedented expansion of household debt. Let's back up and unpack this.
-Big business approaches Reagan and says they want more access to ultra cheap 3rd world labor and raw material. They ask him to liberalize trade laws so they can bypass the expensive American-middle-class-labor. Reagan agrees and dismantles the high wage American manufacturing labor model, i.e., he busts unions, ends legal and regulatory support of middle class labor, and frees capital to harvest 3rd world labor. Wages and benefits in American plummet for the middle class, but explode for the wealthy.
(FYI: How did Reagan deliver 3rd world labor/resources to big business? He used the Soviet Threat to bring resource-rich parts of the 3rd world under America's protective wing. This was part of a grand strategy to create the military component of global capitalism. Why military? Because, places with cheap labor and raw materials must be "stabilized" . How do you think we get things like oil & sugar and precious metals from dangerous parts of the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America?)
Consequence: postwar manufacturing wages are replaced by low retail wages. The GM job model where the father could support an entire family was replaced by the Walmart model, where one medical emergency puts the individual in bankruptcy, and the wage earner does not make enough to send kids to college. The result of this shift to a low wage model was that Americans had less money for consumption, and less opportunity to climb the economic ladder. (Driving down wages makes the rich richer, but it means that the middle class can no longer educate their children. This make America less competitive because there is less competition for things like science jobs. In order to ensure that the wealthy can buy islands in the pacific and leave dynastic wealthy to their children, we no longer invest in education. China is the opposite)
What did Reagan do when the American family lost wages/entitlements, thus making it harder for them to consume and drive the consumption economy? He aggressively expanded credit markets. This resulted in a share rise of household debt. Basically, big business took the extra profits made possible by the new low wage model and loaned this money back to the dying middle class in the form of high interest credit cards. What the middle class used to make in wages/benefits, they would now borrow from the capitalist. This lead to a 30 year period of 'in-debting' the middle class.
2001-2008: Bush inherits a world where the middle class is so in debt that they cannot sustain consumption on the model which had been in place since Reagan: expanded credit. The reality of the low wage Reagan model has finally come home to roost, i.e., you cannot borrow forever, i.e., you cannot replace wages with credit cards. Granted, the wealthy have more money than at any time in history (because their labor costs have been slashed and their tax rates are at 15%, lower than the middle class). However, the middle class no longer has the wages to consume. And they are so in debt (after 30 years of borrowing), that they can no longer borrow.
After the Clinton recession and 9/11, Bush is left with a dead economy. There is nothing left to drive consumption. The middle class, having lost manufacturing jobs and no longer in a position to borrow sufficiently, is tapped out. The economy shows signs of deep sickness with a new phenomena: "jobless recovery". America, having shipped jobs to the 3rd world under the reagan model of breaking expensive American labor, enters a post-job era.
Consequence: Bush turns to the last asset left in order to stimulate job growth and economic activity- the bedrock of the American system: home values. He initiates steroidal lending to the non-credit-worthy. He loans trillions of dollars into the economy on the backs of people without jobs or collateral. Home values sky-rocket and Americans use their fake new-found wealth to spend like crazy. Employment stabilizes and the economy stays afloat on the backs of bubble jobs and bubble consumption (i.e., jobs sustained by criminally inflated housing values).
2008: The Bush housing bubble bursts, destroying the American financial system and leading to the bankrupting of millions of consumers. The combination of the Reagan Model (i.e., lower wages, increase borrowing) and the Bush bubble (which destroyed a generation of consumers) has left America in its deepest hole ever.
2009-2012 Hand this mess to a black democrat and blame him.
Will America ever recover from the Reagan low wage model... followed by the expansion of credit ... followed by the bursting of the Bush housing bubble?.
The game is over. American consumer demand will be insufficient for decades. Welcome to the long road down. The Reagan/Bush poison has taken full effect. The middle class is gone . . . and so is their consumption . . . and now there is nothing to drive the economy. They cannot borrow another cent.
Attention Reagan: You screwed up. We realize that big business funded your ascendancy so that you would bust unions and drive down wages. We know you passed the largest amnesty bill in history so that you could flood California with cheap labor, thus breaking union control of California labor. But you forgot something, or perhaps you never knew it. We need to pay high wages and benefits to Americans so they can consume and drive the domestic economy. When the middle class has a lot of money to spend, the capitalist is forced to innovate and add more jobs in order to capture that money. Capital will only invest when there is sufficient demand to capture. (Silly rabbit, you tried to create demand by expanding credit. How dare you expand household debt to replace high wages? How dare you drive the middle class into debt in order to expand the profits of a narrow group of Americans!) By busting unions and letting capital ship jobs to cheaper labor climates, you destroyed the goose that laid the golden egg: demand. Silly rabbit. You promised us that if we adopted your tax and regulatory model that the jobs would grow. Then, right after we elected you, we watched jobs being shipped to China so that your donors could get cheaper labor costs. How dare you!