4 The 1980s and 1990s The 1980s and 1990s In the late 1970s President Jimmy Carter had a particularly tough job He had to get Americans to understand that there were limits There were limits on how much power the United States had in the world and limits on the amount of resources Americans could consume During the presidential campaign of 1980 Carter’s Republican opponent Ronald Reagan disagreed He told Americans that their troubles were over that there was nothing but clear sailing ahead Apparently that was what Americans wanted to hear On November 4 1980 they elected Ronald Reagan by a landslide and thus began a decade that would become associated with greed and lavish displays of wealth Reagan’s Washington D C inauguration celebrations in January 1981 set the lush tone The festivities cost the taxpayers 8 million dollars First Lady Nancy Reagan’s ball gown alone was worth thousands While most Americans could not afford clothes that expensive in the 1980s many nonetheless would pay quite a lot for items with designer labels Jeans sporting the name of a famous designer and a hefty price tag gained enormous popularity in the 1980s Meanwhile ambitious young businesspeople sometimes referred to as yuppies young urban professionals were power-dressing wearing clothes that trumpeted their intent to climb the ladder of success President Reagan and his wife Nancy pose in the White House Red Room prior to an Inaugural Ball in Washington D C President Reagan and the First Lady who both enjoyed entertaining wait at the North portico of the White House to receive their guests the Prime Minister of Australia and his wife
The 1980s and 1990s 5
6 The 1980s and 1990s A cable television channel called MTV Music Television featured music videos some of which depicted sexual themes drug use and violence Talk shows on which people discussed their most intimate secrets and problems tried to outdo one another with outrageousness The Video Home System VHS developed in Japan was introduced to the United States in 1977 Videocassette recorders were among the fastest-selling appliances in the 1980s In 1982 about 3 percent of American homes had at least one by 1988 almost 60 percent did Americans could now tape television programs and rent movies on video to watch whenever they liked That flexibility combined with more program offerings via cable television gave Americans virtually limitless opportunities to become couch potatoes The evolving video culture became progressively more uninhibited Some television programs displayed a frankness and crudeness that viewers and censors would have rejected just a few years earlier Americans in the 1950s looked to television as their primary source for news and information
Sixty-one percent of U S homes had microwave ovens by the end of the 1980s Speeding up food preparation went right along with the life-in-the-fast lane lifestyle of many Americans More and more people bought personal computers and for many the distinction between work time and personal time became increasingly blurred The 1980s and 1990s After a dramatic fall in the stock market 7 in October 1987 and the arrest of a number of businesspeople whose ambitions and greed had led them to break the law the allure of the money chasing lifestyle seemed to wear off a little In January 1989 President George Bush tried to steer a new course with his inaugural speech My friends he said we are not the sum of our possessions In our hearts we know what matters We cannot hope only to leave our children a bigger car a bigger bank account We must hope to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal friend a loving parent a citizen who leaves his home his neighborhood and town a little better than he found it There were some serious problems largely ignored by the government during the 1980s but the problems did not go away Safety improvements in the nuclear power industry experienced extreme neglect for example now they would cost a great deal of time and money to implement Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars would also have to be spent to correct losses resulting from lax banking and business practices allowed during the Reagan administration The Nec Corporation developed the first mass-produced laptop in 1986 with a 2,560 kbps modem
