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

Brewster's millions said:
Thatcher was one of our greatest prime ministers.

Had vision, backbone and clarity of thought. She reinvigorated the country’s entrepreneurial spirit, freed the economy from its 1970s stupor and boosted social mobility in turn. How we could do with her now.
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Example A M'Lud.

A selfish ****.
 
Both before my time so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.

But income inequality and the power of the middle class have shifted dramatically since Reagan, at least in the US

Maybe some of these impacts were unintended and things spiraled, but Reaganomics has had some extremely detrimental consequences - check the trends from when he became president and after, I think they say it all: https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
 
Vienna_70 said:
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.
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We had a bottle of decent champaign in the fridge waiting for the day she carked, and it was opened when she did, as did many others.

the evil hag is the only person I know who was either loved or depised with a passion
 
Brewster's millions said:
Thatcher was one of our greatest prime ministers.

Had vision, backbone and clarity of thought. She reinvigorated the country’s entrepreneurial spirit, freed the economy from its 1970s stupor and boosted social mobility in turn. How we could do with her now.
Click to expand...
Thatcher did not boost social mobility. In fact, it has been on the decline since her premiership. It has been especially precipitous in the North, sadly.

ifs.org.uk

Social mobility continues to fall – and moving up is harder if you grow up in the North or Midlands.

Inheritances will be twice as big on average for those born in the 1980s as for those born in the 1960s. In addition, parental earnings are a much stronger predictor of earnings for people born...
ifs.org.uk ifs.org.uk

 
yankblue said:
Both before my time so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.

But income inequality and the power of the middle class have shifted dramatically since Reagan, at least in the US

Maybe some of these impacts were unintended and things spiraled, but Reaganomics has had some extremely detrimental consequences - check the trends from when he became president and after, I think they say it all: https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
Click to expand...
One of the most damning charts that illustrates at least a portion of the detrimental impacts of Reagan’s economic policies and philosophy (again, I mean the full ideological apparatus around his rise and reign more then the man himself) that became so pervasive around the world in the following decades—and which ignores individual harm and goes straight to a place conservative economists and politicians claim to care about—is this one:

Notice anything interesting before and after 1980?

US-annualized-GDP-growth-by-quarter-since-1947.jpeg
 
The word that immediately came to mind was neoliberalism. They certainly weren't the brains behind it and there was an inevitably about the direction of travel away from the postwar consensus regardless of who was in charge.

In many ways they are bit part players who just happened to take power at a certain point in history. But the ideology was fully embraced on their watch and is their ultimate legacy.


After Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power, the rest of the package soon followed: massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services. Through the IMF, the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade Organisation, neoliberal policies were imposed – often without democratic consent – on much of the world. Most remarkable was its adoption among parties that once belonged to the left: Labour and the Democrats, for example. As Stedman Jones notes, “it is hard to think of another utopia to have been as fully realised.”

www.theguardian.com

Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems

Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Postman Pep said:
The word that immediately came to mind was neoliberalism. They certainly weren't the brains behind it and there was an inevitably about the direction of travel away from the postwar consensus regardless of who was in charge.

In many ways they are bit part players who just happened to take power at a certain point in history. But the ideology was fully embraced on their watch and is their ultimate legacy.


After Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power, the rest of the package soon followed: massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services. Through the IMF, the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade Organisation, neoliberal policies were imposed – often without democratic consent – on much of the world. Most remarkable was its adoption among parties that once belonged to the left: Labour and the Democrats, for example. As Stedman Jones notes, “it is hard to think of another utopia to have been as fully realised.”

www.theguardian.com

Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems

Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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I think it ‘worked’ as long as living standards rose, and most people were getting a slice of the cake. That’s no longer the case and hasn’t been for over a decade. That is an existential problem for this economic system imo.
 
The thing about Thatcher is that she was (I think) pretty honest. I think she’d be pretty horrified at the current state of some of the industries she sold off. Especially the water companies and rail network. Think she’d probably run a ‘way it was implemented’ argument, rather than admit it was her fault, but it’s impossible to conceive that she’d be anything but disappointed.

Because it’s clearly not worked. In so many different ways. Huge strategic mistake.
 
Yes but you need to look forward - to the future if you want to grow and progress. Looking back on previous administrations is like the Brexit idea that we want to be like it once was - even progressive administrations like Blair had enough faults and yes the Middle East was a disaster but things like Surestart and Building for Schools were about future generations not the past.
 
Eccles Blue said:
I'm afraid 3 came to my mind and I couldn't choose between them. Not for Reagan but for Thatcher.

Bleak, Divisive and destructive.
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I’m more ambivalent about her than most people. I think she had some good and impressive qualities as a person, but I think she definitely made the country a poorer place, long term. And that route was forged by her personality. So, end product shite, but I don’t agree with any suggestion that she was irredeemably evil.

And what an achievement. For a woman, I mean. Hugely impressive feat.

Think she’d bore the arse off me, mind! No way would I want to go on holiday with her!
 
fk me some people need to let it go - divisve and not a saint, for sure, but closed fewer mines than Wilson and killed less military personnel than Blair - and the predicted Third World War nuke propaganda posters seem quite quaint now, compared with the shitshow we now have
 
gordondaviesmoustache said:
The thing about Thatcher is that she was (I think) pretty honest. I think she’d be pretty horrified at the current state of some of the industries she sold off. Especially the water companies and rail network. Think she’d probably run a ‘way it was implemented’ argument, rather than admit it was her fault, but it’s impossible to conceive that she’d be anything but disappointed.

Because it’s clearly not worked. In so many different ways. Huge strategic mistake.
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If I were to give Thatcher the benefit of the doubt (I feel dirty saying that, and not in a good way), I might consider that she didn’t fully grasp how selfish and greedy many people could be.

Her embrace of neoliberalism and the trickle-down theory of unrestrained capitalism might have been based on the naive belief that once people had enough money, they would be more inclined to reinvest profits into their businesses, thereby improving standards and services, and to invest in their staff by offering financial rewards.

However, what we actually saw was a surge in greed and selfishness, with companies prioritising cost-cutting at any expense and funneling profits to shareholders, often at the expense of employees, service quality, and long-term sustainability.
 
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