Deep Thought: RIP Republican Economics
Can we please go back to the progressive economics that began under FDR and created the 50 year long economic expansion, not to mention the middle class as we know it?
It seems to me that a bail out bill that puts back in a truly progressive tax income tax code (bye bye loop holes for Humvees & hello captial gains tax), put in a big estate tax increase (sorry Paris Hilton, get a job), and raises corporate taxes by 15% could pass.
Let the greedy bastards who have been living large for the past ten years show some patriotism for a change.
Palin to the rescue?
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/09/29/zakaria.sarah.palin/
Zakaria: Look, I’m not saying that she is not a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. It is just we are talking about a person who should be ready to lead the United States at a moment’s notice. She has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start.
Who in the hell would want FDR-style economics?
Mike W has a point, although I’m sure he is unaware of it.
In 1933 the unemployment rate was 25%. So FDR’s policies were aimed at putting people to work by any means necessary.
Today, the problem is not unemployment (so far) but the decline in real wages, and the shedding of tax burden by the top brackets.
So Mike W is correct – we do not need policies to create jobs; we need policies to create wage growth, and more progressive taxes.
Sorry anon, but “shedding of tax burden by the top brackets” did NOT cause this.
Jason,
FDR’s economics did not revive the economy. Check the facts, for the first 7-8 years things languished pretty badly. However, the industrial production in WWII and the emerging post war extinction of the British Empire and the sick status of Europe and Japan lead the US to a dominant position in the world.
You may have a beef with the events of today but FDR’s economy is simply not the answer.
FDR’s economics did not revive the economy.
Then as now, when Republicans speak of “the economy” they are speaking of Wall Street and corporations.
But FDR’s programs did revive many families.
Even today, one of the pleasures of working a Democratic GOTV phone bank on Election Day is encountering elderly Roosevelt Democrats who remember how things got better for them under FDR.
wow, you really dont understand trusts and the estate tax code
Which FDR programs revived families?
My parents remember FDR but not in glowing terms.
Also, they have always been Democrats.
While the mythology of FDR is for the Dems what the mythology of Reagan is for the GOPers, and while FDR can be credited with several structural changes to the economy that were necessary at the time, jason, it is laughable to suggest that his Depression-era strategies created the foundation for a 50-year expansion.
World War Two and the devastation of virtually every other major industrial base on the planet created the necessary foundation for that expansion. The primary role of the Government–especially during the period from the late 40s through the mid-60s–was to divert billions of dollars from the economy into the military-industrial complex that might otherwise have been available for other kinds of growth. At the time, given the Red Scare, the arms race, and the burgeoning consumer economy, it seemed like we could afford it.
FDR’s so-called progressive economics did not, for the most part, survive his own presidency.
“Can we please go back to the progressive economics that began under FDR and created the 50 year long economic expansion, not to mention the middle class as we know it?”
FAIL