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  The 25 Fat Years:Ronald Reagan's election marked America's economic turning point.
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ContributorSC Moose 
Last EditedSC Moose  Feb 28, 2006 02:19pm
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CategoryOpinion
News DateTuesday, February 28, 2006 08:00:00 PM UTC0:0
DescriptionIn 1981 Ronald Reagan became our 40th president, the hostages were released from Iran, Walter Cronkite retired after 19 years as "CBS Evening News" anchorman, and Sandra Day O'Connor became the first female Supreme Court justice.

But a quarter of a century later we should remember 1981 as the year the kaleidoscope turned in America, a dividing point between the previous two decades' big-government beliefs and the individualism and market economy thinking of the next 20 years. We have seen sharply different opportunities--in jobs, incomes, economic growth and inflation--between the governmental years of the 1960s and '70s and the market decades of the '80s and '90s and the new century.

In the 1980 election the American people chose a new course. For the first time in half a century we retreated from the expanding-government philosophy established by Franklin D. Roosevelt and pretty much adhered to by every subsequent president through Jimmy Carter. Ronald Reagan's emphasis on individual opportunity--as opposed to the liberals' on government-created opportunity--was to have a substantial and positive impact on the prosperity of the American people.

As Robert Samuelson recently noted in The Wall Street Journal, in the 13 years before 1981 there were four recessions lasting a total of 48 months. In the next 23 years--nearly twice as long--there were just two recessions, lasting 16 months.
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