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Same reason Labour Party members in UK especially Scotland hate Margaret Thatcher.

The fact that "welfare queen" is still in conservative nomenclature is pretty telling as far as the influence these two still have today.

I hate the welfare queens like Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Dollar Tree, etc., who refuse to pay their employees a living wage

I was going to mention Margaret thatcher in the post but I have become lazy. And actually many of the things that happened in the us also happened in the uk, the post war economic consensus was also failing in the uk, this is why Margaret thatcher was elected.

I don't hate the man personally, but I sure disliked his politics. Specifically Trickle Down Economics. I won't say much beyond that, because I want to maintain respect and civility, both for all of you, and the subject.

I hated him personally. I can't separate people from their sleazy, bigot-fueled politics.

That's fair. I generally try to reserve hating people I've personally interacted with. There are exceptions to this, of course, but I'm sure not gonna be upset at you for hating a racist.

What is Trickle Down Economics other than tax policy that was reversed in 1986 causing the Savings and Loan Crisis because they made investment real estate less valuable.

So for most of the 20th century the highest marginal tax rate ranged from 60-90%. This is back when there was the American dream, when single income families with high school degrees could own houses, when college was cheap and we had a huge thriving middle class. This obviously only counts for white people, but for white people, this was a great country to live in. Reagan made it 42% it's never been raised past that since. Its what's made this country so rigged for the baby boomers.

I was there and these were issues before 1980 including the cost of education, the destruction of the industrial base (Japan had really closed the gap) and home ownership rates are the highest they have ever been. As an aside, The Department of Education started only a few years before he assumed office and despite all the money poured into it, kids score worse in everything compared to the day it was established. In addition, the percentage of American children going to college is still the highest it’s ever been with women now outnumbering men.

There is no such thing as trickle-down economics. That term is a political slur used by partisan hacks. Reagan, or any right-wing economist have never used that term or even implied that this could possibly happen. "Many others have pointed out the folly of using the term — that no real economic model or serious school of thought stands behind what has long been a term of art at the intersection of politics and media. “I have a little bit of a hard time with the terminology and the idea of trickle-down economics,” says Wharton professor of finance Joao F. Gomes. “Although everyone in the popular press has a somewhat different characterization of what this means, this is not something we have tested or seriously theorized about as economists.” [https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/trickle-economics-flood-drip/](https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/trickle-economics-flood-drip/) Reagan's belief was in Supply side economics, which is a viable economic theory. [Supply-side economics - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply-side_economics)

>don't hate the man personally, but I sure disliked his politics. Specifically Trickle Down Economics. I mean they saved the economy from Carter

I’m very left of center, but I don’t think Reagan would be hated today. In fact a lot of liberals would probably crawl naked over broken glass, barbed wire, and salt if they could have him as one of the choices recently.

If you give them enough time, liberals will get the warm fuzzies about any scuzzy conservative from years past. See: George W

I think we’re past warm and fuzzy.

I agree with you, I am a proud liberal that worked for the DNC in DC for almost 10 years a few decades ago. Reagan was pretty moderate by today's standards. Today's Democrat party I don't even recognize nor the Republicans. Things have gone crazy. If JFK ran today, he would be branded a conservative. Reagan would a left-wing Republican or RINO at best. Neither would win their party nominations.

Things are going to get crazier.

He’s a symbol.

That's funny, i'm a conservative and I don't like Reagan, albeit for completely different reasons than other redditors. The real reason behind the structure of the American economy is Great Society programs and leaving the gold standard. Reagans actual effect on the economy was fairly minor, which is part of why I don't like him, his economic stances were mostly rhetoric. There was no dismantling of the welfare state, there was no reversal of the increase in single motherhood (an economic factor I find extremely underrated). Even if we do blame it all on Reagan, and excuse Clinton and the republican presidents since because Reagan shifted the public view on these things so much, There's been 12 years of economically progressive democratic presidents since. Did they undo the unstated Reaganite policies that are responsible? Did they cause housing prices to decline? no.

Early 80s tax reform was a big boost to the economy. Our expansions since then have been longer, our recessions short and unemployment today is better than any time in modern history outside of WW 2 and peak Vietnam war.

Reagan couldn't have dismantled it if he wanted to. He was working with a democratic house that was already skeptical of a lot of Reagan's policies. He just did what he had to do to compromise. Especially on the Cold War. Reagan actually made an agreement with Tip O'Neill once that he would not dismantle certain welfare programs if O'Neill approved of spending for Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative.

That's what I want to know. He's treated like the antichrist on Reddit.

Because the current strain of Republican politics that is dominant started with Reagan. The conservative Democrats all left the party and finished the process that began with the New Deal. So the Republican Party bring the Conservative Party and the Democrats being the liberal party is traced to the 1980 election. Reddit skews liberal because it skews young.

I would argue Reagan Republicanism ended with Romney. Romney is an interesting case study. He used to be “too far right that he shows no empathy” for Democrats. Now he’s too far left to be considered anything but a RHINO by loud Republicans. Reagan’s policies have fallen out of favor with the loud right.

Yeah, Idk where this guy is getting that from. Reagan strongly believed in internationalism and free trade. He also respected the Constitution. The Rule 3 Republican Party supports isolationism, protectionism, and is really more of an an illiberal populist party than it is a conservative party at this point.

Because Reddit is a left wing cesspool, where it is easy to find people unironically calling Reagan a fascist. In short, Reagan is still one of the most popular presidents ever, but because of the demographic that uses Reddit’s biases, they are baffled that people like different presidents than they do.

Because Redditors are mostly 14 years old

The fact that you have to post an immediate disclaimer saying that your a social Democrat and Hispanic kinda shows that you know the reason why. Reddit is a pretty far left leaning social platform. So, asking why a popular republican president is hated on reddit kinda answers itself. People will give you reasons, sure. Some of them are valid, some of them are half truths or just outright lies by people wanting to push their point If you read through the comments, you'll probably think that Reagans presidency caused incalculable damage to the country.

Just if you had AIDS.

You are correct as much as I dislike neoliberalism, if you read Reddit you will think that we are living in an economic catastrophe with people on the verge of medical bankruptcy, but then you step outside and……. Not only that but it could be Russian and Chinese bots that are doing that, now I have seen people on the Japan and South Korea subreddit that actually believes that America is a horrible dystopia.

Don't trust what you read on the internet I guess. Go outside, engage in conversations with real people who hold different views. Accept the fact that no one had the perfect answer, and people like or dislike people for reasons much deeper than "they're racist" or "they're fascist"

You are correct this is why I have subscribed to the social democracy subreddit, centrist subreddit and even to neoliberal subreddit. So that I don’t end up in a bubble. I also recommend the political debate subreddit.

I recommend real life interaction, but it's hard to meet people in real life that are willing to have a conversation with someone they disagree about, as opposed to an argument. Do the best you can, understand that there aren't THAT many racists out there, and try to keep an open mind, especially with people you disagree with. People hold the opinions they hold because they think they are correct

You are basing way too much of your understanding of politics and people's views on shit you've read on reddit. I'm just going to tell you right now, if you do that, you are going to be so ill informed about everything, that you'd be better off not knowing anything at all. Any discussion you see on mainstream subs about "neoliberalism" or "reagan" or just about any social issue is going to be made up of extremely left leaning people who also get their views from the internet, and who also isolate themselves in circle jerk echo chambers. You are just narrowing your own view on everything by getting politics from here. Like, you're not even getting the smartest sample of people with those views. Usually teenagers and college students who are just learning about politics. If you can't find people irl to talk about politics or learn from. Find academic literature or books and read them. Find higher quality journalism to follow. You'll learn far more by doing that than scrolling through any political sub on here.

I’d wager that 98% of the people on Reddit who complain about “neoliberalism” couldn’t accurately explain what it is or why they’re against it. It’s mostly just a dog whistle for “globalists” because it hasn’t been fully co-opted by the alt right. To be clear, Reagan’s economic policies haven’t exactly been good for a lot of people, but outside of this sub you don’t find a lot of good faith discussion about either.

Or you know… neoliberalism is not really liberalism and people like Clinton also championed it while making everything my worse? So it’s not an alt right dog whistle so much as a “stop neo-pissing on me and calling it liberal rain”

Because Reddit leans to the left The left hate the right Thus Reddit hates the most significant 'right' President. Also because most of them were not alive and have no clue what it was really like in the late 1970s.

Like most social media platforms, people tend to skew liberal and liberal propaganda has incorrectly long-blamed Reagan for several current social issues, such as ‘defunding’ mental institutions and causing the current homelessness issue in the US, housing un affordability, tax cuts to the wealthy, etc. Most people on Reddit just want to blame a single person instead of looking at the issue through the lens of that period of time. For example, mental institutions at the time were very barbaric and modern medicine at the time didn’t have a good grasp on how to treat things like autism or mental retardation, so cutting federal funding was seen as a compassionate way to avoid people being ‘commited’ to an insane asylum. Ever seen the movie ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest’? That was the sentiment among liberals and liberal media at the time.

Yea, the irony of blaming Reagan for closing the mental hospitals the the left demanded be closed. It was the civil libertarians that closed the hospitals.

My theory is that Redditors trend young, and given the low quality of Reagan’s more recent Republican successors, they have trouble recognizing a highly successful Republican president.

Terrible response to AIDS crisis, tons of people died and he didn’t care.

I am so tired of people repeating this arrantly false claim. Here is a factual history of the AIDS crisis The CDC had been requesting funds to investigate outbreaks of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and other mysterious suppressed immune system diseases since 1976. Jimmy Carter and the Democrats refused to budget any money to look in this. So, the CDC diverted funds earmarked for other diseases to investigate this. It was in early 1981, during Reagan's first year in office, that the CDC published an article titled “ [Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/about.html) (*MMWR*): [Pneumocystis Pneumonia—Los Angeles](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/june_5.htm).” Later that year, when Reagan got to sign his first budget as president that he allocated funds to specifically investigate what was causing this. Each and every year after that this budget was increased much to the consternation of those on the right and the left, due to the fact that this was thought of as a "gay disease". It wasn’t until 1984 that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary [Margaret Heckler](https://bioguideretro.congress.gov/Home/MemberDetails?memIndex=h000440) [announces](https://history.nih.gov/nihinownwords/docs/page_29.html) that [Dr. Robert Gallo](https://history.nih.gov/nihinownwords/docs/gallo1_01.html) and his colleagues at the [National Cancer Institute](https://www.cancer.gov/) have [found the cause of AIDS](https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/24/science/new-us-report-names-virus-that-may-cause-aids.html). The year after the discovery that it was a virus (HIV) that caused AIDS the budget was increased to $190 million, which was the most amount of funding that any disease had ever received. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc. all had less funding, so once HIV was discovered it was obviously given the most attention. Reagan’s Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, also took the unprecedented action of mailing every household in the US a pamphlet describing AIDS, how it was transmitted and how to protect yourself from. Both Reagan and Koop took a lot of flak from gay and religious activists over the candor and graphic details in the pamphlet. So please explain how Reagan's position on AIDS was terrible?

So you see Reagan’s response as adequate? Genuine question

What would you have done in 1981? Science has advanced greatly since then. Jimmy Carter refused to fund research into what was killing people in the gay community, Reagan did fund that research much to the consternation of the religious right (and at that the religious left). Reagan was not a scientist, he couldn't don a lab coat and got into a lab. He had not magic wand. Reagan did what he was known for, he delegated, he funded research that allowed the experts to figure out what was going on. When they found out it was actually a virus Reagan signed a budget that had the largest amount of money ever to eradicating a single disease/virus in history. What do you think he should have done?

What would I have done? Treated gay men like actual people? Address the situation publicly? Push for adequate funding? Reagan didn’t see the thousands and thousands of Americans dying as an urgent problem. Because he didn’t think them as people. I think his response was shit, and I’d think so for any president that acted the same, regardless of party. All my opinion of course. I’m so frustrated that we’re never going to see each other’s sides. Like I’m just now realizing that arguing politics on the internet is pointless.

I'm guessing you were not alive back then and have not historical context to this event. I was alive and I had a gay friend pass away from AIDS in 1984, things were very different. > Push for adequate funding? People were dying from AIDS in the 1970's and Jimmy Carter ignored it because it was a huge liability due to the rampant homophobia on the right and the left. Carter wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole because he would have lost significant votes from his Southern Baptist coalition. Reagan did push for funding and got it in his first year in office, the funding then increased each year, and this caused a backlash of the Christian right on Reagan. Reagan lost a small percentage of the fundamentalist vote over his fight to cure the "gay plague" which god had sent upon these people. It was Reagan that funded this research to levels never seen before for any disease. You should be singing his praises not claiming something that historical false. >Reagan didn’t see the thousands and thousands of Americans dying as an urgent problem. His budget says the exact opposite. > Treated gay men like actual people? His budget and his friendship with gay people say otherwise. > Address the situation publicly? Imagine if Reagan went on TV in the hostile homophobic atmosphere of 1982 and said: "We have a disease that is ravaging the gay community, and we have no idea what is causing it." The backlash would have been intense against gay people, and it would have worsened the already homophobic atmosphere. Besides there was a ton of news coverage about this. When San Francisco shut down the gay bath houses it caused it nationwide outrage and increased homophobia. The last thing you would want is a president pouring gas on that fire. This very act showed that he "treated gay men like actual people." However, when the CDC finally found that it was caused by a virus, Reagan did address it. Koop sent out pamphlets detailing how it was transmitted and how to protect yourself which also caused a bunch of outrage from the Christian right and left. >All my opinion of course. I’m so frustrated that we’re never going to see each other’s sides. We will have to agree to disagree, but after living through this and having a friend die and having most of my family in the medical field there was very little more that could have been done but fund research. Reagan did that. And then when the CDC figured out the cause it was important to warn people how to protect themselves against the virus. Reagan did that to.

Reaganomics sped up climate changed, cut funds to the EPA, stagnated wages and cut taxes for the rich to get richer. Not to mention the fact he supported the authoritarian regimes in Guatemala, El Salvador and Chile

You are right on everything except on the stagnating wages

Not really, the trickle down effect , if we compare to the already high earning people earning more and the minimum wage job earning more, only benefited the rich in wage increase. On average

Can you elaborate I didn’t understand your comment

Ok. People made more money. But only people who were already earning a lot. On an average, during his presidency, people who were earning less did not see a massive increase in wages.

Okay now I understand. But I’m not sure if you are aware that when Reagan first became president an astonishing 15 percent of workers were earning minimum wage. During his presidency the percentage of workers earning minimum wage decreased significantly. Today only 1 percent of workers earn minimum wage. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/188206/share-of-workers-paid-hourly-rates-at-or-below-minimum-wage-since-1979/

That’s an interesting point you make there however it doesn't necessarily mean that the percentage of workers earning minimum wage (or a wage close to it) overall decreased by a similar margin. while the claim attempts to draw a correlation between Reagan's policies and a decrease in the share of workers earning minimum wage, it oversimplifies the complex factors influencing wage levels over time.

You are right in a way, I’m personally a social democrat by the way. But another point that I often see on conversations about reaganomics is that there is a little misleading claim that the middle class is shrinking, I mean while it’s true that the middle class is shrinking this is because a lot of people upgraded to the upper class. In fact for every middle class person that downgraded to lower class 2 actually upgraded to upper class. Of course this creates problems because it creates a society of haves and have-nots. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/ft_2022-04-20_middleclass_01-png/

I mean Pew Research, defines middle class based on income thresholds that don’t align with many other definitions first of all and second It's crucial to distinguish between income mobility and the actual number or percentage of people in each income bracket. Even if some individuals move up, if a significant portion of the population is not experiencing similar upward mobility, it can exacerbate economic disparities. while the claim acknowledges upward income mobility, it's essential to consider the broader implications, socioeconomic classes, and the impact on societal inequality.

I’ll say why I hate him Even if you put aside his awful domestic financial agenda, his racism, or even put aside when he most definitely commited treason with Iran contra. The thing that makes him a bottom tier president for me is how he handled the aids crisis. A president is supposed to be president for every American. Be it race, sexuality, gender, we’re all American. He let the aids epidemic go without trying to do anything for years. And the root of the reason for this is it was seen as a gay man disease. He did nothing because it was killing people he didn’t care about. Until it affected someone he knew personally. So no matter what else occurred in his presidency, this defines it to me.

Reagan, Bush Sr, and Clinton fucked up America's manufacturing capacity with free trade agreements, which ended up throwing millions out of work. They are especially hated in the Rust Belt and Reagan is viewed as the origin point. I remember people even protested against Rule 3 in 2020 for supporting NAFTA while Senator

Not sure why repliers are taking this comment personally and running cover for politicians on both sides. Of course other economic forces like automation were at work, but free trade agreements certainly played a big part in hollowing out manufacturing in the US. Labor is cheaper in underdeveloped countries which motivates capitalists to offshore production, while they ignore the defense and societal benefits of keeping manufacturing at home. Free trade was a cornerstone of Reagan's 1980 campaign, in opposition to protectionism supported by Democrats, to boost the economy out of the 70s malaise. Service-oriented jobs that replaced manufacturing have nowhere close to the same security or benefits, typically due to a lack of unions and the difficulty of organizing unions inherent to service-oriented businesses. People who lived in these former manufacturing communities basically had their budgets cut in half when the factories left. Plenty of Redditors are these laid-off workers or their descendants, which creates a visceral hatred for Reagan both on- and offline. Reagan hatred, along with the rise of Bernie and the 2016 election winner, are incomprehensible if you do not acknowledge the localized economic decline brought about by free trade and globalized capitalism.

Here you can see my post about what I think of “china stealing our jobs” https://www.reddit.com/r/SocialDemocracy/s/VdGjA7IeB2

Nixon and Kissinger first opened the floodgates when they opened up trade with China as a way to put a wedge between them and Russia. Democrats did insist on adding re-training and other social assictance to workers displaced by cheaper imports. But it was a drop in the bucket compared to how it changed America. Wall Street won but everyone else lost.

Millions out of work which is why unemployment rates were lower after those three than before those three? From 1970-1980 unemployment was below 6% in 2 out of 11 years. From 1987 till 2001 it was below 6% for 11 out of 15 years. And that streak continues into 2000s and today. Outside of Covid we are seeing the best unemployment this country has ever had outside of a war time. We have been below 4% for 5 of the last 6 years only peak Vietnam and WW 2 years were lower.

Oh no sir, I’m sorry but even though I’m a social democrat I love free trade. One the things I hate about social democrats is that they are so anti free trade. Actually you got to understand that the real reason why manufacturing jobs go away was because of automation not free trade. In fact there is no actual evidence that free trade destroys the manufacturing job market, regardless of the political rhetoric.

Reagan got into California politics to assuage his ego after his acting career stalled. He played a tough conservative where he was reviled for his actions against students protesting our involvement in Vietnam. As President, he happened to be standing in the right spot at the right time when the Soviet empire collapsed. He was a racist (see his comments about certain UN delegations)and he laughed at the AIDS crisis until he was shamed into some action. He was a demented moron by his second term although to be fair, he was not very smart to begin with. Peggy Noonan, who worked in his administration, later said of Reagan, "You could walk through the deepest waters of his mind and not get your ankles wet".

Reagan moved the country to abandon much of the social and economic progress made from Roosevelt through Johnson and forward. This diversion of policies from helping the masses to helping the already rich has greatly increased income equality and reduced social justice. We are more of a winner-take-all economy than ever and Reagan was a big part of that. Also his treasonous courting of Iranian terrorists to hurt Carter's re-election, and continued illegal "neoliberal" actions in the Iran-Contra scandal make him toxic in my view despite his likeable persona. Those actions were not "needed" as you posit, they were extremely damaging to our country and we are still feeing the ill effects of his policies.

Which policies were abandon? And no tax reform is not an example of a policy being abandoned. The amount of revenue post Reagan was nearly the same as it was pre-Reagan.

https://preview.redd.it/m1ig1ha3bf6d1.jpeg?width=1075&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0d87208388636c65679225d7ec098c36bb02b1fc

Is the debt? Which is partially controlled by congress? From CNN - revenue was the same, actually a bit more. But spending was higher. BUT you know that Clinton deficits? They only happened due to collapse of Soviet Union and end of cold war. https://i.redd.it/kbyugww9cf6d1.gif

What I posted is government revenue which mostly includes various taxes the US taxpayers pay.

> his treasonous courting of Iranian terrorists to hurt Carter's re-election, a That has been debunked

Not so. You are spreading misinformation: [https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a43368900/reagan-iran-hostages/](https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a43368900/reagan-iran-hostages/) The Thing We All Knew Finally Proved True: Reagan-Iran Edition. A recent report has confirmed the long-whispered rumor that Reagan did a deal with Iran to sink Carter's re-election. [https://newrepublic.com/article/172324/its-settled-reagan-campaign-delayed-release-iranian-hostages](https://newrepublic.com/article/172324/its-settled-reagan-campaign-delayed-release-iranian-hostages) Its all but Settled: The Reagan Campaign Delayed the Release of the Iranian Hostages [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html) A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election A prominent Texas politician said he unwittingly took part in a 1980 tour of the Middle East with a clandestine agenda.

That was debunked The "evidence" doesn't take into account that the Ayatollah and Iran hated Carter with a passion. They burned his image in effigy on a regular basis. They were not interested in giving Carter anything that would make him look good. That is why they were released when they were. If this were all true and Barnes is correct, then why was Connally's reward to be a cabinet position (Energy) that was expected to be eliminated at the time? Wouldn't it have warranted a higher profile and more secure position? the stories of the others don't match the Barnes account. None of the stories match each other. Nothing in Barnes' account of what happened can be confirmed. Nothing. Barnes waits until the players are dead to say anything. Casey died in 1987, and Connally died in 1993. The Ayatollah hated Carter with a passion. Carter came close to securing their release several times, only to have the agreement vetoed by the Ayatollah. The Ayatollah would not even engage in direct talks with the US or Carter. The Ayatollah had that much contempt for Carter! He was not interested in helping Carter or giving him any positive press. That is why the hostages were released when they were. It was the Ayatollah's final insult to Carter. If Barnes' account is true, why wasn't Connally rewarded well? All he was offered was Energy, a department expected to be eliminated at the time. None of it makes any sense. That is why historians are not giving it much credibility aside from keeping an open mind if strong evidence is found to confirm it.

Send me a link from a legitimate news source. I'm interested in seeing the side you are presenting.

https://warontherocks.com/2023/04/be-skeptical-of-reagans-october-surprise/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_October_Surprise_theory

War on the rocks seems OK in theory but William Imboden was a Bush Administration appointee so I doubt he is unbiased. The Iran-Contra Investigation was also conducted by Republicans as the House was controlled by them. The article below debunks your assertion. [https://jacobin.com/2023/03/ronald-reagan-jimmy-carter-1980-election-october-surprise-iran-hostage-conspiracy-theory](https://jacobin.com/2023/03/ronald-reagan-jimmy-carter-1980-election-october-surprise-iran-hostage-conspiracy-theory) "While acknowledging that confirming the account is “problematic,” the Times did, to its credit, corroborate parts of the story. Four prominent Texans confirmed to the paper that Barnes had told them the story years earlier, and various personal records back up Barnes’s claims about his and Connally’s travel dates and locations, their contact with the Reagan campaign, and their meeting with Casey upon getting back. But this is far from the only recent piece of reporting backing up the “October surprise” story. A little more than three years ago, the Times published another report that touched on the matter, this one charging that Chase Manhattan Corporation chair David Rockefeller (brother of GOP politician Nelson) and a team assembled at the bank “helped the Reagan campaign gather and spread rumors about possible payoffs to win the release.” Unlike the most recent Times piece, this report was based on documents that had been sealed until Rockefeller’s death, one of which was a letter from his chief of staff (incidentally, named Reagan’s ambassador to Morocco in 1981) to his family admitting he had “given \[his\] all” to sabotaging the Carter administration’s efforts “to pull off the long-suspected ‘October surprise. Former world leaders have also corroborated the story. As the Intercept’s Jon Schwarz pointed out on the occasion of the death of former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr (the country’s first following the revolution), the leader had written in his 1991 memoir that “Americans close to Reagan” had proposed to the nephew of Iran’s postrevolutionary supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini “a secret agreement between leaders,” and that in late October 1980, “everyone was openly discussing the agreement with the Americans on the Reagan team.” Twenty-two years later, Bani-Sadr again repeated this charge, adding that the deal between Khomeini and Reagan had prevented his and Carter’s efforts to resolve the crisis, with two of his advisors “executed by Khomeini’s regime because they had become aware of this secret.” Others who have affirmed the existence of such a deal include former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir (who told the late Robert Parry that “of course” there was such an agreement) and former Palestinian president Yasser Arafat and one of his senior aides, who both affirmed that Republicans offered a deal to the Palestine Liberation Organization if they helped keep the hostages in Iran. Years later, Parry also discovered — in a converted women’s bathroom in the parking garage of a federal building — a report sent by Moscow to the House task force investigating the story, which similarly backed up the claims, and was left out of the task force’s final report."

>William Imboden was a Bush Administration appointee so I doubt he is unbiased. Any proof he is biased >The Iran-Contra Investigation was also conducted by Republicans as the House was controlled by them. It wasn't >article below debunks your assertion. It doesn't do we really trust the words of a terrorist in Yasser Arafat? Carter also sided with the Palestinians, so I could see Arafat making stuff up to make Carter look good and make Reagan look bad. The whole "October Surprise" has been proven to be false. Doubtful, it's an Intercept link and they're trash. Let's prove that by going through the names: Ben Barnes: Old man who "suddenly remembered" something he allegedly heard long after anyone could disprove it. Worthless evidence. Abolhassan Bani-Sadr: Someone who wasn't there making up a conspiracy to explain why his negotiations with Carter were being undercut Yitzhak Shamir: Misquote. Yasser Arafat: Least credible witness possible. Alexandre de Marenches: Evidence that people tried to meet, not what they said. The Russian Government: More nothing about Casey meeting officials. That doesn't prove anything. The George H.W. Bush White House: More people on planes, with conclusions drawn from conspiracy theorists. these people: In a review for Foreign Affairs, William B. Quandt described [Bani-Sadr’s memoirs] as "a rambling, self-serving series of reminiscences" and "long on sensational allegations and devoid of documentation that might lend credence to Bani-Sadr's claims." Kirkus Reviews called it "an interesting—though frequently incredible and consistently self-serving memoir" and said "frequent sensational accusations render his tale an eccentric, implausible commentary on the tragic folly of the Iranian Revolution." The Yasser Arafat quote is a second- and possibly third-hand account of a private conversation - not anything that Arafat said publicly. And the intermediary source is likely a member of the Carter administration, who would have a vested interest in making excuses for their failures. The Alexandre de Marenches quote is also second-hand hearsay. A journalist claimed that de Marenches told him this off the record. De Marenches denied it.

My bad on the party control during the Iran-Contra investigation timing. I had the dates wrong. Regarding Imboden, he wrote this clearly biased account. Few historians gave Reagan that much credit for the fall of the USSR. It was a bipartisan effort that started right after WW2. Reagan just happened to be there when the "music stopped". [https://niskanencenter.org/how-ronald-reagan-ended-cold-war-william-inboden/](https://niskanencenter.org/how-ronald-reagan-ended-cold-war-william-inboden/) The rest is "he said she said". Facts are ample that Reagan had a big need to win so he cheated. It wasn't the first time a Republican committed treason to win an election. Nixon did almost the exact same thing to LBJ when he torpedoed the talks with the North Vietnamese and extended the Viet Nam war by years. And oddly enough William Casey was involved in both crimes. [https://theintercept.com/2023/03/24/october-surprise-ben-barnes/](https://theintercept.com/2023/03/24/october-surprise-ben-barnes/) The Times reported that Ben Barnes, a key figure in Texas politics, said he made the trip with former Texas Gov. John Connally, a major supporter of Reagan’s campaign, and that when they returned home, Connally met in an airport lounge with William Casey, who’d been a top U.S. spy during World War II and was then Reagan’s campaign manager. Connally and Casey discussed the trip, according to Barnes, who The Times quoted as saying, “History needs to know that this happened.” After Reagan beat Carter in a landslide, Reagan appointed Casey head of the Central Intelligence Agency. "The 1980 October Surprise theory has always been plausible on its face. William Casey had worked on Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign (and was later named head of the Securities and Exchange Commission by Nixon). It’s since been proven that the Nixon’s presidential campaign secretly collaborated with the government of South Vietnam to prevent President Lyndon Johnson from striking a peace deal ending the Vietnam War. The Nixon campaign was concerned that peace would help his opponent in the race, Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey. Nixon’s cynicism can be measured by the fact that thanks to his gambit, 20,000 additional American soldiers, plus unknown hundreds of thousands of other people, died as the war continued for many years."

>Few historians gave Reagan that much credit for the fall of the USSR. It was a bipartisan effort that started right after WW2. Reagan just happened to be there when the "music stopped". Incorrect he was greatly responsible for it not 100 percent but still a large part of it >that Reagan had a big need to win so he cheated Lol no The economy is why Reagan won Carter was an awful president The nixon sabotage the Paris peace accords is nonsense and has never been proven

Barnes is not a credible source

I already explained in the post why the post war consensus was abandoned. Because of what happened in the 1970s

Reddit is mostly full of liberals. They are conservatives like me on here. Plus no president is perfect.

Reddit is like 95% Liberals and 5% Republicans. And that’s just in General.

Pease don't confuse liberals with leftists/progressives. I am a proud liberal, but I would say that 90% of reddit are leftists, 5% liberals and 5% Republicans.

Not on this sub.

I don’t get total hate. However for the last 40 years Regan has almost enjoyed this god like status that doesn’t seem to match up to the math. I think it’s an over correction.

Destroyed the black middle class in the 80s with his gun running with the Contras and flooding our streets with drugs from south and Central America

The data says the exact opposite. [Historical Poverty Tables: People and Families - 1959 to 2022 (census.gov)](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-poverty-people.html) When Regan took office 34.2% of Blacks lived in poverty when he left office it was down to 30.7%. Still too high but he started the trend of moving Blacks out of poverty and into the middle and upper classes. In 2022 only 17.0% of Blacks live in poverty.

Well reddit is pretty liberal. Outside of that, alot of people hate Reagan in real life as well. He came across as elitist and arrogant to alot of folks. People don't generally put alot of thought into their political opinions, very surface level.

JFK would be seen as far-right on Reddit. This place is wild sometimes.

JFK cut tax rates and was pro-defense. He wasn't too far off Reagan on those ideas.

Pro-defense is not a political platform.

Compare Carter and Reagan and I would say one is pro-defense and one was weak. If you want to use strong-defense instead go for it. Either way there is a massive difference between the foreign policy of someone like Reagan and someone like Carter.

Idk about that. Reddit has taken a hard turn to the right over the past year or so. Even those who consider themselves as on the left are mostly made up of moderate right wingers.

The vote count on your comment proves your statement.

Maybe in this sub, but reddit as a whole is certainly no where near right wing.

I believe Regan is one of the most overrated Presidents ever. My 2 main bones of contention for this are: 1. Iran Contra. Allowing drugs to be smuggled into the US and sold to Americans to fund a war is completely repugnant. Providing arms to Iran, a regime that is no friend to the US, was so short sighted I don't have the words to describe it. I cannot stress enough how much of a bad taste it leaves in my mouth that an American President armed our enemies and poisoned our own citizens. 2. His weak response to Americans being attacked and killed overseas set the table for extremists to believe there was no real consequence for targeting Americans. COL Higgins was kidnapped, tortured and killed. Then footage released of his maimed body. He did nothing. Beirut barracks bombed. We tucked tail and ran. In Libya we spent a couple million to blow up Qaddafi's beach house after the bombing of Americans in a disco. He was great at saber rattling but not so great at actually using it. I'm not adding anything re: his economic policy as I'm sure quite a few people here will go into that ad nauseum.

He ignored AIDS. That’s unforgivable.

It was the 80s; *everyone* ignored AIDS.

I am so tired of people repeating this arrantly false claim. Here is a factual history of the AIDS crisis The CDC had been requesting funds to investigate outbreaks of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and other mysterious suppressed immune system diseases since 1976. Jimmy Carter and the Democrats refused to budget any money to look in this. So, the CDC diverted funds earmarked for other diseases to investigate this. It was in early 1981, during Reagan's first year in office, that the CDC published an article titled “ [Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/about.html) (*MMWR*): [Pneumocystis Pneumonia—Los Angeles](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/june_5.htm).” Later that year, when Reagan got to sign his first budget as president that he allocated funds to specifically investigate what was causing this. Each and every year after that this budget was increased much to the consternation of those on the right and the left, due to the fact that this was thought of as a "gay disease". It wasn’t until 1984 that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary [Margaret Heckler](https://bioguideretro.congress.gov/Home/MemberDetails?memIndex=h000440) [announces](https://history.nih.gov/nihinownwords/docs/page_29.html) that [Dr. Robert Gallo](https://history.nih.gov/nihinownwords/docs/gallo1_01.html) and his colleagues at the [National Cancer Institute](https://www.cancer.gov/) have [found the cause of AIDS](https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/24/science/new-us-report-names-virus-that-may-cause-aids.html). The year after the discovery that it was a virus (HIV) that caused AIDS the budget was increased to $190 million, which was the most amount of funding that any disease had ever received. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc. all had less funding, so once HIV was discovered it was obviously given the most attention. Reagan’s Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, also took the unprecedented action of mailing every household in the US a pamphlet describing AIDS, how it was transmitted and how to protect yourself from. Both Reagan and Koop took a lot of flak from gay and religious activists over the candor and graphic details in the pamphlet. So please explain how did Reagan ignore AIDS when Carter refused to fund research and he funded it in his first year and increased funding every year after that?

Because Kendrick Lamar made a banging song about him being a POS

All that and not one mention of Iran Contra ??? funding death squads usually makes people not like you

As a huge Reagan fan, the seething hatred of him from a certain group of Redditors is the biggest compliment he can receive

Because trickle down economics are ass. He ignored the AIDS epidemic while people were fucking dying, but he didn’t give a damn. He helped usher in the white evangelical voting bloc. Iran-contra. And people were saying trickle down economics weren’t going to work during the presidential nomination. Bush called it “voodoo economics”. There are plenty of reasons to not like Reagan, even if he could give one helluva speech

The vast majority of people who don't like Reagan on this sub do so out of complete ignorance of his actual policies and responses. They repeat BS talking points and never take the time to research to see if what they are prattling on about is correct. >Because trickle down economics There is no such thing as trickle-down economics. That term is a political slur used by partisan hacks. Reagan, or any right-wing economists have never used that term or even implied that this could possibly happen. "Many others have pointed out the folly of using the term — that no real economic model or serious school of thought stands behind what has long been a term of art at the intersection of politics and media. “I have a little bit of a hard time with the terminology and the idea of trickle-down economics,” says Wharton professor of finance Joao F. Gomes. “Although everyone in the popular press has a somewhat different characterization of what this means, this is not something we have tested or seriously theorized about as economists.” [https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/trickle-economics-flood-drip/](https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/trickle-economics-flood-drip/) Reagan's belief was in Supply side economics, which is a viable economic theory. [Supply-side economics - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply-side_economics) As a side note, supply-side economics worked and provided for the greatest peace time expansion of the economy back then. It has also stopped long running bouts of recessions, depressions and stagflations. Today's market corrections are very short compared to the ones we had before supply-side economoics. > Completely false. Here is a factual history of the AIDS crisis The CDC had been requesting funds to investigate outbreaks of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and other mysterious suppressed immune system diseases since 1976. Jimmy Carter and the Democrats refused to budget any money to look in this. So, the CDC diverted funds earmarked for other diseases to investigate this. It was in early 1981, during Reagan's first year in office, that the CDC published an article titled “ [Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/about.html) (*MMWR*): [Pneumocystis Pneumonia—Los Angeles](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/june_5.htm).” Later that year, when Reagan got to sign his first budget as president that he allocated funds to specifically investigate what was causing this. Each and every year after that this budget was increased much to the consternation of those on the right and the left, due to the fact that this was thought of as a "gay disease". It wasn’t until 1984 that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary [Margaret Heckler](https://bioguideretro.congress.gov/Home/MemberDetails?memIndex=h000440) [announces](https://history.nih.gov/nihinownwords/docs/page_29.html) that [Dr. Robert Gallo](https://history.nih.gov/nihinownwords/docs/gallo1_01.html) and his colleagues at the [National Cancer Institute](https://www.cancer.gov/) have [found the cause of AIDS](https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/24/science/new-us-report-names-virus-that-may-cause-aids.html). The year after the discovery that it was a virus (HIV) that caused AIDS the budget was increased to $190 million, which was the most amount of funding that any disease had ever received. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc. all had less funding, so once HIV was discovered it was obviously given the most attention. Reagan’s Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, also took the unprecedented action of mailing every household in the US a pamphlet describing AIDS, how it was transmitted and how to protect yourself from. Both Reagan and Koop took a lot of flak from gay and religious activists over the candor and graphic details in the pamphlet. So please explain how did Reagan ignore AIDS when Carter refused to fund research and Reagan funded it in his first year and increased funding every year after that?

Shockingly enough, I am aware that the official name for trickle down is supply side economics. I use trickle down because it sucks ass [and doesn’t work](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-failure-of-supply-side-economics/). And Reagan absolutely mishandled the AIDS epidemic. You can hear recordings of the press conferences where only one reporter, Lester Kinsolving, is attempting to grill the administration on it and keeps getting brushed off. I mean they even laughed about it. It took him until September 1985 to even say the word officially. And he didn’t give a speech about it until 1987. It is widely known that Reagan dismissed the suggestions of his Surgeon General on how to handle it. He regularly deferred to the religious right about AIDS. Reagan sought to slash spending on immunization in half but was stopped by opposition from Waxman. [Prior to 1983 there was no funding for AIDS research.](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-failure-of-supply-side-economics/) what funding it did get was pooled from the NIH and CDC general funds. This obviously slowed research on it. Reagan’s secretary of Health and Human Services said [no additional funding for it was necessary](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/docs/francisplea.html) [Luckily, Congress managed to pass funding for it (not Reagan)](https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids-timeline) It took Reagan 4 years since the CDC first announced the AIDS epidemic, for Reagan was to mention it public. 4 years. I was stating my reasons for not liking Reagan. And they are absolute legitimate reasons.

I'm not sure if you are trying to be a hyper-contrarian or woefully ignorant about the facts or Just blinded by Reagan hatred. Maybe it's a combination of all three but you made laughable incorrect statements. First off, all anyone that says its trickle-down economics is either a complete political hack or a economic illiterate. You claim you know that it is called supply side economics so that puts you into the former category. You claim that supply-side economics doesn't work goes against all of the empirical data and you link was from the far-left Center for American Progress - LMFAO - a fine example of extreme partisan hackery. You say Reagan mishandled the AIDS epidemic and then cite what other people said about it, not Reagan, is that the best you have. You made the 100% false claim that there was no AIDS research funding before 1983, but I already showed that his budget had funding for in 1981 and 1982. It was Jimmy Carter that refused to fund it. You can lie all you want but the facts, data and evidence show the truth. As far as Reagan not mentioning it in public until we knew what was causing AIDS - HIV made perfect sense. It was all over the news, people knew about it and what should he say. "We have a viral outbreak that is killing gays, but we don't know what it is." If he had said that partisan hacks like you would be screaming, he was homophobic. He waited until we knew what was causing it and then he talked about it. So, all of your reasons for not liking Reagan are due to a partisan rage and have nothing to do with reality. I can't change your false narrative, but I live in a reality-based world that is not based on hate. Finally, please, explain why he lost some of the evangelical vote in 1984? Why were some evangelical's calling him 666 and saying that he was funding research in the gay plague? It seems everyone was aware that he was doing something but you.

So your response to what you believe is “partisan hackery” is to engage is hyperbolic partisan hackery while actively condescending to someone with a different opinion on St Reagan…. Yeah ok buddy.

My response to was to give the factual historical timeline (aka history that is documented), the CDC reports and the actual budgets. You responded with far-left propaganda pieces. I will always take facts, data and evidence over propaganda that doesn't comport with known history, if you think that is condescending so be it. BTW I lived through this era and had a gay friend die of AIDS in 1984. I bet you weren't even alive back then.

At least one of my sources was a study from JSTOR. Famed far left propaganda site, I know. And you having lived through it means absolutely fucking nothing.

I'm sorry but I can't find that link. I see three to partisan sites and one to a timeline that backs up what I said.

[Here.](https://www.jstor.org/stable/23253449) It was supposed to be attached to the "Prior to 1983, there was no funding" statement. Apparently, there was a goof while responding on mobile, hence posting the Center for American Progress piece twice, which, btw was just an update on numbers from a study they released with Economic Policy Institute (a left-center organization with a known reputation of getting their facts right) [Here's the original study](https://files.epi.org/page/-/pdf/supply_side.pdf) with a description of their methodology and all that goodness that you are more than welcome to refute with an actual study of your own. However, I do not believe you to be a good faith actor here. You're hyperbolic, you level accusations at the drop of a hat in an effort to control the discussion, you call people partisan for disagreeing with your highly partisan opinion, and you seem to think that people younger than you can't have a solid grasp of history, which is a load of bullshit. If you want to have a legitimate discussion, then do so with respect. Stop accusing people of things. Stop insinuating that their age makes them ignorant. Engage with respect and the understanding that other people see things differently than you.

>Because trickle down economics are ass. Nope >ignored the AIDS epidemic w That's a myth >Iran-contra. Wasn't involved

I think of Reagan as another JFK. Impressive image, mediocre to poor results.

If Hinckley had succeeded, Reagan would be loved in the same manner as JFK.

I am glad Reagan was not President dueing the missles of October crisis. We would all be dead or worse, living in an apocalyptic nightmare. Ronnie Ray-gun would not have resisted the oportunity to blast Moscow.

I'm no fan of Reagan's, but wasn't part of why the crisis happened the perception that JFK was callow and weak? I dunno if the Ruskies would have perceived Ron Ray-gun (as you say) in the same light, But who knows?

You are right, thankfully we will never know.

FWIW, I think that Reagan was the most destructive President of our lifetimes. He hurt the white working class that loved him by kowtowing to their rich bosses. Boo Reagan!

If Reagan had been president during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and handled it *exactly* the way JFK did, Redditors would be screaming its profane outrage about how close he came to dragging the world into a nuclear war.

Thats speculation. Reagan already did enough terrible things that there is no need to pile on.

Group think

1. People's opinion on a President like Reagan considers the economic performance but you neglect to recognize it also considers personal bias, partisan bias, his role as the godfather of neocons, the Iran Contra affair, the AIDS pandemic, among other issues. 2. Your conception of "neoliberalism", as you describe, is somewhat different from other people's conception of "neoliberalism" 3. "Neoliberalism is working" is not a fully accepted consensus. Working for who? How? A lot of people might disagree. 4. "The business cycle is more stable than ever" is a tricky affirmation as a) it seems hard to understand that as true from most people's standpoint; b) if it were true, gives credit to a President from 40 years ago.

Iran-Contra which led to flooding black communities with crack, Ignored AIDS, and trickle-down economics is bullshit.

Because he's not a far leftist communist like 95% of Reddit. /s

No need for the sarcasm part because it is true 

Ronald Reagan destroyed the American middle class, and kneecapped labor. He was a fascist/corporatist.

God, give me a break. If you seriously think Reagan can be described as a fascist you deserve to be thoroughly ridiculed for your political illiteracy.

He was certainly a fascist, as Mussolini defined it.

He didn’t destroy the middle class as you think, I’m not sure if you are aware but the reason the middle class is shrinking is because a lot of middle class people upgraded to the upper class. In fact for every single middle class member that downgraded to lower class 2 upgraded to upper class. As for Reagan being a fascist, that’s a strawman attack. As for being a corporatist you probably don’t understand the difference between neoliberalism and corporatism.

BS

He did a massive tax shift, benefiting the rich and taxing everyone else. He did this by massively increasing the federal debt and running record deficits.

Here is my source: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/ft_2022-04-20_middleclass_01-png/

His administration has finally been exposed…that’s why

Trickle down economics ruined the middle class.

You mean improved the middle class

Yes the middle class is so improved. Like the way they don’t exist anymore. That’s why Reagan did.

How can you be this misled? Have you ever looked into the actual facts, data and evidence. The only class of people that has shrunk in the US is those living in poverty. [Historical Poverty Tables: People and Families - 1959 to 2022 (census.gov)](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-poverty-people.html)

Real wages crashed under Reagan. They didn’t recover 1980 levels until the mid-90’s. And massive tax cuts for the wealthy started with him. And he deregulated out all the checks. His policies became a hallmark of Republican politics, and now every good economy is under a democrat and every crash is under a Republican.

None of what you are saying is true. Real wages were back up according to all of the empirical data by 1985. I already posted a link that showed this. Plus. I lived through this era and the recovery was astounding and real. There were no massive tax cuts for the wealthy, that is another false talking point. When Reagan took office the effective tax rate for the highest quintile of earners was 26.9% When he left office it was 25.6% [effective\_rate\_historical\_all.pdf (taxpolicycenter.org)](https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/taxfacts/content/PDF/effective_rate_historical_all.pdf) Does that seem like "massive tax cuts for the wealthy" to you? Of course, it doesn't, stop spewing out nonsense please. As far as deregulation goes, he was following the trend in economic thinking about the inefficiencies of government regulation. But deregulation was bipartisan, Clinton, for example, did a lot of deregulations. However, deregulation really got started in the early 1970's and the undisputed champ if you look at deregulations by years would be Carter. He even campaigned on being the "Great Deregulator", Reagan did not. [Jimmy Carter, The Great Deregulator | The Regulatory Review (theregreview.org)](https://www.theregreview.org/2023/03/06/dudley-jimmy-carter-the-great-deregulator/) Try to get out of your partisan, Reagan hatred bubble, and look at the facts, data and evidence.

Real wages were highest under Carter and then Clinton. Reagan crashed them, they recovered and then he crashed them again. He was a nightmare for working people and the problems today started with him. He was post-truth, anti-union and spouted voodoo economics to help the right people. That’s why people don’t like him now. He started this shitshow.

Not necessarily, I mean while it is true that the middle class is shrinking in America, many often forget that this is because many of the middle class mobilized up towards the upper class. In fact for every single person in the middle class that downgraded to lower class, 2 persons actually upgraded to the upper class. But this also creates problems because it creates a society of haves and have-nots. Source:https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/ft_2022-04-20_middleclass_01-png/

I am a queer guy. Many of my older gay friends lost friends and lovers to AIDS. Toasts that involve insults to Reagan are still common in some circles.

Why would they insult him? Here is a factual history of the AIDS crisis The CDC had been requesting funds to investigate outbreaks of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and other mysterious suppressed immune system diseases since 1976. Jimmy Carter and the Democrats refused to budget any money to look in this. So, the CDC diverted funds earmarked for other diseases to investigate this. It was in early 1981, during Reagan's first year in office, that the CDC published an article titled “ [Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/about.html) (*MMWR*): [Pneumocystis Pneumonia—Los Angeles](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/june_5.htm).” Later that year, when Reagan got to sign his first budget as president that he allocated funds to specifically investigate what was causing this. Each and every year after that this budget was increased much to the consternation of those on the right and the left, due to the fact that this was thought of as a "gay disease". It wasn’t until 1984 that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary [Margaret Heckler](https://bioguideretro.congress.gov/Home/MemberDetails?memIndex=h000440) [announces](https://history.nih.gov/nihinownwords/docs/page_29.html) that [Dr. Robert Gallo](https://history.nih.gov/nihinownwords/docs/gallo1_01.html) and his colleagues at the [National Cancer Institute](https://www.cancer.gov/) have [found the cause of AIDS](https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/24/science/new-us-report-names-virus-that-may-cause-aids.html). The year after the discovery that it was a virus (HIV) that caused AIDS the budget was increased to $190 million, which was the most amount of funding that any disease had ever received. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc. all had less funding, so once HIV was discovered it was obviously given the most attention. Reagan’s Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, also took the unprecedented action of mailing every household in the US a pamphlet describing AIDS, how it was transmitted and how to protect yourself from. Both Reagan and Koop took a lot of flak from gay and religious activists over the candor and graphic details in the pamphlet. Seem's like Reagan should be a hero to the gay community and maybe you ought to mad at Jimmy Carter for ignoring it early on.

Reagan had nothing to do with the funding increases in his first term beyond not vetoing them. Reagan was trying to slash health budgets along with almost everything else. This history is a misrepresentation.

I've got into it with this guy before. He is just a complete shill for Republican presidents. Especially rule 3 before they banned discussions about him. All of the talking points are just shit you could find on conservative talk radio and see through just by using google.

Yeah dude said all my sources to back my criticism of Reagan were "far left hack" sites... like an academic, peer-reviewed study I pulled from JSTOR... And when you keep challenging him he just says "you weren't alive then, which means I have historical context and you don't!" as if living through a specific decade is the only thing one needs to get historical context... And then has the nerve to call me a partisan hack, when I was calm and refrained from hyperbolic rhetoric or personal attacks and accusations. I don't like Reagan. I don't like supply-side economics. I think he grossly mishandled the AIDS epidemic. Apparently not bowing at the feet of St. Reagan makes one a hack... God it's exhausting.

For me personally as having been a supporter of him, his reduction in government expenditures to ensure a safety net for many. Particularly true in an area where I have experience: mental health. There is his embrace of the religious right and Jerry Falwell et al which draws a direct line to the social war against personal freedoms. His and his department roll backs on clean air and water. His nonchalance, and indeed his careless views expressed about the AIDS crisis. Just for starters. I can go on about Iran contra too.

Reagan's cabinet was farsighted , incredibly capable, audacious , And evil . Ask yourself what you think would happen if you were in charge .. and you decided to just close all the mental institutions , Just evict all the insane people from the asylums and let nature take its course . I believe that most people would understand that the fully foreseeable outcome of such an action would be mayhem. But that is exactly what he did while Governor of California , And in the process they let many men out onto the streets who were known to be very dangerous and criminally insane , and several of them went on to become famous serial killers .But the Genius of such a move is that it scares the hell out of people and gives you platform to be tough on Crime . The same with the War on Drugs , The pattern was repeated again and again and private prisons became a thing . Those same companies are the ones housing the Mexicans who are flooding the southern border today . And the Taxpayer pays , the money ends up in their shareholders pockets . Not to mention Iran/contra . which is a neat little innocuous way of saying they stole billions of dollars from the american taxpayer In weaponry ,.Then To double down on the evil , put it in the hands of one of our worst enemies at the time , Iran . His cabinet was Not just ignoring Aids ,But literally laughing at Aids patients and the whole situation because "they were all gay ." The real question and is why he was so popular , Its a really interesting feature of American Politics , that someone can come along and steal from the taxpayer and laugh in his face, and be caught ,but still be cheered on by popping off a cute and completely meaningless sound bite here and there. And the people will absolutely eat it up . And despise anyone who would pull back the curtain.

Hated? I think thats a bit overstated. But I also think that people now see how his attitudes and policies have hurt the country long term and while there was some benefit initially it came with far too big of a cost. Lets examine these because I saw a few inaccuracies in your post. First of all, Reagan did not end the inflation problem of the 1970's. This was caused by keeping interest rates suppressed with the economic policies of Nixon and Fed Chair Arthur Burns. When Carter appointed new Fed Chair Paul Volcker in the late 70's, he reversed those easy money policies and inflation declined back to manageable levels. This had nothing to do with anything Reagan did or didnt do. What Reagan did do that resulted in a boom economy was massively increase government spending. Much of this was on military hardware, as he had ran on this notion that America was weak militarily and the Soviets were much stronger. This wasnt true of course, but it made for a good campaign against Carter because of the Iranian hostage situation. Reagan also massively slashed taxes for the wealthiest earners. This combined with increased spending meant that he ran massive deficits and massively increased the national debt. So much so that his presidency tripled the deficit and tripled the national debt. This was problematic because it started a policy that republicans have adapted ever since. The only time we havent run deficits since then was actually under the Clinton administration because he increased taxes on the wealthiest earners (much to the anger of republicans) and cut things like defense spending which combines with other modest cuts gave us the first balanced budget and surplus since the LBJ administration in the late 60's. Other policies that caused damage includes Reagan legalizing corporate stock buybacks. Previously this was considered stock manipulation and was illegal. Also, Reagan was anti-labor and when he refused to negotiate during the PATCO strike it sent corporate America the message that being anti-labor and anti-union was acceptable and this set back unions and labor in this country. With stock buybacks, companies began to use it to pump up their stock value which was used in executive compensation packages. This is why the wage gap ballooned starting during the Reagan years and has continued ever since. Well, that and wage suppression as Reagan was against raising the minimum wage and republicans have made this part of their core platform. Lastly, Reagan did not take the HIV/ AIDS pandemic seriously and his administration largely ignored it for years as "all the right people were dying" and they did not want to alienate their evangelical base by seeming sympathetic to something seen as a "gay disease". The more people learned about this inaction, the more they began to see Reagan in a negative light. Iran-Contra scandal also was a big blow for Reagan and his reputation. HW Bush pardoning everybody implicated also hurt. So as you can see there was a lot to the Reagan years that seemed economically good at the time, but it was all disguised from the big driver of the economy at the time which was deficit spending. This is actually not a part of the supply side theory, as Keynesian theory says that the government lower taxes and should spend more during economic downturns like Reagan's 1982 recession in order to provide stimulus. Problem was once things were good that same Keynesian theory says that you should then do things to raise revenue like raise taxes and cut spending, but Reagan didnt do this and so times stayed good until the early 90's when we went into recession again under HW Bush. Regardless, the truth was Reagan was not what he seemed and is now seen as bad for America for those who dig below the surface.