The history of the Soviet Union from 1982 through 1991 spans the period from the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev's death until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Due to the years of Soviet military buildup at the expense of domestic development, and complex systemic problems in the command economy, Soviet output stagnated. Failed attempts at reform, a standstill economy, and the success of the proxies of the United States against the Soviet Union's forces in the war in Afghanistan led to a general feeling of discontent, especially in the Soviet-occupied Baltic countries and Eastern Europe.
Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. A member of the Republican Party, his presidency constituted the Reagan era, and he is considered one of the most prominent conservative figures in American history.
Reaganomics, or Reaganism, were the neoliberal economic policies promoted by U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. These policies are characterized as supply-side economics, trickle-down economics, or "voodoo economics" by opponents, while Reagan and his advocates preferred to call it free-market economics.
Neoliberalism, also neo-liberalism, is a term used to signify the late-20th century political reappearance of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism. The term has multiple, competing definitions, and is often used pejoratively. In scholarly use, the term is frequently undefined or used to characterize a vast variety of phenomena.
Supply-side economics is a macroeconomic theory postulating that economic growth can be most effectively fostered by lowering taxes, decreasing regulation, and allowing free trade. According to supply-side economics, consumers will benefit from greater supplies of goods and services at lower prices, and employment will increase. Supply-side fiscal policies are designed to increase aggregate supply, as opposed to aggregate demand, thereby expanding output and employment while lowering prices. Such policies are of several general varieties:
- Investments in human capital, such as education, healthcare, and encouraging the transfer of technologies and business processes, to improve productivity. Encouraging globalized free trade via containerization is a major recent example.
- Tax reduction, to provide incentives to work, invest and take risks. Lowering income tax rates and eliminating or lowering tariffs are examples of such policies.
- Investments in new capital equipment and research and development (R&D), to further improve productivity. Allowing businesses to depreciate capital equipment more rapidly gives them an immediate financial incentive to invest in such equipment.
- Reduction in government regulations, to encourage business formation and expansion.
Neoconservatism is a political movement that began in the United States and the United Kingdom during the 1960s during the Vietnam War among foreign policy hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and counterculture of the 1960s. Neoconservatives typically advocate the unilateral promotion of democracy and interventionism in international affairs, grounded in a militaristic and realist philosophy of "peace through strength." They are known for espousing opposition to communism and political radicalism.
Arthur Betz Laffer is an American economist and author who first gained prominence during the Reagan administration as a member of Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board (1981–1989). Laffer is best known for the Laffer curve, an illustration of the theory that there exists some tax rate between 0% and 100% that will result in maximum tax revenue for government. In certain circumstances, this would allow governments to cut taxes, and simultaneously increase revenue and economic growth.
Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist who is the Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a columnist for The New York Times. In 2008, Krugman was the sole winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to new trade theory and new economic geography. The Prize Committee cited Krugman's work explaining the patterns of international trade and the geographic distribution of economic activity, by examining the effects of economies of scale and of consumer preferences for diverse goods and services.
United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, better known as NSC 68, was a 66-page top secret National Security Council (NSC) policy paper drafted by the Department of State and Department of Defense and presented to President Harry S. Truman on 7 April 1950. It was one of the most important American policy statements of the Cold War. In the words of scholar Ernest R. May, NSC 68 "provided the blueprint for the militarization of the Cold War from 1950 to the collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s." NSC 68 and its subsequent amplifications advocated a large expansion in the military budget of the United States, the development of a hydrogen bomb, and increased military aid to allies of the United States. It made the rollback of global Communist expansion a high priority. NSC 68 rejected the alternative policies of friendly détente and containment of the Soviet Union.
Globalism has multiple meanings. In political science, it is used to describe "attempts to understand all the interconnections of the modern world—and to highlight patterns that underlie them". While primarily associated with world-systems, it can be used to describe other global trends. The concept of globalism is also classically used to focus on the ideologies of globalization instead of its processes ; in this sense, "globalism" is to globalization what "nationalism" is to nationality.
Trickle-down economics is a generally critical term for supply-side economics, criticizing such policies as favoring wealthy individuals and large corporations. In the "trickle down" description, wealthy individuals directly benefit from supply-side style tax cuts, leaving only the leftover wealth to "trickle down" to those less fortunate. The term has been used broadly by critics of supply-side economics to refer to taxing and spending policies by governments that, intentionally or not, result in widening income inequality; it has also been used in critical references to neoliberalism. While economists who favor supply-side economics generally avoid the "trickle down" analogy and dispute the focus on tax cuts to the rich, the phrase "trickle down" has also been occasionally used by proponents of such policies.
Ronald Reagan's tenure as the 40th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1981, and ended on January 20, 1989. Reagan, a Republican from California, took office following his landslide victory over Democrat incumbent president Jimmy Carter and independent congressman John B. Anderson in the 1980 presidential election. Four years later, in the 1984 presidential election, he defeated former Democratic vice president Walter Mondale, to win re-election in a larger landslide. Reagan was limited to two terms and was succeeded by his vice president, George H. W. Bush, who won the 1988 presidential election. Reagan's 1980 landslide election resulted from a dramatic conservative shift to the right in American politics, including a loss of confidence in liberal, New Deal, and Great Society programs and priorities that had dominated the national agenda since the 1930s.
American foreign policy during the presidency of Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) focused heavily on the Cold War which was rapidly intensifying. The US government pursued a policy of containment and rollback with regards to communist regimes. The Reagan Doctrine operationalized these goals as the United States offered financial, logistical, training, and military equipment to anti-communist opposition in Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua. He expanded support to anti-communist movements in Central and Eastern Europe.
Russell David "Russ" Roberts is an American-Israeli economist. He is currently a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and president of Shalem College in Jerusalem. He is known for communicating economic ideas in understandable terms as host of the EconTalk podcast.
This article discusses the domestic policy of the Ronald Reagan administration from 1981 to 1989. Reagan's policies stressed conservative economic values, starting with his implementation of supply-side economic policies, dubbed as "Reaganomics" by both supporters and detracters. His policies also included the largest tax cut in American history as well as increased defense spending as part of his Soviet strategy. However, he significantly raised (non-income) taxes four times due to economic conditions and reforms, but the tax reforms instituted during presidency brought top marginal rates to their lowest levels since 1931, such that by 1988, the top US marginal tax rate was 28%.
Ronald Reagan was the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Previously, he was the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975 and acted in Hollywood films from 1937 to 1964, the same year he energized the American conservative movement. Reagan's basic foreign policy was to equal and surpass the Soviet Union in military strength, and put it on the road to what he called "the ash heap of history". By 1985, he began to cooperate closely with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whom he became friends and negotiated large-scale disarmament projects with. The Cold War was fading away and suddenly ended as the Soviets lost control of Eastern Europe almost overnight in October 1989, nine months after Reagan was replaced in the White House by his vice president, George H. W. Bush, who was following Reagan's policies. The dissolution of the Soviet Union took place in December 1991. In terms of the Reagan Doctrine, he promoted military, financial, and diplomatic support for anti-communist insurgencies in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and numerous other countries. For the most part, local communist power collapsed when the Soviet Union collapsed.
George Pratt Shultz was an American economist, businessman, diplomat and statesman. He served in various positions under two different Republican presidents and is one of the only two persons to have held four different Cabinet-level posts, the other being Elliot Richardson. Shultz played a major role in shaping the foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration, and conservative foreign policy thought thereafter.
In economics, the Laffer curve illustrates a theoretical relationship between rates of taxation and the resulting levels of the government's tax revenue. The Laffer curve assumes that no tax revenue is raised at the extreme tax rates of 0% and 100%, meaning that there is a tax rate between 0% and 100% that maximizes government tax revenue.
This timeline of modern American conservatism lists important events, developments and occurrences which have significantly affected conservatism in the United States. With the decline of the conservative wing of the Democratic Party after 1960, the movement is most closely associated with the Republican Party (GOP). Economic conservatives favor less government regulation, lower taxes and weaker labor unions while social conservatives focus on moral issues and neoconservatives focus on democracy worldwide. Conservatives generally distrust the United Nations and Europe and apart from the libertarian wing favor a strong military and give enthusiastic support to Israel.
Democratic socialism is a left-wing set of political philosophies that supports political democracy and some form of a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on economic democracy, workplace democracy, and workers' self-management within a market socialist, decentralised planned, or democratic centrally planned socialist economy. Democratic socialists argue that capitalism is inherently incompatible with the values of freedom, equality, and solidarity and that these ideals can only be achieved through the realisation of a socialist society. Although most democratic socialists seek a gradual transition to socialism, democratic socialism can support revolutionary or reformist politics to establish socialism. Democratic socialism was popularised by socialists who opposed the backsliding towards a one-party state in the Soviet Union and other nations during the 20th century.
Legion of Honour 
