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pro
Reganomics was spend spend spend.

The only way to do that was to untie the dollar from real assets and start borrowing into insanity from the federal reserve. That's pretty much what I meant by 'however much money we feel like'. Nixon started in 1971 by removing the final restrictions held on the federal reserve which required them to hold some gold in store to back the dollars they were creating.

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pro
Build the Military then liquidate it when it wasn't needed at those levels.

The problem is that the debt accumulation by the US government inflates the dollar and decimates the savings of the lower and middle class. It affects the lower and middle class more because they get the dollar later in the cycle. The government and anyone closely tied to them (read: defense contractors and big bankers) gets to use the money first, when it's worth more. The goal inflation rate of the federal reserve 2-3% is an exponential decay of your savings perpetrated by the wealthiest people in the world.