What Impact did the Reagan Presidency have? - Topic 5.3 Flashcards
The nature and extent of social change
What was the effect of Reagan’s policies on workfare?
Reagan’s administration was the first to state, that claiming benefit was buying into dependency, therefore undesireable. The administration wanted to change ‘welfare’ into ‘workfare’, by requiring at least one working parents before it paid out family benefit. Much of the work provided paid below minimum wage so families struggled.
Despite government promises of childcare, many single parents found childcare impossible to find, making it impossible for them to work. OBRA tightened up previous legislation that provided work projects tied to benefits for welfare claimants. It allowed states to make working on state projects an absolute requirement for welfare payments. By 1987, 42 states were running programmes. While none of them made working on a programme a requirement for benefit, most required the claimant to be looking for work.
What was the effect of Reagan’s policies on social housing?
In 1985, there were 3.7mn (1.3mn increase from 15 years prior) who qualified for a low-income home, but couldn’t move into one because there weren’t any available. This happened because Reagan’s administration slashed federal funding for building low-cost homes. In 1978, the government were spending $32.2bn, by 1988, there were spending $9.2bn. This led to a significant rise in the number of homeless people in the US, something the public found increasingly difficult to accept. They felt it made the US look bad and Americans feel bad; a direct contradiction of the American Dream.
What was the effect of Reagan’s policies on homelessness?
Reagan’s administration could no longer ignore homelessness by the mid-1980s. In 1987, Congress pushed through a bill giving some federal help to project for the homeless. In 1984, the funding available was $300mn for the homeless, by 1988 it was $1.6bn. The 1987 McKinney Act set up the FEMFSP to be run by FEMA. FEMA matched state grants to local homeless projects half-and-half and the state had to choose the project and put the funding in place before the federal money was given. The state or local government funding could be raised through taxes, charities or donations. FEMA set up a federeal housing project for transitional housing, with special emphasis on the elderly, disabled, veterans, families with children and Native Americans. Emergency medical care to the homeless and education for homeless children and job training that favoured homeless veterans were also given.
What was the timeline of Reagan’s welfare measures?
- 13th October 1982 - Job Training Partnership Act shifted job training from federal hands to state and private schemes and removes any need for the trainees to have their incomes made up to minimum wage
- 20th April 1983 - Social Security Reform Bill delayed the linking of payments to inflation from July to December; raises the amount the government takes from wages to cover benefitsl sets up a study of running the Social Security Agency as a privately run agency; makes part of benefit payments taxable; changes the earning test for eligibility; retirement credits are now not fully payable until 1967
- 22nd July 1987 - McKinney Vento Homeless Assistance Act set up Federal Emergency Management Food and Shelter Program to be run by FEMA
- 13th October 1988 - Family Support Act allows a family to be only eligible for benefits if at least one parent is working for at least 16 hours a week; single parents are expected to finish education and undergo job training, the state to provide childcare
What was the impact on living and working conditions?
Working families not on welfare did benefit from lower taxes. However, they were hit even harder by the changes to the family credit regulations. They were also hit by rising interest rates that pushed up housing costs, mortgages and rent. From 1980-87, average mortgage debt rose by 30% and the rate of foreclosure quadrupled. Workers were overstretched. In 1973, the average leisure time a week was 26 hours; by 1987, it was 16 hours. Some people felt pressured to work harder, to take work home and be in competition with their colleagues. Reagan’s stress on productivity was emphasised by businesses. Working mothers found it hard to hold anything but low-level jobs, with many persuaded to just step-down.
A two-tier wage structure emerged, with established workers having their wages kept and benefits were negotiated when they took the job; workers joining the business could be offered a lower salary, and fewer benefits, for doing the same job. Many people, worried about job security as employers shifted to hiring part-time and temporary employees, felt they had to take the jobs.
What was Reagan’s impact on minorities?
In regards to the civil rights movement:
Reagan’s administration did little to support minority rights. In 1982, The Crisis, the magazine of the NAACP, pointed out that Reagan’s inaction was harming all minority groups. It pointed to his abandonment of busing students into various schools as something particularly harmful to black and Hispanic Americans. It was virtually guaranteed that children in the poorest and most deprived areas would have to attend schools in these areas, therefore creating segregated schooling. The adminstration also withdrew 40% of its funding for bilingual education, saying that it was in the interests of children from minority groups to use English ASAP.
What was Reagan’s impact on minorities?
In regards to women’s rights:
Although Sandra Day O’Connor was appointed to the Supreme Court, women’s rights floundered around him. Reagan didn’t support the ERA and spoke out against abortion - although he was persuaded not to introduce anti-abortion legislation.
What was Reagan’s impact on minorities?
In regards to the gay rights movement:
Some people acussed Reagan of ignoring the AIDS epidemic until his friend, actor Rock Hudson, died of AIDS. Other point out that he addressed meeting on the epidemic, and that the adminstration provided funding for AIDS research from 1982. Many Republicans and conservative Reagan supporters opposed gay rights and might have opposed the adminstration if it was too ‘gay friendly’.
What was Reagan’s impact on minorities?
In regards to black Americans:
Hard-working, well-educated, middle-class, conformist black Americans could get ahead, especially women as they filled two minority ‘quotas’ for cynical businesses. Undereducated young, poor black men often went under. Even successful black people felt the constant pressure of being in a minority - of being held back and not promoted; of being seen as the ‘quota’ hire, not someone hired for their abilities. Black people felt increasingly less a part of the political environment. The civil rights movement was scrambling to regain ground, fighting to retain rights. It was in this environment that young black Americans turned increasingly angry, violent and defeatist rap music as thei anthem, rather than the civil rights anthem ‘We Shall Overcome’; they were no longer sure that they would do so.
How did businesses and farms change under Reagan?
Big businesses profited from reduced federal regulation over wages, working hours and conditions. Deregulation meant they could buy up or merge with other businesses. In 1983, Reagan said his adminstration was helping small businesses with tax breaks. He did admit that many small businesses had gone under in the recession just passed but said that 500k new small businesses had been set up in each of those years.
Farming was badly affected by high interest rates and federal non-intervention. In the 70s, the US had supplied wheat to the USSR and encouraged farmers to expand and grow wheat. When the USSR invaded Afghanistan, the US stopped exporting wheat in protest. Interests rates rose as money supply tightened and things worsened in the 1980s, further hampered by a drought in 1983. Many smaller farms failed and so were bought by agri-businesses. Demonstrations were organised to highlight the plight using tactics such as traffic-slowing tractorcades.
How did production change under Reagan?
Older manufacturing industries such as the car and textile industries, were doing badly against foreign imports and exports dropped with the change in the value of the dollar. The Reagan adminstration would not impose tariffs on foreign imports. Towns and cities were car manufactures were the main employer were badly hit by this decline. In Baltimore and Cleveland, well over 20% of the population was living way below the poverty line, and unemployment and poverty was hitting all workers.
While older industries were failing, new industries were doing well. Reagan increased spending on defence, meaning that the defence industry did well, as well as the computer industry. These technologies were based in different parts of the US and had a significant effect on population and migration within the US. Manufacturing and the provision of raw materials have been in decline, but service industries were expanding. Everything from estate agencies to coffee shop chains and computer goods stores did well.
What was the effect of the bi-coastal boom?
Industries that did well in the 1980s created more employment. People were eager to move to the areas of the country where these industries were located and resulted in a population shift from the North and the East to the South and West, especially in the coasta states. Those families that could afford the move fuelled a growth of the suburbs in these areas. Here were places where people felt their lives were improving and people in these places were consistently more likely to vote for Reagan, and after him, Bush. The policies of the Reagan administration had worked for them, and in 1987, California and the state on the East coast had 5.6% unemployment, compared to 7.8% in the rest of the country. These areas had almost 75% of all new businesses and about 60% of new jobs. The part of the country that stayed worst off was the central Great Plains area, which had always been a predominantly farming area.
