Reagan made famous what he called the "economy pie." The economic pie represented the entire American economy. Reagan criticized government for taxing productive Americans to pay for every slice of pie that the government took and then used in ever more inefficient ways. All of this slicing left less of the economic pie for ordinary, taxpaying Americans who were earning their piece of the pie the old-fashioned way--with hard work.
Instead of following that failed mode, Reagan believed that we grew the economy--and increased the size of the pie--by helping the unproductive become productive.
He said: "The weakness in this country for too many years has been our insistence of carving an ever-increasing number of slices from a shrinking economic pie. Our policies have concentrated on rationing scarcity rather than creating plenty."
Instead of fighting over who gets the last piece of shrinking economic pie, let's help America produce a bigger pie so that everyone will have a chance to be better off.
Source: Last Line of Defense, by Ken Cuccinelli, p.226-228 , Feb 12, 2013
Doubled the national debt from $1 trillion to $2 trillion

One can imagine what Reagan would think of the spend-happy and micromanagerial "elite" in Washington today. When Reagan was elected in 1980, most Americans could look to a future in which their children would live better than their parents, and the national debt was less than a trillion dollars.
Reagan might have been criticized often for