The post WWII economic consensus was Keynesianism, but beginning around the time of Nixon there was an economic phenomenon called "stagflation," which refers high unemployment at the same time as high inflation, something that isn't supposed to be possible under Keynesianism, which advocates confronting high unemployment with injecting money into the economy, and then reducing those injections when employment comes back down. Nixon attempted to address the problem with price controls as a short-term solution, Ford's idea was just asking people to spend less, but Carter was the one who made the decision to view inflation as a bigger problem than unemployment and began moving towards Neoliberalism.

The big difference between Carter and Reagan was branding. Carter branded the policy terribly which is to say he was honest about it. Work was going to become more alienating and purchasing power would decrease, but it's ok, because we as a society will just have to pursue meaning outside of the economic sphere, making do with less, cultivating out personal virtue. There's likely a connection between Carter and the right's meme of, "You will own nothing and be happy."

Reagan has much better branding for these policies, which is to say he lied. Look at how cheap we're gonna make everything! You're gonna be able to buy so much stuff, it's gonna be great, let's party and celebrate capitalism and consumerism! Of course, with wages divorced from productivity and the decline of the power of organized labor, purchasing power would decrease, but the effects of that would take time to fully manifest.

There were a wave of wildcat strikes during this period but unions had already defanged themselves, they kicked out all the communists and the leadership sold out, because from the New Deal era up to this point things were going fine.

Reagan definitely bears a lot of the blame but there wasn't a huge difference in economic policy, the democrats didn't really have anything to propose as an alternative and voters weren't given much of a choice about it.