Ronald Regan
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On February 5, 1981, Ronald Reagan said in his Address on the Economy:
"What's happened to that American dream of owning a home? Only 10 years
ago a family could buy a home, and the monthly payment averaged little
more than a quarter -- 27 cents out of each dollar earned. Today, it
takes 42 cents out of every dollar of income. So, fewer than 1 out of 11
families can afford to buy their first new home.
Regulations adopted by government with the best of intentions have added $666 to the cost of an automobile. It is estimated that altogether regulations of every kind, on shopkeepers, farmers, and major industries, add $100 billion or more to the cost of the goods and services we buy. And then another 20 billion is spent by government handling the paperwork created by those regulations.
I'm sure you're getting the idea that the audit presented to me found government policies of the last few decades responsible for our economic troubles. We forgot or just overlooked the fact that government -- any government -- has a built-in tendency to grow. Now, we all had a hand in looking to government for benefits as if government had some source of revenue other than our earnings. Many if not most of the things we thought of or that government offered to us seemed attractive."