The intellectual juice for Reagan's historic tax cuts came from Milton Friedman. He said that if you cut Government revenue, they will spend less. He thought he understood human nature. (This man is responsible for America's post 70s economic policy, so he better be right).
Unfortunately, he was wrong. The government didn't spend less under Reagan -- in fact, with a huge increase in military and law enforcement outlays, spending increased sharply over the Carter years. The consequences of Friedman's miscalculation were debt and deficits as far as the eye could see.
Same thing with investment in education. Friedman said that the government didn't need to invest in education because the market would deliver a utopian trickle of degrees to the middle class. Consequently, after Reagan began America's long divestment from education, the USA went from #1 to #12 amongst the #36 developed nations, and is woefully behind in the global competition for solutions to our largest problems.
Friedman also convinced Reagan that lowering taxes on the wealthy would lead to investment and jobs. It didn't. It went to the purchase of politicians and the Wall Street casino. As a result, middle class spending had to be kept alive on credit, while America's infrastructure and economy died.
Same thing with energy. Carter begged America to move into a less petro-intensive system. He warned that some day the demand for energy would outstrip supply, and your economy would be held hostage by terrorist states. Reagan framed him as a hysterical Lefty, and he crushed the alternative energy movement. He tore down the solar panels on the White House roof, and then he proclaimed that the market would take care of energy. It did the opposite. Big Oil bribed politicians to rig Cafe standards and crush the first big electric car movement. At every juncture, America's politicians expanded oil use. Now you are paying dearly for it.
The market mantra became a catch-all for anything America didn't want to pay for, invest in, or devote resources to.
"Don't worry, the market will take care of it. Let's go to Aspen!"
America tried to have its cake and eat it too. It got seduced by Reagan's voodoo. You believed that you did not have to pay as you go; you believed that you did not have to tend to big problems. You simply channeled all your resources to making a small group of people insanely wealthy -- and now it's time to pay (but you don't have any money, because the wealthy parachuted away with it. Trillions have been stuffed into dynastic coffers or moved off shore. Your great public sector is dead. You are living in a hyper-privatized neoliberal dystopia of concentrated wealth surrounded by rapidly expanding poverty).
You swallowed poison in 1980. The money is gone. The game is over. Nothing left to do but build prisons for all the poverty you created.
(the market didn't take care of it, and the price is your children's future)
