The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties

by Christopher Caldwell

Today Reagan’s defenders credit him with having prepared the country for the competitive conditions of the global economy. He did, but that was no part of his vision. A former spokesman for General Electric, Reagan did not win two elections by promising to close more plants, outsource more jobs, and lay off more industrial workers. The Reagan administration, according to his aide William A. Niskanen, erected “more trade barriers than any administration since Hoover.” Reagan’s critics, for their part, saw a redistribution from the poor to the rich. That may have been a long-term consequence, but at first the transfer was not from one social class to another but from one government program to another. The transfers went, according to Niskanen, “from discretionary domestic spending to defense, entitlements and interest payments.” Reagan took money from bridge building, park tidying, and arts funding and used it to pay for a military buildup and the very Great Society programs he had come to office promising to dismantle. That required borrowing.