Comment by WillPostForFood
20 days ago
Carter has good employment, but terrible inflation making everyone poor in miserable. His Fed appointee, Paul Volcker raises interest rates, kills inflation, puts the country in recession, and drives unemployment up during Reagan's first years in office. Carter's job numbers look better than they should, and Reagan's worse, unless you look at the bigger picture.
Carter gave up the presidency to save America then. Volcker did the right thing.
He does deserve some credit, but 1979 was a total mess for the growth, inflation, the dollar. Nominating a credible Fed chair to fight inflation was both a risk and politically expedient in the short term. Trying to build some economic credibility at the risk those policies slowing growth.
Reagan supported those interest rate changes. Reagan than continued to push deficit spending well after the recovery from those first couple years, a huge lasting trend in Republican administrations ever since.
It's also very hard to assume that Reagan being elected in 76 would've avoided the oil-driven inflation at the end of that decade.
But of course, we've decided as a country/media to generally blame Biden for non-policy factors that put the economy on a wild bullwhip ride from 2020-to-2023ish, soooooo... maybe Reagan can deal with getting the blame for the inflation too!
The bigger picture being that this is political nonsense. We all know Reganomics.
They did not pay their bill for their own agenda then, and they have still not paid their bill for trillions in follow-on expenses.
They cut taxes and debt-financed war, which forced the US further into debt.
In modern times republicans got US into most wars. Nixon also got Vietnam extended.
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