In the last year of the Carter Administration (1980) the US inflation rate climbed to a peak of 14.8%, the top individual tax payer rate was 78%, unemployment was 7.4%, federal outlay was 17% higher than the economy''s growth rate, and the federal government grew while enacting loads of new spending programs. During this period, the US economy was then truly the worst it has ever been since the Great Depression of the 1030s. The nation was in quite a deep hole of economic collapse when the new president Ronald Reagan took office in January of 1981. Reagan had to devise a constructive, sound tax and monetary policy to pull the US out of its horrific economic low point, very similar to what we find ourselves in today.

Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute stated that “no act in the last quarter century had a more profound impact on the US economy of the eighties and nineties than the Reagan tax cut of 1981.” Reagan''s tax cuts, combined with an emphasis on federal monetary policy, deregulation, and expansion of free trade created a sustained economic expansion?creating America''s greatest sustained wave of prosperity ever. Our economy grew by more than a third in size, producing a $15 trillion increase in American wealth. Every income group, from the richest, middle class and poorest in this country, grew its income (1981-1989). Cutting federal income taxes, cutting the US government spending budget, cutting useless programs, scaling down the government work force, maintaining low interest rates, and keeping a watchful inflation hedge on the monetary supply was Ronald Reagan''s formula for a successful economic turnaround. The Nation reacted with new found confidence. I realize that Reagan was a former Democrat, turned Republican, but above all he was focused on doing the right things for the US economy, and he got it right. We might wish to incorporate and apply some “Reaganomics” to our current economic dilemma.
Igor Sill
The Royal Economics Society member
Oxford University, MBA

In the last year of the Carter Administration (1980) the US inflation rate climbed to a peak of 14.8%, the top individual tax payer rate was 78%, unemployment was 7.4%, federal outlay was 17% higher than the economy''s growth rate, and the federal government grew while enacting loads of new spending programs. During this period, the US economy was then truly the worst it has ever been since the Great Depression of the 1030s. The nation was in quite a deep hole of economic collapse when the new president Ronald Reagan took office in January of 1981. Reagan had to devise a constructive, sound tax and monetary policy to pull the US out of its horrific economic low point, very similar to what we find ourselves in today.

Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute stated that “no act in the last quarter century had a more profound impact on the US economy of the eighties and nineties than the Reagan tax cut of 1981.” Reagan''s tax cuts, combined with an emphasis on federal monetary policy, deregulation, and expansion of free trade created a sustained economic expansion?creating America''s greatest sustained wave of prosperity ever. Our economy grew by more than a third in size, producing a $15 trillion increase in American wealth. Every income group, from the richest, middle class and poorest in this country, grew its income (1981-1989). Cutting federal income taxes, cutting the US government spending budget, cutting useless programs, scaling down the government work force, maintaining low interest rates, and keeping a watchful inflation hedge on the monetary supply was Ronald Reagan''s formula for a successful economic turnaround. The Nation reacted with new found confidence. I realize that Reagan was a former Democrat, turned Republican, but above all he was focused on doing the right things for the US economy, and he got it right. We might wish to incorporate and apply some “Reaganomics” to our current economic dilemma.
Igor Sill
The Royal Economics Society member
Oxford University, MBA