What happened in the late 70s?
I believe during the boom years of industrializaton, THE scarce resource was manpower. Factories were full of machines, and machines were operated by humans. In 1943 U.S. Steel employed 340,000 workers.
The high demand for manpower allowed workers to capture a greater proportion of the economic surplus their activities generated through negotiation.
At some point other ingredients of business became crucial and thus the balance of power shifted.
We've been eating our seed corn ever since.
I do think there's a political dimension to the change, but laying the blame at Reagan's feet exclusively seems like simple political point-scoring.
Edit: it's funny seeing this comment getting down-modded. I think I'm significantly more liberal than most people here, but it looks like people are upset that I called out empty partisanship? I fail to see anything particularly inflammatory about what I wrote.
In short, saying Reagan had a big part in this is a claim I would support, but saying it's all Reagan's fault is clearly untrue, barring time travel.
It's silly for presidents to talk about the economy at all. It's just another way for politicians to take credit for something they aren't responsible for. Do you think Jobs and Woz started Apple because of Carter's economic policy? Do you think Microsoft succeeded because of Reagan?
Of course some companies rise and fall along with the political tides. I suspect that a close examination of these will show you bribes and favoritism. Companies that depend on a favorible political climate probably aren't adding to the economy at all.