The Fall of American Economic Power: Will Trump Be the Turning Point?

Hartmann Report - When Ronald Reagan came into office in 1981, our national debt was less than one trillion dollars, because every president from FDR to Truman to Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon to Ford to Carter had worked to pay down the roughly 140% of GDP debt we ran up fighting World War II.

Across those same presidencies, America had also built a broad and strong social safety net for its citizens, primarily through the New Deal and Great Society programs. And Republicans hated it all, particularly because it’d been paid for with a 74% to 91% income tax on billionaires and a 50% income tax on corporate profits. More