How Americans are still paying for the economic ‘wins’ of the 1980s
We remain trapped in Reagan-era contradictions, the decade when America roared and workers lost their security.
From The Boston Globe
Reporters like to say that our stories are the first draft of history. It’s a comforting cliché, implying that even if we miss the grand trajectory of an era while typing on deadline, our dispatches capture the raw truth of a moment. Recently, I got the rare chance to write a second draft — revisiting the key players, street-level struggles, and structural upheavals I covered for The Boston Globe during the 1980s, a decade defined in great measure by radical economic restructuring, the campaigns of Jesse Jackson, and the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe.
Gathering all this research for my new book was eye-opening. So many aspects of the modern American dilemma — from severe wealth inequality to hyper-polarization — were forged in the crucible of that single, transformative era.
At the center of that transformation was the elevation of the free market from a practical tool of economic policy into an all-encompassing national ideology. The decade began with an America gripped by profound anxiety, beset by high interest rates, stagflation, and a surge in foreign competition that laid waste to traditional regional manufacturing. By the time the decade ended, lower taxes, deregulation, and Wall Street financial innovations had pulled the country out of its downward economic spiral. The economy soared; American companies became the envy of the world.
