This week on the Lectures in History podcast, Brigham Young University historian Grant Madsen

examines the supply-side economic agenda of the 40th president, Ronald Reagan, policies that came

to be known as Reaganomics. Reganomics was an economic approach championed by Ronald Reagan that emphasized tax

cuts, deregulation, and reduced government spending to spur growth by boosting private

investment and job creation. More in a moment.

All right, welcome to class, and today we're going to be talking about Reaganomics.

So what we're really going to talk about, and we say Reaganomics, is this combination of what

policy prescriptions Ronald Reagan advocated, as well as what was going on with the economy during

the 1980s.

So anticipate a little bit about both of those things

as we talk.

Now, this is a history class, and so like we always do,

that means I'm going to take a step backwards

before we move forward.

So the question is, what was going on in the economy

in the 1970s?

In other words, what was happening before Ronald Reagan took office. Well, this is something

that you probably remember from last week. This is a combination of the inflation rate and the

unemployment rate. People at the time referred to the combination of these two things as the

misery index, so all of the bad things going on in the economy. And as you can see through 77,

up to 1980, both inflation and unemployment were quite a bit higher in the economy. And as you can see through 77, up to 1980, both

inflation and unemployment were quite a bit higher than what the targets would have

...