I find this truly ironic, unless you intended to throw your own generation under the bus. Because according to your profile you're a Boomer, so it was your generation that was primarily raising their kids in the mid 80's. And it was the Greatest and Silent generations running the country for the most part. All the US presidents in the 80's were members of the Greatest generation.
And that is of course the problem with whining about the new generations. Because if you're whining about the generation after yours, well, you raised them. And even the generation after that, well, your kids raised them. And who's to say you didn't have a hand in screwing up your grandkids for that matter? For a Boomer to say it went south in the 80's is pretty hilarious though. Unless you're gonna try and pin it on the Greatest or Silent generation, since the President would have been from the Greatest generation and most of the heads of industry would still have been from the Silent generation, or older Boomers.