in the late 1970s and 1980s. The top marginal income tax rate for high-income individuals (the top 1.2% of earners) was 70 percent in 1980, then lowered to 28 percent in 1986 by Reagan; Clinton raised it back to 39.6 percent, but it remained far below pre-Reagan levels. Clinton's administration also afforded no benefit to unionized labor and did not favor strengthening collective bargaining rights. Lower unemployment rates were another large part of Clinton's macroeconomic policies. Many argue that Clinton cost many Americans jobs because he supported free trade, which some argue caused the U.S. to lose jobs to countries like China (Burns and Taylor 390). Even if Clinton did cost Americans some jobs because of free trade support, some claim that he allowed for more jobs than were lost because the unemployment rate of his presidency, and especially his second term, were the lowest they had been in thirty years (Burns and Taylor 390). Others attribute this to sustained declines in interest rates, which fueled a booming stock market and job growth in a booming technology sector. As mentioned previously, Clinton has been criticized by some observers as having played a long-term role in leading to the Great Recession with the aforementioned Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act as well as the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. See also Presidency of Bill Clinton New Democrats Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy George W. Bush administration economic policy Orbanomics Reaganomics Rubinomics U.S. economic performance under Democratic and Republican presidents Notes References Anonymous. Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. File Tax.Com. 8 Mar. 2008 Anonymous. "S&P 500." Standard & Poor's. 8 Mar. 2008 Midgley, James. "The United States: Welfare, Work, and Development." International Journal of Social Welfare 10:7 (2000): 284–293. Bartlett, Bruce. “Clinton Economics.” NRO NationalreviewONLINE 7 July 2004. 8 March 2008 "Bill Clinton’s Economic Legacy." BBC. 15 January 2001. British Broadcast Corporation. 8 March 2008 Bartlett, Bruce. "Those Were the Days." The New York Times. 1 July 2004. 4 March 2008 Burns, John W. and Andrew J. Taylor. "A New Democrat? The Economic Performance of the Clinton Presidency." The Independent Review V.3 (2001): 387-408. Further reading Congressional Quarterly. Congress and the Nation: IX 1993-1996 (1998) Congressional Quarterly. Congress and the Nation: X 1997-2000 (2002) Frankel, Jeffrey A. and Peter R. Orszag, eds. American Economic Policy in the 1990s (2002) introduction Stiglitz, Joseph E. The roaring nineties : a