" The specific policy changes in the 1980s were profound in the aggregate, but beyond the nostalgic Reaganite Morning in America and freer-free-markets messaging, most of the changes were complicated and esoteric and seemed small, so they had a stealth quality. It didn’t feel quite like a paradigm shift because it was mainly carried out by means of a thousand wonky adjustments to government rules and laws, and obscure financial inventions, and big companies one by one changing how they operated and getting away with it—all of it with impacts that emerged gradually, over decades. Social Security and Medicare benefits were not cut, the EPA wasn’t abolished, labor unions weren’t banned. As it turned out, the 1980s were the ’30s but in reverse: instead of a fast-acting New Deal, a time-release Raw Deal. "

― Kurt Andersen , Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America