I have, very fortunately and by dint of VERY hard work, enough money set aside to pay off the mortgage completely. Because of the interest deductions I'm not going to do so, but I could.

In and of itself "supply side economics" isn't necessarily bad. But like so many, many other things it was wrongly understood (I'm being charitable here) and wrongly applied. As a result, Reagan's "Social Safety Net" is, at best, in tatters and more and more people are viewing life with hopelessness. And people without hope are people who have nothing at all to lose.