Reaganomics

Reaganomics ( ; a portmanteau of Reagan and economics attributed to Paul Harvey), or Reaganism, were the neoliberal economic policies promoted by Ronald Reagan, president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. These policies focused mainly on supply-side economics. Opponents (including some Republicans) characterized them as "trickle-down economics" or Voodoo Economics, while Reagan and his advocates preferred to call it free-market economics. The pillars of Reagan's economic policy included increasing defense spending, slowing the growth of government spending, reducing the federal income tax and capital gains tax, reducing government regulation, and tightening the money supply in order to reduce inflation. The effects of Reaganomics are debated. Supporters have pointed to the end of stagflation, stronger GDP growth, and an entrepreneurial revolution in the decades that followed. Critics have pointed to the widening income gap, what they described as an atmosphere of greed, reduced economic mobility, and the national debt tripling in eight years which ultimately reversed the post-World War II trend of a shrinking national US debt as percentage of GDP.