But Does Business Really Outperform Government?

There it was, 463 words into Ronald Reagan's first inaugural address: "In the present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." With those words, spoken in 1981, a movement that had abscessed on the fringes of political chatter since the 1930s reclaimed power. The words meant nothing in themselves. Characteristic of Reagan's copious plagiarism, they weren't even new. They were a retread of the Harding-Coolige-Hoover slogan that "the business of America is business."