Read Online Todd Brewster & Peter Jennings by The Century for Young People: 1961-1999: Changing America - Free Book Online

property and who were already fairly well off. For people who didn’t have money—for the poor—it was a horrible time. Property values in Bristol doubled or tripled, but so did the rents. And as the rentswent up, the wages of the working class stayed the same, and suddenly many people couldn’t afford to live in their own homes anymore. In Bristol, as in a lot of America, entire families found themselves without a home. These were not lazy people. They were not sluggards or substance abusers. They were committed, dedicated men and women who were trying to make a difference in their own life, and suddenly they couldn’t afford a place to live.
    So when I hear about the legacy of Mr. Reagan, and I hear of the good times of the Reagan years, I can say that I personally benefited—the value of my home more than tripled—but the same factors that allowed for me to make money turned out to be very hard on the working class. The trickle-down theory just stopped at those who already had money, and many of those who were already struggling to make ends meet were forced out into the streets. It was tragic.
    For the poor, life was getting harder. Homelessness was on the rise. So were drug abuse and the crime that came with it. But the Reagan era encouraged many to distance themselves from these social problems. The social consciousness of the sixties and seventies now seemed to have faded, a victim ofimpatience, cynicism, and, for some, a firm belief that government programs rarely worked. At the top of the ladder of opportunity, some wealthy Americans spent their newly made money more freely and publicly on themselves.
    Starting in 1982, more than a hundred thousand new millionaires were created each year, so many that the word
millionaire
lost its significance. Millionaire? Try billionaire. America was throwing itself into conspicuous consumption: big cars, mammoth houses, opulent dinners, and luxurious vacations. The panting pursuit of wealth was now acceptable, even admirable. “Greed is good,” claimed a character in
Wall Street
, a movie that defined the times.
    Chris Burke, born in 1958, experienced the excitement of easy money on Wall Street in the 1980s.
    I n 1979 I was two years out of high school and working in a local bar in Manhasset, Long Island, a bedroom community for people who work in Manhattan. And probably about 80 percent of those people worked on Wall Street. A lot of these Wall Street guys were regulars at the bar and they were always saying things like “What are you doing here? Come on down and work on Wall Street with us. You have what it takes.” Theymade it all seem very glamorous, and I was lured in. In 1980 I went down to work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Wall Street was just heading into a big upswing, so things were pretty exciting down there. Suddenly there I was, a twenty-year-old kid with a high-school education, and I was starting out at $40,000 a year.
    I was a clerk for a specialist house that traded in about eighty big stocks like TWA, Delta Air Lines, things like that. I stood behind a counter, and outside the counter was the broker I worked for. Surrounding him were ten to twenty guys just screaming and yelling, buying and selling. And I’d have to record all of these orders. Hectic isn’t the word. It was overwhelming. We ripped our hair out of our head for the entire day every day.
    When the bell rang in the afternoon, we cleaned up, and then it was cocktail time. I went out every night with the guys that I worked with and our immediate bosses. And we never spent a penny. Everything was on an expense account. We would go to this same restaurant a couple of blocks from the stock exchange. There’d be about fifteen guys. And we’d head right for the bar and just start pounding drinks. Then we’d sit down at the table. And we’d never even see amenu; the food would just start to come out, and it seemed like it