Reagan Finally Ruins America

It took a while, but Ronald Reagan finally destroyed America. The myth of Reagan, told during many a conservative circle jerk, has recently been crushed by reality. Ronald Reagan has made America less safe, less powerful and less wealthy. At this point, his great accomplishment – the collapse of the Soviet Union – looks incredibly ironic, like rain on your wedding day. Reagan’s economic policies have taken us the to brink of global unimportance. Only people with brains could have seen this coming.

The Reagan-Bush years have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect. – Bill Clinton 1991.

Sound familiar? That quote can now be applied to the Reagan-Bush-Bush years. The mythical Reagan recovery is about as real as a unicorn. We had a boom in the mid 80s, but the people who did well were the rich. The middle class and the poor certainly didn’t benefit. By 1990, middle class incomes were the same as 1980 and poverty had gone up. Then we were slammed by another recession. Wow, that’s some impressive shit.

American production didn’t pick up again until the mid-nineties. So, that means Reagan’s kick ass tax cuts for the rich didn’t get things rolling until 1995. Weird, huh? Of course, it all ended again brutally a few years after Bush II took over and lowered taxes of the rich again. Strange coincidence that. Bush continues Reagan’s idiotic policies of helping the rich but he added a fantastic touch: Start an expensive war with no articulated finish line. And just like Reagan, he started his presidency during a recession, which allowed him to claim his moronic economic policies worked when there was an inevitable recovery. Only, just like Reagan, production did not increase. The poor got poorer, the middle class shrunk and the rich got richer.

When Clinton came into office he raised taxes. At that time we were experiencing a terrible recession. Not one Republican Congressman or Senator voted for the tax raise. They all screamed that it would ruin the economy. How’d that work out?

The other big linchpin in the Reagan destruction of our nation is deregulation. It led to the savings and loan crisis, the Enron disaster and the current housing and credit crisis. That’s a pretty sweet record. When Reagan took office, we had a total debt of around 1 trillion dollars. Now it’s at 11 trillion.

Since the Reagan days we have been existing as a credit card economy. Now the time has come to pay the bill – and it is going to be ugly. The days of America as the global leader are over. When we nationalized large parts of our banking system, we acknowledged the American free market way of doing things was a failure. The only comparison of such a failure would be the Soviet Union. You know, the big bad country Reagan killed. He just happened to kill America, too. We’ve just been walking around with a stomach wound waiting to die.

America has spent decades lecturing other countries on finance. We are the ones who knew how to do it. The International Monetary Fund has enforced the American creed. Not doing it our way led to a decrease in aid for a few countries. We certainly gave quite a bit of shit to China, the country whose banks are not failing left and right.

Both Bush and Reagan excelled at jacking up military costs, while lowering taxes. That’s pretty much economic suicide. It’s also what doomed Britain after WWI and the Soviet Union. So, now we have to look to those countries that did not bow to American pressure to do things our way to bail us out. Now, that is ironic, like rain on your wedding day.

Regardless, we are no more. At least, not in the global sense. This is Reagan’s legacy. The policy of big spending and deregulated markets will have the end result of far less global power. Russia didn’t just happen to fight Georgia at this time. Hugo Chavez isn’t coincidentally talking endless shit about America at this exact moment. Iran isn’t bragging about 5,000 centrifuges now for the hell of it. They are all doing it because they know we are a clawless beast. We can’t afford to do what we have done in the past. Our economy can no longer support our military the way it has. It’s over.

And it’s not just military might, but the money we spread around to keep countries friendly isn’t there either. Iceland, one of the hardest hit nations of the crisis, asked for help from the U.S.. We couldn’t provide it, so they went to the next guy: Russia. Russia bailed out Iceland and now they have a new friend in the Atlantic. That same friend now dislikes America and England. That was fast.

The only way out of this recession – or depression – will be massive government spending, which means even more dependence on foreign governments. We could inflate our way out of the debt, which would lead to the dollar being dropped as the world’s reserve currency. Or the countries bailing us out will use the debt to shift the balance of power in their favor. Those are pretty much the options. That’s the Reagan legacy. Remember when he stared the evil Soviet Empire in the face, took it down and then ruined America with unsustainable economic policies? What an epic failure he was.


FearTheReaper is a writer, actor and stand up comedian. Check back each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday for more from FearTheReaper and read his blog, Stop All Monsters.

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