Carter was a pretty good person, at least post-Presidency, can’t really speak on how he was in the White House though.
Reagan, otoh, was irredeemable all the way through, given while he was in the White House, that guy effectively destroyed the middle class, created the current disaster that is unaffordable post-secondary education, and created the current credit score system among other atrocities, not to mention that whole Contra business.
Yes, really, if it weren’t for Reagan, there wouldn’t be a massive and progressively-widening gap between the bottom and top of society, it would still be possible to get affordably educated, and people wouldn’t be getting completely screwed by bad credit.
For a perfect foil of everything the US has stood for for at least the last four decades, look at most of the EU having universal healthcare, having an actually regulated education sector where for-profit grift schools like University of Phoenix or even the late ITT Tech or EDMC and its subsidiaries, wouldn’t have ever been allowed to take root to begin with.
The reason to hate Carter is that a lot of the economic policies attributed to Reagan had their beginnings under Carter.
The post WWII economic consensus was Keynesianism, but beginning around the time of Nixon there was an economic phenomenon called “stagflation,” which refers high unemployment at the same time as high inflation, something that isn’t supposed to be possible under Keynesianism, which advocates confronting high unemployment with injecting money into the economy, and then reducing those injections when employment comes back down. Nixon attempted to address the problem with price controls as a short-term solution, Ford’s idea was just asking people to spend less, but Carter was the one who made the decision to view inflation as a bigger problem than unemployment and began moving towards Neoliberalism.
The big difference between Carter and Reagan was branding. Carter branded the moves terribly which is to say he was honest about it. Work was going to become more alienating and purchasing power would decrease, but it’s ok, because we as a society will just have to pursue meaning outside of the economic sphere, making do with less, cultivating out personal virtue. There’s likely a connection between Carter and the right’s meme of, “You will own nothing and be happy.”
Reagan has much better branding for these policies, which is to say he lied. Look at how cheap we’re gonna make everything! You’re gonna be able to buy so much stuff, it’s gonna be great, let’s party and celebrate capitalism and consumerism! Of course, with wages divorced from productivity and the decline of the power of organized labor, purchasing power would decrease, but the effects of that would take time to fully manifest.
There were a wave of wildcat strikes during this period but unions had already defanged themselves, they kicked out all the communists and the leadership sold out, because from the New Deal era up to this point things were going fine.
Reagan definitely bears a lot of the blame but there wasn’t a huge difference in economic policy, the democrats didn’t really have anything to propose as an alternative and voters weren’t given much of a choice about it.
For Carter the worst thing I know is that a lot of the free iran Iranian people really hate Carter for his actions in the Whitehouse and blame him for the current oppressive Iranian regime. I don’t really think that was something malicious on his part, just a policy mistake.
They aren’t wrong! Carter may have been the best president post office, but he is also the American most responsible for the religious dictatorship that took over Iran and much of the middile east.
I’m a leftist, but after finishing “Reading Lolita In Tehran” and watching the PBS documentary “Taken Hostage” I understood completely how Reagan defeated him in a crushing landslide. The outpouring of grief after Carters death was difficult to stomach understanding the damage he had done. Yes the man built houses and gave generously late in life, but that’s because he knew he had a lot to make up for it. The man destabilized several nations, including his own, with entirely foreseeable negligence.
Carter was a pretty good person, at least post-Presidency, can’t really speak on how he was in the White House though.
Reagan, otoh, was irredeemable all the way through, given while he was in the White House, that guy effectively destroyed the middle class, created the current disaster that is unaffordable post-secondary education, and created the current credit score system among other atrocities, not to mention that whole Contra business.
Yes, really, if it weren’t for Reagan, there wouldn’t be a massive and progressively-widening gap between the bottom and top of society, it would still be possible to get affordably educated, and people wouldn’t be getting completely screwed by bad credit.
For a perfect foil of everything the US has stood for for at least the last four decades, look at most of the EU having universal healthcare, having an actually regulated education sector where for-profit grift schools like University of Phoenix or even the late ITT Tech or EDMC and its subsidiaries, wouldn’t have ever been allowed to take root to begin with.
The reason to hate Carter is that a lot of the economic policies attributed to Reagan had their beginnings under Carter.
The post WWII economic consensus was Keynesianism, but beginning around the time of Nixon there was an economic phenomenon called “stagflation,” which refers high unemployment at the same time as high inflation, something that isn’t supposed to be possible under Keynesianism, which advocates confronting high unemployment with injecting money into the economy, and then reducing those injections when employment comes back down. Nixon attempted to address the problem with price controls as a short-term solution, Ford’s idea was just asking people to spend less, but Carter was the one who made the decision to view inflation as a bigger problem than unemployment and began moving towards Neoliberalism.
The big difference between Carter and Reagan was branding. Carter branded the moves terribly which is to say he was honest about it. Work was going to become more alienating and purchasing power would decrease, but it’s ok, because we as a society will just have to pursue meaning outside of the economic sphere, making do with less, cultivating out personal virtue. There’s likely a connection between Carter and the right’s meme of, “You will own nothing and be happy.”
Reagan has much better branding for these policies, which is to say he lied. Look at how cheap we’re gonna make everything! You’re gonna be able to buy so much stuff, it’s gonna be great, let’s party and celebrate capitalism and consumerism! Of course, with wages divorced from productivity and the decline of the power of organized labor, purchasing power would decrease, but the effects of that would take time to fully manifest.
There were a wave of wildcat strikes during this period but unions had already defanged themselves, they kicked out all the communists and the leadership sold out, because from the New Deal era up to this point things were going fine.
Reagan definitely bears a lot of the blame but there wasn’t a huge difference in economic policy, the democrats didn’t really have anything to propose as an alternative and voters weren’t given much of a choice about it.
For Carter the worst thing I know is that a lot of the free iran Iranian people really hate Carter for his actions in the Whitehouse and blame him for the current oppressive Iranian regime. I don’t really think that was something malicious on his part, just a policy mistake.
They aren’t wrong! Carter may have been the best president post office, but he is also the American most responsible for the religious dictatorship that took over Iran and much of the middile east.
I’m a leftist, but after finishing “Reading Lolita In Tehran” and watching the PBS documentary “Taken Hostage” I understood completely how Reagan defeated him in a crushing landslide. The outpouring of grief after Carters death was difficult to stomach understanding the damage he had done. Yes the man built houses and gave generously late in life, but that’s because he knew he had a lot to make up for it. The man destabilized several nations, including his own, with entirely foreseeable negligence.
Everything you mention for Reagan was passed by a democrat controlled Congress. Both parties killed the middle class