Ramifications of No Reagan Revolution?

The Christian Right ends up toned down but still relevant - social issues end up with more progress sooner but not leaps and bounds. The Defense of Marriage Act become a law but probably gets struck down sooner. AIDS gets more attention and less of a stigma attached to it - a link to gays and drug users will still exist (for Pete's sake, the original name of the disease started with the words 'gay related' so there will be a stigma regardless) but there will be more effort to cure it when, say, GHW Bush devotes more attention to doing so. Also, labor unions still maintain much of their original power with no Reagan to strong arm them.

The biggest difference, though, will be taxes. The rich will pay significantly more, even if there are cuts. Businesses will pay more. Granted, there will have to be ways to make businesses keep some operations in America, but those will probably have limited success.
 
Even ignoring the Christian Right, IIRC Ronald Reagan was seen as the leader of the conservative movement of the 1960s-late 1970s, which took off with the nomination of Barry Goldwater over more moderate establishment candidates like Nelson Rockefeller. The rise of Reagan is a bit more complex than the Religious Right being loud enough to get him into office. (ex. William F. Buckley, Jr. Phyllis Schafley, Young Americans For Freedom, the rise of Non-Keynesian economics, right-wing backlash over Nixon's picks for the SCOTUS)
 
. . . (ex. William F. Buckley, Jr. Phyllis Schafley, Young Americans For Freedom, the rise of Non-Keynesian economics, right-wing backlash over Nixon's picks for the SCOTUS)
You bring up highly interesting points.

President Reagan certainly preached in favor of balanced budgets. But his administration pushed for budgets which increased military spending and cut taxes significantly more than they cut spending. Now, to complicate matters, I think Reagan was somewhat successfully politically in blaming Democrats for not being able to cut spending more.
 
And Richard Viguerie was another conservative mover and shaker from the late 1970s, being quite successful using mailing lists to raise money for conservative causes and candidates. Overall, the political right seems at least as successful with technology as the left.
 
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As to how you get to a Reaganless '80s, the easiest way to do it would be to have Ford win in '76. I don't see how the late 70s would be much better with Ford than they were with Carter, so a Democrat wins after 12 years of Republicans in the White House that consisted of Watergate, the messy end of the Vietnam war, Inflation, and two oil shortages. Reagan would be too old to run as a non incumbent in '84 and after two (three if you count his unserious run in '68) failed attempts at the Presidency (I'd assume he'd run in 1980 TTL as well) I doubt he'd try again even if he were younger. I would say to that having a Republican win in '76 and a Democrat elected in 1980 would probably alter the economic cycle we've had over the last 36 years.
 
You bring up highly interesting points.

President Reagan certainly preached in favor of balanced budgets. But his administration pushed for budgets which increased military spending and cut taxes significantly more than they cut spending. Now, to complicate matters, I think Reagan was somewhat successfully politically in blaming Democrats for not being able to cut spending more.

Agreed. There was a percentage of Republicans to this day (Ron Paul being one example) who criticize Reagan on how he preached in favor of small government/balanced budgets but blew up the deficit due to the influx of military spending in the 1980s.

There was hesitation from more moderate circles of the GOP over Reagan's plan to enact generous across-the-board tax cuts and increasing military spending at the same time, but the spike in Cold War tensions (starting with the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan) and the slow decline of the popularity of Keynesian economics likely proved to be the sugar that made the spoonful go down.

Of course, I did not grow up in the 1980s (I was born in 1996), so my facts may be slightly off there.

My main point was that the Reagan Revolution was more complicated than Jerry Falwell's Religious Right Moral Majority catapulting Reagan into the White House
 
. . . and the slow decline of the popularity of Keynesian economics . . .
I've read that in a hundred different sources, that economists were stumped on how in the world you could have rising inflation and rising unemployment, both at the same time? ? ?

And yet, I understand that there's a pretty simple solution, or at least a theory: an increase in price of a system-wide input (which pretty much means oil or natural gas) shifts the supply curve of the economy inward, and you end up with an equilibrium point where you have both lower GDP and higher prices. Case closed (at least in theory).

And to top it off, I didn't learn of this until just a couple of months ago, even though I very much lived through and do remember the late '70s and early '80s!!
 

I found this previously by looking up "negative supply shock" on youtube. SRAS stands for Short-Run Aggregate Supply.

Love the fact that the guy's wearing a T-shirt! Probably he's a grad student, or maybe a younger professor.
 
Economically, isn't a right-wing figure bound to win, with the terrible economy in the US in that era? This was the end of the Golden Age of Capitalism, where American manufacturing was being exported elsewhere (especially to Japan, hence where people thought Japan would rule the world one day). A Democrat can only stem the bleeding as opposed to go along with it and adapt as Reagan did. Such trends are comparable throughout the West as notably with Margaret Thatcher in the UK.

But we should realise that the Religious Right was bound to be a force in politics sooner or later, considering their struggles through the 1970s (Bob Jones with desegregation, future Surgeon General Koop's expertly made anti-abortion propaganda film, etc.). If Carter eaked out a victory in 1980, the right-wing candidate in 1984 would almost certainly win, although probably not as big as Reagan destroyed Mondale.
 
Economically, isn't a right-wing figure bound to win, with the terrible economy in the US in that era? This was the end of the Golden Age of Capitalism, where American manufacturing was being exported elsewhere (especially to Japan, hence where people thought Japan would rule the world one day). A Democrat can only stem the bleeding as opposed to go along with it and adapt as Reagan did. Such trends are comparable throughout the West as notably with Margaret Thatcher in the UK. . .
And Thatcher was elected May 3, 1979. So, a full year and a half before Reagan.

And you bring up a very good point and a very good challenge. Here on our site we generally assume that, for example, if President Ford had been re-elected in '76, the reputation of the Republican Party would have really suffered. And that's not necessarily the case.

Maybe during economic hard times in advanced economies, voters recourse to rightwing solutions because they're more tried and true (?), because they're more familiar?
 
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and yet I wonder, why has the slow erosion of middle-class jobs been such a political orphan in the U.S. ? ? ?

(other than a bunch of generalities)
 
I'm thinking that the Christian right isn't as strong ITTL as it is OTL. The long term consequences in my opinion is a more progressive US over all.
Then you'd need to also avoid the mass conversion of huge sections of the country to evangelical Christianity in the 1960's. In many ways, this was a cultural revolution just as significant as the counterculture and hippie movements even if it is much less commonly spoken of and as a result, Americans in both the south and the north practice a faith much more in line with the Southern Baptists and similar sects than their previous churches.

The United States has had a number of these religious awakenings with huge sections of the country simultaneously deciding, for reasons I have never been entirely clear upon, that a return to the fundamentals of Christianity is necessary to save the nation/world.
 
Then you'd need to also avoid the mass conversion of huge sections of the country to evangelical Christianity in the 1960's. In many ways, this was a cultural revolution just as significant as the counterculture and hippie movements even if it is much less commonly spoken of and as a result, Americans in both the south and the north practice a faith much more in line with the Southern Baptists and similar sects than their previous churches.

The United States has had a number of these religious awakenings with huge sections of the country simultaneously deciding, for reasons I have never been entirely clear upon, that a return to the fundamentals of Christianity is necessary to save the nation/world.
The thing about great awakenings is that they occur at time of great social upheaval. For example, the First occurred during the era of the Revolution; the second during that of the Civil War. They are not necessarily reactionary movements; as you have said, at their heart they are revolutionary.
 

Economist Jeffrey Sachs giving his views in this brief video.

And look at the graph about 1:30 into it. "Real Median Earnings of Full Time Male Workers" has basically been stagnant since 1973.
 
Do you think that if the Revolution was somehow completely overthrown that the U.S would remain culturally stagnant and continue on the path of the 1970s, or do you think a libertarian/leftist revolution would rise up instead?
 
. . . or do you think a libertarian/leftist revolution would rise up . . .
POD 1: Starting 1982, '83, '84, more liberal and leftie parents begin homeschooling their children because they think standard school is too authoritarian, plus it's not doing a good job preparing young people for a more free-form, post-industrial economy. In addition, learning differences such as dyslexia, ADHD, and Aspergers-Autism Spectrum are recognized a decade or two earlier, and schools are seemingly unable to really roll with the fact that different children roll in different ways.

And most importantly, when evangelical families start to occasionally homeschool their children, the liberal and leftie families stand up for them and say, hey, a religious or spiritual family has the same rights as any other family. In fact, the secular families give practical advice, Oh, yes, you can homeschool on academics and still participate in debate team, choir, track, etc, etc.

For example, in OTL no less an athlete than Tim Tebow was homeschooled in academics and yet fully participated with a local team in sports! So, just shift this timeline earlier, have homeschooling first become a "thing" among left-leaning parents (although probably never going much beyond 5%) and have these parents matter-of-factly stand up for evangelical Christian parents.
 
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