Calling the early ’80s “Reagan stagflation” isn’t quite right. Stagflation means high inflation and high unemployment at the same time. By 1981–82, inflation was already collapsing — from nearly 14% in 1980 to about 3% by 1983. What remained was a brutal recession with high unemployment, caused by Volcker’s deliberate rate hikes to kill inflation. Painful, yes, but that’s not stagflation anymore. The stagflation era ended with the oil shocks of the ’70s; the early ’80s was the hangover cure, not the disease.