Reganomics: By Ethan Cornell
Reaganomics was the economic policy embraced and founded by the United States President Ronald Reagan that was basically the policy and belief of Trickle-Down Economics. The policy was based on the concept of helping the rich so that they will make more jobs that will in turn will trickle down and help the poor. However even though this plan did help in some ways it arguably created more problems than it helped. The way this idea was accomplished and carried out was by giving the rich and wealthiest people in country, major tax cuts in hopes that they would make more jobs but what was not anticipated was that the demand for products was not there so there was no reason to need to make more jobs. If the rich were to have made more jobs it would have only hurt them because the increase in supply would have skyrocket far above the demand for the product so the company would just over produce and lose money. Because the rich did not make more jobs all the tax cuts did was give the rich more money and increase the wealth gap while hurting the poor. Along with that Reaganomics Reagan sought to reduce the amount of money spent on welfare and on the poor in general believing it was a socialist belief and that it was making the poor unmotivated to get a job as they could just get unemployment. However the reality was that you cannot effectively live on unemployment and so most people were not trying to and so all this did was further increase the unemployment problem. Overall this hurts the poor and helps the rich and even though throughout his presidency many jobs are made the wealth gap expands immensely. Along with expanding the wealth gap Reaganomics also created a massive national debt as it raised defense spending dramatically along with the tax cuts the government was spending way more money than it was receiving. As said previously Reaganomics is very similar to Trickle-Down Economics which is the economic strategy embraced by Herbert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge that destroyed the country’s economy throughout the 1930s or the Great Depression one of the lowest points in the entirety of the United States’ economic history.