Choose Your Own Adventure!
In August 1981, the New York Times described this new book series as "contagious as chicken pox" and a "cultural phenomenon taking... adolescent America by storm" (Cook, 1).
What is the Choose Your Own Adventure series?
This term was adopted by both supporters and critics when referring to Reagan's economic agenda, which was marked by "shrinking the role of the government in the economy by slowing government spending, cutting tax rates, and rolling back regulations” (Philips-Fein, 126).
What is 'Reaganomics'?
These kinds of enterprises -- "the proverbial Main Street proprietors” -- are increasingly praised as counterpoints to the growth in “international conglomerates and global capital" (Waterhouse, "The Small Business Myth").
What are small businesses?
Just months before the 1980 presidential election, this best selling business magazine published a spread entitled the “Reindustrialization of America,” suggesting that the American economic order was unstable and that "neither market forces nor conventional fiscal and monetary policies could reinvigorate the ailing US economy” (Rowe, 1).
What is Business Week?
Publisher Elaine Delbourgo suggested that CYOA books were the predecessors to this digital cultural phenomenon due to their interactive nature and the feature that one might "die numerous times" (Cook, 3).
What are video games?
Upon moving into the White House, Reagan famously took down a picture of the pro-union former President Truman and replaced it with a portrait of this 1920s president who was “known for his belief that ‘the business of America is business’” (Philips-Fein, 125).
Who is Calvin Coolidge?
This government organization founded in 1953 gives loans to both US manufacturers who have "fewer than 500 employees, and non-manufacturers [who] have annual receipts below $7.5 million (although the government reserves the right to make exceptions)” (Waterhouse, "The Small Business Myth").
What is the Small Business Administration (SBA)?
By the end of the 1960s, America's productivity rates had plummeted while this Asian country's “economic growth radically outstripped that of other major industrialized countries during the post-World War II era," had a productivity rate that had grown by more than 10%, and by 1968, was the second biggest economy in the capitalist world (Rowe, 7).
What is Japan?
Influenced by the narration style of self-help books, advertising campaigns, and the CYOA series, while the 1970's were the "ME" decade, the 1980s were referred to as this.
What is the "YOU" decade?
This commonly-used phrase was coined derogatorily by Herbert Stein, chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under Nixon and Ford, who sneered at Reagan's idea of shifting economic policy from meeting consumer demand to providing "incentives that would make investors create wealth" (Philips-Fein, 132).
What is supply-side economics?
This colloquialism named after a large sneaker brand is used to refer to the process of free trade that has birthed "a world where anonymous and poorly regulated sweatshops in developing countries pay paltry wages to workers who manufacture items adorned with a global brand” (Waterhouse, "The Small Business Myth").
What is 'Nike-fication'?
As the American auto industry was in decline, members of Michigan's auto unions rallied against the importation of cars from these two major Japanese manufacturers; it became common to see signs in "union parking lots declaring ‘No Japanese Cars Allowed’ and ‘Park your Imports in Japan’” and Japanese cars with slashed tires and smashed windshields (Rowe, 10).
What are Nissan and Toyota?
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! In a Gallup poll taken in the early 1980s the majority of Americans listed this American value that emphasized "individual freedom and interactive agency" as the most important societal principle (Cook, 13).
What is the "freedom of choice"?
The laissez-faire supply-side economics that arose under the Reagan administration were the response to 'stagflation' in the 1970s and represented a sharp pivot from the former American economic order that had dominated policy since the Great Depression.
What is Keynesian economics?
This American political party, despite passing tax cuts that favored big business and hurt smaller companies “picked up the rhetorical mantle of small business, but instead of changing their policy ideas, they changed what it meant to speak for small business," emphasizing the virtues of competition and entrepreneurship instead of changing federal policy (Waterhouse, "The Small Business Myth").
What is the Republican party?
In September 1981, between 260,000-500,00 members of “unions, women’s groups, and civil rights groups" gathered in Washington, DC to protest Reagan's austerity and anti-union policies in what became the largest labor march in US history (Rowe, 24).
What is Solidarity Day?
This former Republican governor of Missouri, "a strident conservative who as governor passed a harsh anti-union 'right-to-work' law steeped in free-to-choose language" cited his addiction to CYOA books in his youth as influencing his life-long mantra “you and YOU ALONE” (Cook, 22).
Who is Eric Greitins?
Wall Street Journal writer Jude Wanninski lauded this up-and-coming USC economics professor's theory of taxation which stipulated that higher taxes would discourage people from working hard and thus by "lowering their taxes, the government would give them an incentive to work harder and produce more overall income” (Philips-Fein, 131).
Who is Arthur Laffer?
Politicians appealed to small businesses by stressing this business-minded value that suggested that amidst the "millions of nail salons, fast-food franchises, accountants, landscapers, general contractors, housekeepers, cosmetics sellers, photography studios, restaurant owners, small town lawyers, and florists" there might be the "next Ford Motor Company or AT&T” (Waterhouse, "The Small Business Myth").
What is entrepreneurship?
This registered Republican and Chrysler CEO criticized Reagan’s laissez-faire economics in his 1984 autobiography, most notably in a chapter entitled ‘Make America Great Again’ where he outlined "his ideas about how the federal government could help revitalize American industry” (Rowe, 34).
Who is Lee Iacocca?