text: You hit the nail on the head.  Reagan didn't just lower taxes on the rich.  EVERYONE received a 23% tax cut, and by reducing the number of tax brackets to just two, the middle class was squarely in the 15% tax bracket; much lower than most of them had been.
  Unfortunately you can't get the progressives to look at the facts.  The Savings and loan debacle is one such situation that progressives like to lay at the feet of Reagan, but they fail to understand that the underlying problem that led to asset mismatch (the root cause of the problem) was raising interest rates in the late '70's coupled with legislation signed by then President Jimmy Carter in March of 1980.  (That's not an indictment of Carter and Volcker - they were trying to get inflation under control). The fallout began while Reagan was president, but not because of Reagan.