US Elections: The end of Reaganomics?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2020
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Will the elections usher in a sea-change in economic thinking, after 40 years dominated by small government conservatism?
Manuela Saragosa speaks to one small government conservative - Ramesh Ponnuru of the American Enterprise Institute - who says people like him no longer have a home in either of the main political parties. Economist James Galbraith says the scale of the economic challenge posed by the pandemic could compel a much greater role for the Federal government in reviving and restructuring the economy.
But could this election prove as significant as the victory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his economic New Deal in 1932 - assuming that President Trump even loses? Political scientist Julia Azari says despite Joe Biden's reputation as an unassuming moderate party stalwart, there are parallels with his illustrious Democratic predecessor.
Producer: Laurence Knight
(Picture: A poster of a Ronald Reagan commemorative postage stamp on display as people pass by; Credit: Stephen Osman/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC with me, Manuel Zaragoza. |
| 0:06.6 | Coming up, is big government going to come back into fashion? |
| 0:10.4 | The U.S. elections may well decide. |
| 0:13.0 | There are a lot of forces in American politics that are very powerful |
| 0:15.9 | and a lot of organized interests that aren't committed to kind of fundamentally reshaping the economy. |
| 0:21.2 | At the same time, I think there's going to be tremendous political pressure. |
| 0:23.9 | And as the COVID pandemic destroys jobs and businesses, why isn't the economy a top priority |
| 0:30.1 | for American voters? People are getting confused by just the seesaw pattern of the economy. This year has already seen some of the best |
| 0:40.6 | and some of the worst economic numbers in US history. |
| 0:45.2 | That's all here in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:51.6 | When President Reagan was elected back in 1980, he ushered in an era of small government conservatism. |
| 0:59.4 | In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem. |
| 1:07.6 | Fight the power. Fight the power. Fight the power! |
| 1:12.2 | Fight the power! |
| 1:13.1 | The era of big government is over. |
| 1:15.6 | If we want America's job creators to do what they do best, we need to get government out of the way. |
| 1:20.7 | Freedom and free enterprise are what create jobs, not government. |
| 1:25.4 | We need to cut spending now. So please, send us some spending cuts. |
| 1:30.7 | Free markets work. The president's cut taxes, he's rolled back regulations. Yep, that's right. |
| 1:36.2 | The prevailing belief was that government should stay out of the economy as much as possible. |
| 1:40.4 | Even the 2008 financial crisis and a massive state bailouts that followed that |
| 1:45.6 | didn't shake that core belief about how the American economy should be run. But is the COVID |
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