When you had record high interest rates/inflation/unemployment getting it lower was a matter of waiting. His economic policies did as much as any would have.
The Cold War was coming to an end whether he did anything or not. Carter suckered the Soviets into invading Afghanistan and that was the beginning of the end for them.
Eliminate price controls WAS A VERY GOOD THING.
But Reagan's legacy is debt, spending, debt, and more spending...he never tried to stop it. It was never part of his plan. And that is just wrong.
Wrong in your opinion. Measured in 1987 dollars, the military budget soared from $187 billion in 1980 to $286 billion in 1989, an increase of more than 50%. If Reagan had not spent roughly $2 trillion on defense during his tenure, no doubt the deficit would have been a lot smaller. Yet Reagan justified the military buildup on the grounds that the U.S. was fighting the cold war. America won the cold war. Economist Lawrence Lindsey calculates that the country's defense savings since the collapse of the Soviet empire have more than compensated for the investment that Reagan made in the 1980s. In purely economic terms, Lindsey was quoted as saying, the cost of the Reagan military buildup was "a fantastic payoff--the best money we ever spent"
I respect your Soviet knowledge & agree that you make valid points regarding the Cold War. I'll grant you that other factors led up to the end of the cold war, but you'll never convince the average joe, much less conservatives, that Reagan wasn't more responsible for bringing the cold war to a sooner end than expected. That is the perception based on Reagan's actions. Had Carter or the others preceding him been as fervently anti-communist, maybe they'd share in more of the credit. But unfortunately for your argument, perception is reality. Anyone can read reams & reams of Reagan's history & learn how philosophically opposed he was to communism, the USSR in particular. Was he tough on Gorbachev & the USSR in the press & more willing to negotiate in private as you state? Who cares? He helped get the job done & the press (most of it) is reluctant to acknowledge this.
As far as the deficit, I alluded to how Congress was forced to reduce spending via Gramm-Rudman which led to the budget balancing itself (as explained by some economists). The late Milton Friedman wrote, "the deficit has been the ONLY effective restraint on congressional spending". Sad, but evidently true.
BTW, Reagan may not have created the Third Industrial Revolution that occurred during his 2nd term. Its actual course had more to do w/ Bill Gates & other ingenious entrepreneurs. But where did all the venture capital for the new industries of the 1980s come from? There was very little around in the 1970s. Why the doubling of venture capital in the 1980s? When Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were asked, many gave credit to 2 men, one being Ronald Reagan. They credited his policies of limited gov't, deregulation, & open mkts w/ creating an atmosphere in which the revolution could flourish. Michael Dell argues that Reagan did this in part by championing the entrepreneur as an American hero who defies limits to the imagination & creates new things. And you thought Al Gore created the internet
