Breathing Lessons Historical Context

Breathing Lessons Historical Context

Political Apathy

Poor economic conditions at the end of the 1970s led to a change in the political landscape of America. In 1980 Ronald Reagan won the presidential election with only 51.6 percent of the popular vote. His "landslide victory" resulted from a turnout of only fifty-four percent of the voting-age population. In other words, only twenty-seven percent of all eligible voters elected Reagan to office. Many commentators expressed disappointment over voter apathy and the lack of democratic participation.

The Decade of Greed and the Working Class

In 1981 Reagan restructured the tax code. His theory that deep tax cuts would be offset by an increase in employment rates and tax revenue through greater capital investment—known as trickle-down theory—was proven false, just as Nobel Prize-winning economist Wassily Leontief guaranteed. According to Forbes Magazine, the richest one percent of Americans gained a combined total of one trillion dollars between 1979 and 1990. In other words, a greater stratification between rich...
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