The FDR and the Reagan presidencies are comparable moments of fundamental change in the relationship between the federal government and the rest of society.
Before FDR's New Deal, the federal government was very small and saw its chief role as providing defense against foreign powers. It had almost no involvement in social welfare, leaving that role to state and local governments. However, the total economic collapse brought on by the stock market crash in 1929 overwhelmed the ability of local and private charity to provide relief. By the time FDR took office in early 1933, a large number of people were questioning whether capitalism would survive. FDR is often credited with saving capitalism by, for the first time, defining social welfare as the responsibility of the federal government. The New Deal brought in sweeping changes, such as Social Security, minimum wage, the forty-hour work week, the end to child labor, secure home mortgages, bank regulations, and other measures that created the world we take for granted today. Since the New Deal, the vast bulk of the US people expect a portion of their tax dollars to go to protecting the public welfare and creating a safety net under people. We no longer expect to live in a world where children develop rickets for lack of food or the elderly pick through trash cans for food.
In the 1970s, the actions of the Arab oil producing nations to control the output of oil meant the price of gas, on which the US economy depended, skyrocketed. Gas was rationed and average people were faced with unprecedented levels of inflation. To combat inflation, the Fed raised interest rates to high levels, making it very difficult for the average person to afford a home. This situation created anxiety, which Reagan was able to exploit by blaming people's economic woes on bloated government and unreasonably high taxation. He was willing to balloon federal deficits to cut taxes. He began to cut social programs and safety nets, claiming he wanted to shrink government to the point he could drown it in the bathtub.
Since Reagan, the basic tenets of the New Deal, which were considered settled practice for more than 40 years, began to be contested. We still live in a world uneasily poised between wanting and expecting the social safety net FDR implemented and not wanting to pay for it, except for very popular programs such as Social Security.
Reagan's small government mantra and belief in markets was a chief part of the neo-liberalism that has become the dominant ideology across the western world today. His sharp increase in defense spending is often credited with hastening the break up of the Soviet Union and the democratization of its satellites, discrediting communism as a viable ideology.
The Reagan presidency was as much a watershed moment in federal economic policy as FDR's New Deal was. Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) fundamentally changed the role of government by increasing the scope of the government's role in people's lives. Through policies that he implemented, the government began to create a greater safety net, providing people with relief in the form of jobs, money, and other programs such as social security.
During the 1980s, Reagan began to reduce the role of the government in providing this social safety net. He cut spending on social services (see the source below) and reduced taxes for individuals and corporations. He altered the role of the federal government from providing assistance to the most disenfranchised (though the government has retained this role to some degree) to providing funds for defense and other priorities. These policies changed the ways in which people (both in the US and abroad) viewed the role of the federal government and had a lasting legacy, as people began to question the idea that the government should provide assistance for the nation's poor. Both FDR and Reagan fundamentally changed the way in which individuals viewed the government, and they both altered the role of the government.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/reaganomics.asp
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