You had Keynesian economics after the Depression, and that was supposed to fix the economy. And it did for a while. A lot of good things happened. Inflation was under control. Wages were high. Unemployment was low. Production was through the roof. Everything was in nice little balance. But then the financial crisis of the 70s kicked in. That shook faith in Keynes enough that the old liberal economics could come back. That's when you got The Chicago School and the rise of neoliberalism. They rejected Keynesian spending and did the trickle down shit instead. This started gutting the quality of life everyone enjoyed and throwing the economy out of whack. You can't actually reduce input from the wealthy and cut government spending and then expect consumers to have enough money to actually be able to consume enough. If consumers can't consume then production gets cut, which goes back to cutting jobs, and the cycle continues. We've been on that slope this whole time regardless of the Clinton years. 2008 was the next big blow. The slide down got a little steeper. Neoliberal economics was supposed to fix the problems with Keynesian theory and prevent crisis' but it obviously didn't. Like it was sold as this new and better way to understand the world. 2008 shattered that completely. Now this shit can't prevent problems and it can't respond well to new problems like COVID. Nobody knows what to do now. It's too late to go back to Keynes. That shit relied on a manufacturing sector that's never coming back. It relied on that post WWII expansion that will never be re-created.