70% to 28% during the first 7 years in office. These cuts assisted with the slowing of the inflation on the U.S. dollar. In 1982, the recession in which Reagan inherited caused unemployment to rise over 10% and gross domestic product growth slowed to 3.5% per year. By the end of his presidency, Reagan had seen the GDP set a new growth record at 7.3% in 1983 and unemployment dropping to 5.3% in 1988. Many people became critical of President Reagan’s supply-side economics strategies following his time in office. The term Reganomics or Trickle-down economics have often been attributed. The fore mentioned terms are never used by economists, but rather only by critics of the Reagan era and capitalism. They argue that Reagan provided too much incentive to the rich, allowing a disproportionate balance of the distribution of wealth. Reagan supporters will often cite Reagan’s ability to lower unemployment, increase consumer spending, and grow the GDP significantly. Critics of Reagan will also bring up wealth disparity, however, during President Reagan’s term as president, families making less than $10,000 a year shrunk from 8.8% to 8.3%, in addition, households making more than $75,000 a year increased from 20.2% to 25.7%. This is more than enough evidence …show more content…
Reagan implemented an increase of DOD spending demanding that excess spending be cut from other sectors to produce a more balanced budget. Since during Reagan’s election the house and the senate fell under republican control, Reagan had very little push bac k in implementing his cutbacks, however, he ran into several road blocks when he attempted to cut spending to domestic programs such as social security, Medicare, and food stamps. Agencies like the EPA suffered cuts of up to 22%, with the justification lying with the increased need for national defense against the