Unemployment hits 10.2 percent... worst since 1983

Unemployment hits 10.2 percent... highest since 1983

Ronald Reagan "inherited" Jimmy Carter's recession... so what did Ronny do?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics

During Reagan's tenure, income tax rates of the top personal tax bracket dropped from 70% to 28% in 7 years,^[10] while social security and medicare taxes increased.^[11][12] RealGross Domestic Product (GDP) growth recovered strongly after the 1982 recession and produced five straight quarters of growth averaging 8.4%. The GDP grew during Reagan's remaining years in office at an annual rate of 3.4% per year,^[13] slightly lower than the post-World War II average of 3.6%.^[14] Unemployment peaked at over 10.7% percent in 1982 then dropped during the rest of Reagan's terms, and inflation significantly decreased.^[15] A net job increase of about 16 million also occurred (about the rate of population growth).

According to a 1996 study^[30] from the libertarian think tank Cato Institute:

• On 8 of the 10 key economic variables examined, the American economy performed better during the Reagan years than during the pre- and post-Reagan years.
• Real median family income grew by $4,000 during the Reagan period after experiencing no growth in the pre-Reagan years; it experienced a loss of almost $1,500 in the post-Reagan years.
• Interest rates, inflation, and unemployment fell faster under Reagan than they did immediately before or after his presidency.
• The only economic variable that was worse in the Reagan period than in both the pre- and post-Reagan years was the savings rate, which fell rapidly in the 1980s.
• The productivity rate was higher in the pre-Reagan years but much lower in the post-Reagan years.

In the last year of the Carter Administration (1980) the US inflation rate climbed to a peak of 14.8%, the top individual tax payer rate was 78%, unemployment was 7.4%, federal outlay was 17% higher than the economy's growth rate, and the federal government grew while enacting loads of new spending programs. During this period, the US economy was the worst it had been since the Great Depression of the 1930s.^{[citation needed]} The nation was in quite a deep hole of economic collapse when the new president Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981.^{[citation needed]} Reagan had to devise a constructive, sound tax and monetary policy to pull the US out of its economic low point.^{[citation needed]}

Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute stated that "no act in the last quarter century had a more profound impact on the US economy of the eighties and nineties than the Reagan tax cut of 1981." He claims that Reagan's tax cuts, combined with an emphasis on federal monetary policy, deregulation, and expansion of free trade created a sustained economic expansion creating America's greatest sustained wave of prosperity ever. The American economy grew by more than a third in size, producing a $15 trillion increase in American wealth. Every income group, from the richest, middle class and poorest in this country, grew its income (1981-1989). Consumer and investor confidence soared. Cutting federal income taxes, cutting the US government spending budget, cutting useless programs, scaling down the government work force, maintaining low interest rates, and keeping a watchful inflation hedge on the monetary supply was Ronald Reagan's formula for a successful economic turnaround. The economic principle that business expansion, jobs and wealth follow low tax rates is widely accepted.^{[citation needed]} The last principle Ronald Reagan incorporated was the realization that immigrant workers are a key and vital component of the US economy.