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Crash Course 43 REagan Revolution

Added Apr 27, 2017 •

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Period 9 - Ronald Reagan's Presidency

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hi I'm John Green this is Crash Course u.s. history and today we're going to talk about the guy who argue  to shape the world that I live in stand not Carrot Top no not Cumberbatch although he did to the most of shape the Tumblr that I live in I'm talking about the great communicator Ronald Reagan straightforward I could presidency was called the Reagan Revolution but it's a bit odd that he gets so much credit for changing America because he was one of the least Hands-On of all send as you know here it crash course we don't really indulge in great man history so we're going to talk about Reagan but we're also going to talk about the forces that predated his president that led to the so-called Reagan Revolution maybe you'll be almost interesting the regular begin unsurprisingly with his election to the presidency in 1980 now anyone could have beaten Jimmy Carter but Reagan succeeded largely by pulling the other many strands of conservatism states rights and he condemned welfare cheats he also confirmative action and he won the support of you can serve it including the newly-formed Moral Majority by standing for family values even though in fact you was the first u.s. president to have been divorced also he wants monkey there's nothing Family Values about that in fact act with a monkey he acted with a chimp I apologize to all of the primate right people out there good white backlash white people who resented the advances that African-Americans and made during the 1960's and 1970's can AMA conservative like his anti-union low taxes free market positions and anti-government Crusaders and Libertarians like his assertion that government was not the solution to holmesburg was itself the problem then the Cold War on the military barely a majority Coalition Reagan won in 1980 and New York proving that Jimmy Carter really was profoundly unelectable in condescended to his Relentless optimism contrast to Jimmy Carter being like you should wear sweaters inside to save fuel sorry Jimmy is America  what are Reagan use the word Freedom more than any other president in American history but it's interesting do you think about what he meant by the word freedom freedom from government government protection from hunger and homelessness in military attack the government's ultimately restrict Freedom or provide it there's no question that the federal government that Ronald Reagan in hair it would have been absolutely foreign to the people who founded this country I mean Social Security federal income taxes the National Endowment for the Arts America of 1980 was much more free for more Americans than say the America of 1790 when after all slavery was legal many slave owners said that the government was taking away their freedom to own slave the question of how we should imagine freedom and how we should allow for it is at the center of Adam with economic freedom which he laid out in his economic and Bill of Rights they would curtail Union power reduce federal regulation of Industry environment and most of all lower-tax all these ideas were a big part of the Reagan Revolution but as we know much of what he proposed have been brewing for years during the rise of Remington economic Bill of Rights actually ended up happening well his main accomplishment was lowering taxes in 1981 Reagan persuaded Congress to lower the top tax rate from 70% to 50% in 1986 Congress went much further with the tax reform act that lowered the top income tax rate 228 set a time for the mystery document the rules here are simple I read the mystery document I either get the author that correct right shocked alright here we go can I guess it's going to be Reagan is beyond the control of any president any Administration or congress we are going to put an end to the notion that the American taxpayer exist to fund the federal government federal government exists to serve the American people and to be accountable to the American people on January 20th we are going to reestablish that truth also on that date we are to initiate action to get substantial relief for our taxpaying citizens and to put people back to work we will simply apply to our government the common sense that we use in daily garbs  is Regan stand is telling me that I'm not going to get the check mark unless I guess the correct speech 20th so happy it's not his inaugural address or like the speech that he gave after he was elected so the idea that lower taxes is the best way to Spur economic growth is called supply-side economics or trickle down economics or if you're George HW Bush sing Against Ronald Reagan in the 1980 primaries economics play Shin coupled with cutting taxes especially for wealthy Americans rich people then spend more and invest more in private Enterprise which creates new job set lower taxes will encourage people to work harder since they'll be able to keep more of their money did this work  history where it depends on your political perspective a high interest rates definitely provoked a recession in 1981 and 1982 which was not ideal but inflation drop from 13.5% in 1981 to 3 5% in 1988 and after 1982 the economy began expand and the rest of the increases in gross domestic product benefited from that expansion will the stock market boomed wages didn't rise very much and in fact haven't risen since I'm one of the central ideas of supply-side economics is that you have tax rates and you also cut government spending because you know the government has less money which you add did not happen the government is always good at cutting taxes but it is the Reagan Era did see cuts to some programs but the really expensive item Social Security Medicare and Medicaid they remained largely intact and instead of cutting the overall amount of spending it play went up considerably because of the defense spending binge that saw the national debt balloon to 2.7 trillion dollars wreck in August 1981 when the unionized air traffic controllers went out on strike violating federal law in the process Reagan fired more than 11,000 control to refuse to return to work which is why Oliver Stone made a movie about it that has the line greed in the 1980s it became easier to make money buying and merging companies than actually like running them profitably but fortunately we later with that problem  we never fixed the problems we only fix the things that are fine one of the reasons American history so important to me as I want us as a country to bike summon the courage to deal seriously with our problem sometimes I think that we're just so cowardly like where the Cowardly is country on Earth alright the French cigarettes and Nabisco which gave us Oreos not only created a cancer and heart disease Dream Team it also generated nearly 1 billion dollars for the Warriors and bankers who put the deal together but if you were like most of us in the 80s watching Dallas and Dynasty working at your regular job inexplicably having a carpeted bathroom than you probably didn't share in that abundance Rising economic inequality although not nearly as make as we see today by the mid-1990s the richest 1% controlled 40% of the nation's wealth double the share from 20 years before the income of middle class play stagnated and that of the poorest 20% began to decline an overlooked aspect of deregulation was the closing of hospitals for the mentally ill now some of these Institute menswear hellish but rapid closure of all of these facilities without replacement services meant that many patients were left to live on the street homelessness increased dramatically Raiders considered the darling of conservatives today but by current standards he was something of a moderate I mean yes he cut taxes and cut funding for programs that help the poor like food stamps school lunches during the second term he worked effectively with the Democratic Congress there's no bipartisanship today also he left the big New Deal and Great Society programs largely I mean he was too old to Believe In cutting Medicare he was like all of my friends are on the divorce rates went up can continue to be legal women didn't leave the workforce impact Reagan appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court are you kidding we didn't have a woman in the Supreme Court until the 1980 what come this is the craziest country ever even a formative action persisted and Nancy Reagan's urging of Americans to just say no to drugs didn't convince anybody tell me a Ronald Reagan's reputation as the man who ended the Cold War on defense that the Soviets bankrupted themselves trying to compete can you maybe a case to be made there but we don't want to remove agency from the people who protested the oppression of Life Behind the Iron Curtain so you can argue that the Reagan Administration helped create conditions for the change that happened the people who made the change made it let's go evil empire in even once joked that the US would begin bombing in five minutes that would buy the largest military buildup in US history BMX missile proposed Strategic Defense Initiative AKA Star Wars space-based missiles and lasers for shooting Soviet missiles the sky this was a fantastic idea of the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty impossible to build song with this idea to put missiles in Western Europe in the war games that NATO staged in 1983 were so realistic that the Soviets almost scrambled their planes in launched ICBM positive results worldwide anti-nuclear weapons movement called the freeze movement and second it heard Reagan and the most successful nuclear abolitionist in the atomic something like a reasonably close brush with nuclear apocalypse to tone down your rhetoric over though and in his second term Reagan was much more conciliatory toward the Soviets and worked what's the number of warheads President Nixon Ford and Carter combined playing much more than both the cost of the Korean and Vietnam Wars and his rhetoric constant an urgent purpose must be a lasting reduction of tensions between us new Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986 please give me that impossible that was a big deal but then chapter 241 of them were killed by a car bomb in the biggest controversy of Reagan's presidency the Iran-Contra scandal crazy schemes ever hatched up by an American presidential Administration which is really saying something to overthrow the socialist government of Nicaragua they were anti-communist in the cold war was in full swing the Reagan Administration want him to support them but Congress passed a law saying that they couldn't talk to Administration officials John Poindexter and Oliver North got creative they hatched a plan to sell arms to the Irani and government still technically our enemies and then funnel some of the profits from illegal arms sales to the country and Congress would never have to know about it except they found out Lowe's in his policy to underwing Reagan Era I'm not sure that it was really about Reagan in fact I'm not sure that any great man history is really about the great man who supposedly spearheaded it turn out you think America is better off from the rise of conservatism we've seen since lbj's Great Society it wasn't really and it's still really isn't about individuals it's about collectively deciding what we mean when we talk about freedom and equality thanks for watching I'll see you next week show partly because they care about it and partly because you don't money if you want to help us in our mission to keep crash course free for everyone forever please consider subscribing over at Summerville interception platform that allows you to pay whatever you want monthly to make crash course exist change watching crash course and if we say in my hometown it's morning in America don't forget to be awesome

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Crash Course 43 REagan Revolution

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