How much have Thatcher/Reagan contributed to the state of the world today?

It’s weird because I would readily agree that Thatcher and Reagan set us on a bad path. One that may have made a segment of society well-off, but did so at the expense of something more fundamental to our social fabric.

That said, I have no doubt prime Thatcher would be absolutely rolling in her grave at the current Conservatives around today, as Reagan would be to see Trump.

Which leads me to believe that perhaps their lasting impact is more about how they set in motion a kind of weird devolutionary cycle. Increasingly more inept people morphed their ideology into something that became totemic rather than having some practical basis. They have gradually stripped it of any utility it might have once claimed to have had (even if that utility was to a narrow group and costly to wider society). And today they parade the skeleton of Thatcherism around as if it were still alive. And complete fools follow along pretending it is somehow still the same thing of ideological principle that it once was. Rugged free market capitalism. Remember that? The Conservatives who voted for Brexit don’t.

Basically they managed to create a political philosophy that seems to consistently degrade itself over time until it becomes… well… nothing really. Like a husk of itself. To all rational folk, they have seemingly left behind a group of people who are just gnashing their teeth while getting nothing done. Bizarre and depressing.
 
Reagan was an insidious man, he abandoned the Fairness Doctrine which paved the way for Fox News and allowed for the influence of right wing think tanks like the Heritage foundation which promoted neo-liberal economic thinking to gain influence in American politics. Thatcher followed a similar path as they both abandoned Keynesian economics in favour of Chicago and Austrian school economists such as Hayek. They were both anti-Communist, look up the Reagan Doctrine for what actually occurred. In December 1997, Thatcher said that the Reagan Doctrine "proclaimed that the truce with communism was over. The West would henceforth regard no area of the world as destined to forego its liberty simply because the Soviets claimed it to be within their sphere of influence."

The pair of them started the development of wealth disparity with those with Capital benefitting more than those without, they both attacked workers rights, they were in effect Philisophical and Economic bedfellows.
 
They made selfishness and greed respectable again. Once you go down the road of 'it's all about me' society is fucked. What's more, it's hard to restore.

Individualism, like capitalism, needs to be kept within bounds. If you want to wear a yellow hat, that's fine. No one is suggesting Mao suits for all. But at some point, you have to accept that the collective is the core of a functioning and civilised society.
 
Reagan understood that the Cold War was an economic war and that the USSR wouldn't be able to keep pace with the US in the long run. He changed the face of world Politics more than anyone else since WWII. His problem was he didn't have a plan for what to do in the aftermath.

Reagan also introduced the law that makes Americans declare all their global income in their tax returns.

Thatcher is a footnote outside of the UK.
 
I think their influence is overstated because it’s clear from looking at the world more widely that there has been a global shift towards more capitalist-centric economies since the ‘70s that is a natural and inevitable function of the evolution of globalisation, driven by market forces.

I think, in short, we’d likely be pretty much where we now are anyway, give or take.
 
west didsblue said:
As the architect of the European Single Market she certainly wouldn’t have supported the clowns that were in office for the last 5 years or Cameron’s decision to have a referendum in the first place.
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We can’t blame her for the single market although it was the beginning of all our industrial downfall.
 
gordondaviesmoustache said:
I think their influence is overstated because it’s clear from looking at the world more widely that there has been a global shift towards more capitalist-centric economies since the ‘70s that is a natural and inevitable function of the evolution of globalisation, driven by market forces.

I think, in short, we’d likely be pretty much where we now are anyway, give or take.
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That is quite the statement given the influence of Reagan’s admin’s specific flavour of capitalism (and government deregulation)had on economic trends of the last 40 years, and Thatcher’s cabinet’s own similar stances’ impacts on the UK and Europe.

That’s ignoring that we likely would not have Trump and the MAGA party right now without Reagan setting the foundation for it in many ways. I have spoken about that at length in the Trump thread, and am happy to share those posts if you are interested. Ironically, even beyond the more obvious cultural (including launching the culture wars in earnest) and economic shifts Reagan brought about, it turns out Project 2025 borrows heavily from the Reagan campaign’s own transition plan document. Another fun fact: the Heritage Foundation helped to draft that plan, as well.

To be clear, when I refer to Reagan or Thatcher in any discussion like this, I really mean their handlers, as neither were actually particularly gifted thinkers or tacticians. That is especially the case for Reagan, who was never particularly clever to begin with, and that deficit was made worse by his rapid cognitive decline in his second term (former staffers and his own family have admitted he suffered from ALZ toward the end of his presidency). It is one of the reasons I don’t generally like to use the term “Reaganomics”—he had very little do with that destructive economic “philosophy” or the package of economic policies that formed it in practice (or the unfortunate impacts it has had over the past four decades).
 
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SebastianBlue said:
That is quite the statement given the influence of Reagan’s admin’s specific flavour of capitalism (and government deregulation)had on economic trends of the last 40 years, and Thatcher’s cabinet’s own similar stances’ impacts on the UK and Europe.

That’s ignoring that we likely would not have Trump and the MAGA party right now without Reagan setting the foundation for it in many ways. I have spoken about that at length in the Trump thread, and am happy to share those posts if you are interested. Ironically, even beyond the more obvious cultural (including launching the culture wars in earnest) and economic shifts Reagan brought about, it turns out Project 2025 borrows heavily from the Reagan campaign’s own transition plan document. Another fun fact: the Heritage Foundation helped to draft that plan, as well.

To be clear, when I refer to Reagan or Thatcher in any discussion like this, I really mean their handlers, as neither were actually particularly gifted thinkers or tacticians. That is especially the case for Reagan, who was never particularly clever to begin with, and that deficit was made worse by his rapid cognitive decline in his second term (former staffers and his own family have admitted he suffered from ALZ toward the end of his presidency). It is one of the reasons I don’t generally like to use the term “Reaganomics”—he had very little do with that destructive economic “philosophy” or the package of economic policies that formed it in practice (or the unfortunate impacts it has had over the past four decades)
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When I said ‘we’ in my second paragraph I meant the UK, and didn’t make that clear, so apologies

So in terms of the UK, yes, I’d say so. I think more stuff would be in public hands (which would be a good thing) If Thatcher hadn’t been elected in 1979, but still certainly discernibly less than in the ‘70s. I also think our service sector would have grown hugely in the last 45 years as industrial production inexorably moved to the east. I think income tax levels in the ‘70s were unsustainable and are currently probably about as high as they can feasibly go, so I think those levels would be about the same as they are now, give or take.

People who think that we’d have simply carried on with the postwar consensus aren’t looking at the bigger picture. I think we’d have ended up with a market led economy come what may. Fifteen years of a Labour government didn’t reverse that for a good reason.
 
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gordondaviesmoustache said:
When I said ‘we’ in my second paragraph I meant the UK, and didn’t make that clear, so apologies

So in terms of the UK, yes, I’d say so. I think more stuff would be in public hands (which would be a good thing) If Thatcher hadn’t been elected in 1979, but still certainly discernibly less than in the ‘70s. I also think our service sector would have grown hugely in the last 45 years as industrial production inexorably moved to the east. I think income tax levels in the ‘70s were unsustainable and are currently probably about as high as they can feasibly go, so I think those levels would be about the same as they are now, give or take.

People who think that we’d have simply carried on with the postwar consensus aren’t looking at the bigger picture. I think we’d have ended up with a market led economy come what may. Fifteen years of a Labour government didn’t reverse that for a good reason.
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Fair enough; I had definitely interpreted your post more broadly.

I agree that some of the current state of UK political and economic affairs would have occurred if neither Reagan nor Thatcher (and the entourage that came with them) had ever risen to any sort of position of influence. That is the case with really any major figure—post hoc ergo propter hoc tends to be motto fallacy of any cult of personality.

But I do not necessarily agree we would be where we are now without their influences. I think Reagan especially had a huge hand in the rise of UKIP, the march to Brexit (and the aftermath), and the sort of culture war politics that have taken hold in the UK.
 
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Blue and true said:
Seconded. She was an evil bitch and I know family members that were happy when she died.
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Mrs Vienna hates to hear that anyone has died, but she rang me to tell me the news, and I could hear the delight in her voice.

She absolutely hated the Grantham granny with a passion.
 
In the 1970s, for all its issues, Britain mist the most equal society in Europe. Now it is the most unequal. Down to Thatcher and that ideology.
 
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