depression unemployment chart
Why did it take Reagan so long to address the unemployment situation?
Reagan used Reaganomics to get us out of the Carter recession, which is considered by experts left and right as far milder than the current one.
Yet, as the chart shows, it take Reagan years to get unemployment to drop. In fact, it took about five years!
Why would anyone even consider listening to conservatives when it comes to anything economic? On top of Reagan’s failure, you have Bush’s miserable handling of the economy, and let’s not forget good ol’ Hoover, the father of conservative economic policy and of the Great Depression.
These are the official unemployment number during Reagan’s term:
http://www.bls.gov/cps/prev_yrs.htm
Annual average unemployment rate
Carter
1976 7.7
1977 7.1
1978 6.1
1979 5.8
Reagan:
1980 7.1
1981 7.6
1982 9.7
1983 9.6
1984 7.5
1985 7.2
1986 7.0
1987 6.2
Pass this info on.
The ‘Carter’ recession was really the Nixon/Ford recession. the result of a guns AND butter economic policy that was used to fund the Vietnam war, and the rise of OPEC which was encouraged by Henry Kissinger. Remember the Arab Oil embargo of 1973? A lot of posters on here blame that on carter…look at a calendar…carter was elected in 1976. Reagan had the benefit a decrease in demand for oil resulting from policies put in place by carter policies to encourage conservation like the cafe standards. The resulting plunge in oil prices worked wonders. I would say that Reagan’s ‘trickle down’ policies probably extended the recession. He also began a process of tweaking unemployment figures by change who was counted and who wasn’t. Couple that with similar ‘tweaks’ installed in both Bush regimes and you will find that todays’s 9 percent figure would be roughly 18 percent were we counting the same we did in 1976.
Reagan ran the most corrupt administration in US History until the advent of Bush II and he initiated an assault on the middle class that the republicans continue to pursue.