- Carter was the one who beat inflation. He inherited a modest deficit from his predecessor and kept it at about the same level throughout his presidency, and appointed Paul Volcker as the Fed Chair, who raised interest rates to 17.61%, causing the first Volcker Recession in 1980.
- Carter was the Great Deregulator, not Reagan. Despite Reagan’s fiery rhetoric, he passed only two pieces of deregulation during his two terms in office, while Carter passed seven major pieces of deregulatory legislation.
- Reagan didn’t increase defense spending by much. In dollar terms, Reagan increased military budgets, but when adjusted for GDP, it looks much less impressive and was much lower than the military outlays of earlier decades.
- The fall of the USSR is more complicated. The most convincing economic explanation for the Soviet collapse in the late 80s comes from Yegor Gaidar, a Soviet official who later became Prime Minister of Russia, who suggested that the Soviet economy collapsed due to the oil glut that began around 1985.
- Lessons to take away. Successful policy takes a long time to work, American policy is driven less by ideology and presidential personality than we think, and presidential elections are not always as cataclysmic as we may think.
Published February 21, 2023
Visit Noahpinion to read Noah Smith’s original post Repost: Much of what you’ve heard about Carter and Reagan is wrong
