America voted for Ronald Reagan in the biggest landslide victory the US had seen in a very long time.
Reagan promised "deregulation" and "get government out of business" etc, and had a very clear mandate to execute, which he did, IMO to our detriment, by doing things like telling the FTC to just let companies do whatever, and outright not enforce anti-competitive laws if you couldn't show "consumer harm", which explicitly meant you had to show prices going up before you could prevent the monopoly from forming.
Reagan was out of office by three decades when Sears finally collapsed, and 16 of those interim years was with a Democrat in office, and Democrat control of both houses for several of those years.
Reagan promised "deregulation" and "get government out of business" etc, and had a very clear mandate to execute, which he did, IMO to our detriment, by doing things like telling the FTC to just let companies do whatever, and outright not enforce anti-competitive laws if you couldn't show "consumer harm", which explicitly meant you had to show prices going up before you could prevent the monopoly from forming.
What did people expect?