Hits of the '80s

A second opinon about a much-maligned decade

Richard B. McKenzie from the August/September 1994 issue

(Page 3 of 3)

With my book in hand and a lot of data to work with, any number of critics have told me, in so many words, "In spite of your evidence, we know better: The problem in the 1980s was attitude," which all too often translates to, "Don't bother trying to change my mind."

When I insist that some claims are worth checking, I can count on the critics to hang the albatross of political intentions around my neck. Obviously, the book is the work of an apologist for Ronald Reagan, they say--a notion which cannot be further from the truth. Although I supported many of Reagan's policies, I'm neither a Republican nor a Democrat (in 1992, I voted for Bill Clinton--or, rather, against George Bush). In good humor, I submit that I'm something far worse than a political ideologue: an academic economist who doesn't believe he has been able to tell the whole story of the '80s but who is convinced that he has made a contribution, albeit minor, to balancing an important policy debate.

I didn't conceive of What Went Right in the 1980s as a polemic. It emerged from a series of studies I undertook on various prominent policy claims that failed to reflect my own experience. In researching the claims, I was often dumbfounded at the gap between the rhetoric and reality. I discovered only two years ago that I had assembled a book-length work, one that might catch others by surprise, which it obviously has.

The reaction has hardly been all negative. I have been struck by the amount of heartfelt gratitude from people across the country for providing, if nothing else, an alternative view, one that more accurately described the America they knew in the '80s. One radio talk-show host went so far as to suggest that the critics must have been living in outer space. I was especially struck by the comments of a woman from North Carolina who called in on the same program. She said, with eloquence that cannot be captured here, that she and her husband never made more than $23,000 a year during the '80s, but they did improve their lot and were thankful for the chance to do their own thing and to have and educate their children. They now wanted "nothing from nobody."

The '80s have been described as a decade of Ds: Decay, Decline, Deindustrialization, Debt, re-Distribution, and Despair. The facts make mincemeat of those flippant characterizations, but many of the critics don't seem to want to be bothered by the facts, possibly because they have a political and economic stake in keeping the '80s down and totally out. It appears to be no accident that critics of the '80s accompany their sordid claims about the decade (or "the last 12 years," a phrase that now flows with ease from Bill Clinton's lips) with calls for "change" or, more precisely, for reversal.

They want a return to the "good old days" of the '60s and '70s, of escalating government involvement in the economy--by way of health-care reform, managed international trade, expansive industrial policies, and labor mandates. Such a reversal requires, apparently, that Reagan's policies be trashed, and one of the best ways of doing that is to dump on the decade as a whole, to insist that the times were far tougher than they were and that the toughness of the times was all due to Reagan (with no help from Congress).

But contrary to the claims of the decade's critics, Ronald Reagan and his political cohorts should probably be given both far less credit and far less blame for what happened in the '80s than they have been given. After all, Congress was at work, and Ronald Reagan did not always get his way with Congress. And Reagan's policies were nowhere near as "conservative" and "free-market oriented" as the critics would like to believe.

During the Reagan era, for instance, government continued to expand in real-dollar and per-capita terms. Total government spending represented a higher percentage of national income during the Reagan administration (32.7 percent) than during the Carter administration (30.9 percent).

Reagan's main contribution to conservative government, if it can be called that, is that he may have helped to cap the upward march of government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product. I say "may" because government spending during the '80s was also capped relative to national production in most other major industrial powers, despite widely varying political philosophies in those countries. That fact makes one wonder whether it could have been "all Reagan's fault" (or credit). It's just as plausible to interpret the capping of spending as a global economic force at work, forcing governments to seek less onerous economic policies.

It is clear that not everything went right during the '80s. Competition got tougher for many worker groups, especially those Americans in previously protected (and unionized) markets and those Americans with limited education. Crime continued to be a problem, especially in the inner city. Teenage pregnancy and divorce boomed. Too many Americans suffered a lapse of civility, frugality, and diligence.

Nevertheless, in spite of all the problems, much did go right in America in the '80s. That is the bottom line that too few Americans, Bill Clinton included, are willing to accept. Clinton can thank his lucky political stars that his assessment of the "past 12 years" is largely wrong. In the considerable successes of the '80s lie the seeds of prosperity for the rest of the '90s and beyond.

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