Inflation, in short, was a political problem, in the sense that it caused problems for politicians. The parties differed on the specifics, but both seemed to agree that the voting public and the private sector were to blame, not the bureaucrats and politicians in charge. The presidents and power brokers of the 1970s had tried price controls, public campaigns, pressure programs, blame games, and attempts to redefine basic economic terminology. The question was what the next president was going to do about it.Īmerican politicians had tried to control inflation before. It was the country's most pressing problem. Inflation was the single metric by which the country's failures and foibles could be measured. Inflation was eating into family earnings, to the point where some were making more on paper yet found themselves with reduced buying power.īy summer 1979, the vast majority of Americans (84 percent) told Gallup that the country was on the wrong track. All of this came in the context of a decade that saw dramatically slower overall economic growth than in the previous two decades, and a substantial reduction in typical family income, even as two-earner households became more common with the mass entry of women into the workforce. In 1980, that figure came in at an only-slightly-reduced 12.4 percent. Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, hit 13.3 percent in 1979, its highest level in more than three decades. It's not hard to understand why Americans were so concerned. Even those who named "energy" were likely worried about supply constraints and spiraling costs. That 40 percent figure arguably understated the public's sense of alarm: Another 20 percent said inflation was an important problem (if not the most important), and 8 percent said the nation's biggest issue was "the economy," which could easily cover concerns about stagnant wages and rising prices.
A New York Times/CBS News poll found that 40 percent of the country named it as their top concern, more than twice the number that picked the next biggest concern, energy.
But all that took second place to a single, highly specific metric: inflation.īy October 1979, Americans agreed by an overwhelming margin that inflation was the most important issue facing the country.
Ronald Reagan won the 1980 presidential election for many reasons-energy woes, taxes and regulations, crises in Iran and Afghanistan, discomfort with the sexual revolution, a vague yet unmistakeable "crisis of confidence" that Reagan's Democratic rival, President Jimmy Carter, infamously described in his 1979 "malaise" speech.
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