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Thread: When America Was 'Great,' Taxes Were High, Unions Were Strong, and Government Was Big

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  1. #1
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    When America Was 'Great,' Taxes Were High, Unions Were Strong, and Government Was Big

    http://www.theatlantic.com/business/...as-big/407284/

    When America Was 'Great,' Taxes Were High, Unions Were Strong, and Government Was Big

    The bygone nation Donald Trump’s supporters yearn for looks awfully liberal, at least in terms of economic policy.
    Brian Snyder / Reuters

    Ester Bloom Sep 28, 2015

    There is plenty about GOP hopeful Donald Trump to which potential primary voters respond. He’s successful. He’s plainspoken. At a time when politicians are historically unpopular, he’s not a politician. And he has a great slogan.

    That slogan resonates with his supporters, according to Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who ran a recent focus group, the results of which were written about in Time. “I used to sleep on my front porch with the door wide open, and now everyone has deadbolts,” one man told Luntz. “I believe the best days of the country are behind us.” Luntz concluded that people see Trump as a “real-deal fixer-upper,” able to make repairs that others have bungled. “We know his goal is to make America great again,” one woman astutely observed. “It’s on his hat.”

    It could be on your hat too—Trump has begun selling “Make America Great Again” merchandise—if you can find one, that is. They have a tendency to sell out.

    As Russell Berman pointed out in The Atlantic earlier this month, many white Americans these days are pessimistic to the point of despair:

    White Americans—and in particular those under 30 or nearing retirement age—have all but given up on the American Dream. More than four out of five younger whites, and more than four out of five respondents between the ages of 51 and 64 said The Dream is suffering.

    No wonder Trump’s message is so powerful—it’s a sugar pill coated with nostalgia. He is not promising to make America great, he’s promising to make it great again. But to what era does he intend to take the nation back? And what would that look like, practically speaking?

    The boundaries of America’s “golden age” are clear on one end and fuzzy on the other. Everyone agrees that the midcentury boom times began after Allied soldiers returned in triumph from World War II. But when did they wane? The economist Joe Stiglitz, in an article in Politico Magazine titled “The Myth Of The American Golden Age,” sets the endpoint at 1980, a year until which “the fortunes of the wealthy and the middle class rose together.” Others put the cut-off earlier, at the economic collapse of 1971 and the ensuring malaise. Regardless of when it ended, it would not be unfair to use the ’50s as shorthand for this now glamorized period of plenty, peace, and the kind of optimism only plenty and peace can produce.

    In 1950, America led the world in GDP per capita. Even by 1973, it had only sunk to number two. Jobs were so plentiful that male employment peaked at over 84 percent. Unemployment, when it did strike, didn’t last long. Housing was cheap. Gas was cheap. Movies were cheap. If America was ever “great,” it was great in 1950, and one can sympathize with a desire to recreate those economic conditions, if not the social ones.

    Most of Trump’s supporters (but not all) deserve some benefit of the doubt that when they look wistfully at the past, they aren’t yearning for Jim Crow laws, Communist witch hunts, or an age before women could own credit cards.

    Still, Trump’s supporters might not appreciate what an economic return to the ’50s—even a ’50s lacking overt discrimination against women and political, racial, and sexual minorities—would entail. The ’50 were, as Stiglitz puts it, “a time of war-induced solidarity when the government kept the playing field level.” In other words, they were a time of Big Government. And Big Labor: As Alternet reports, “By 1953, more than one out of three American workers were members of private sector unions. That means there was a union member in nearly every family.”

    Then there’s the matter of taxes. Though a conservative writer at Bloomberg View scoffs at the oft-cited statistic that the top marginal tax rate in the ‘50s was an astounding 91 percent, even she admits that “the Internal Revenue Service reckoned that the effective rate of tax in 1954 for top earners was actually 70 percent”—vastly higher than it is today. Indeed, for most of the past 100 years, tax rates have been much higher than they are now, including during some boom times.

    If bigger government, stronger unions, and higher taxes on the rich are what it takes to make America great again, Republican primary voters might be surprised to learn that the candidate who truly shares their values is not Donald Trump, but Bernie Sanders.
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    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    It's true that taxes were high and unions were strong, but government wasn't big. That's totally false.

    It's true that Americans yearn for the economic prosperity and security of days gone by, but that prosperity wasn't because of high taxes, it was in spite of them. It was after all, income taxes that led to investors moving their money out of the country and free trade treason that moved the jobs out of the country.

    When times were good, we didn't have massive immigration, legal or illegal, and we didn't have free trade treason. Since the income tax is the parent breeder of both, when we resolve those three issues, the jobs will come back and bring the economic security and domestic tranquility we all desire. Most Americans don't dream of being rich, they dream of being comfortable, money secure, independent, and getting ahead, even if that just means being able to pay off their house and have some savings to complement a retirement income.

    The past wasn't all pomp and circumstance for everyone. Even during the good times, a lot of people struggled, but for most there was an opportunity in sight, within reach, there were would be recessions, plant closings started occurring in the 1960's, usually by industry. It started with the meatpackers moving out of areas where the workers were located in metro areas to small towns in the midwest with not enough workers, so they could apply for visas for foreign workers which led to just hiring illegal workers. Then it was the shoe plants, then it was the textile plants, then the garment plants, then the steel plants, and they didn't move to other areas of the United States, oh no, they moved out of the country or were replaced by imports. Then it was the television companies, then the appliance companies, then the automobile companies, then the electronics companies, and then it was ... everyone, including our food companies.

    The perfect storm of massive immigration, free trade treason and a failed, futile income tax that started it has destroyed the US economy. Unions got blamed when they were not the cause. Labor is approximately 10% to 20% of production costs depending on the company, today due to technological developments and lower wages, it's 10% or less, while corporate income tax rates were 48% when the exit started, so our companies did not leave because of labor costs, they left because of income tax expenses. Reducing income tax rates to 35% sounds good, but it's still 35%, plus dividend taxes, payroll taxes, capital gains taxes, excise taxes, local and state taxes. It's doesn't take a genius to see where this was headed and what the outcome would be.

    That's why in the 1990's 3 rich men in Houston decided to invest millions of their own money and some more from others to start a project to examine the federal income tax system and come up with a new plan that would promote our economy while still paying the bills. They hired 10 economists and sent them out to do interviews with focus groups, large companies, small companies, individuals, investors workers and so forth. They interviewed and studied for 3 long years. The result of their findings produced the FairTax, the people's tax, the tax that our companies and citizens when interviewed and given an opportunity to say what they wanted, what they thought would work best to promote our economy while still paying the bills.

    A couple of years later, after more research to develop a system that met the needs and desires of the focus groups, comply with law and the Constitution and at rates that would be revenue neutral while ensuring essentials up to the poverty line plus a little bit would be exempt, they found a sponsor of the legislation, John Linder, who worked with them to write the bill.

    That bill known as the FairTax Act of 1999 was introduced into the US congress in 1999, a tax of the people that doesn't cut into company earnings, reduce workers wages or rob nest eggs. A tax that only taxes consumption, after the rebate level, after the basic essentials for every citizen and legal resident who wants to sign up for it regardless of income are met, and only taxes new consumption of new goods and services, that taxes the item or term of service 1 time at 1 rate at the final point of sale, a tax that robustly funds Social Security and Medicare and amply funds the federal government on a revenue neutral basis based on revenue levels generated by income tax rates in 1999, before the Bush Tax Cuts.

    The FairTax introduced every session since 1999 is the people's tax, a tax of the people, by the people and for the people. The people who developed the FairTax for our country are like ALIPACers who just knew what was right for our country and what wasn't, who were fighting for us, the same way we fight for American Workers most of whom don't even know we exist.

    The parallel between these two grassroots efforts is astonishing, because both groups, both efforts have been completely ignored by our Congress and Presidents. And so America sinks, and will continue to do so until someone with prominence and enough celebrity to be heard picks it up and runs with the ball. Trump is the only person so far to take our causes here at ALIPAC and run with the issues of stopping illegal immigration, deporting illegal aliens, stopping/reducng legal immigration and fixing the free trade inequities. Perhaps he will soon see the need for the FairTax as well and make it a Trump Trifecta.

    Trump Trifecta. I like that!

    1. stop illegal immigration and reduce legal immigration
    2. pass the FairTax
    3. protect our trade

    That will Make American Great Again.
    Last edited by Judy; 09-30-2015 at 05:17 PM.
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    To a greater America!


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    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    Nikosik, I love your videos! They're always so perfect. Yours videos and Newmexicans cartoons really jazz up our website and brighten our days.
    A Nation Without Borders Is Not A Nation - Ronald Reagan
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    I just want the illegals and the want-it-all foreigner shut out. And my experience with illegals go back a long ways---to picking vegetables with them, and knowing one who had come in 1976 to go to bible college. Today it is vastly different.

    And no thank you----I don't want a rip roaring economy, because that just compounds the bad problems that do exist. It's like fertilizing your lawn and the weeds take off instead. People should know self sufficiency and how to make your own real estate investments. Everything else simply gets us back to the spot where powerful groups are manipulating society to their benefit, not the general public.
    "Men of low degree are vanity, Men of high degree are a lie. " David
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    Quote Originally Posted by Judy View Post
    Nikosik, I love your videos! They're always so perfect. Yours videos and Newmexicans cartoons really jazz up our website and brighten our days.
    Well thanks Judy!

    I didn't know if anyone would think that I wasn't being serious about illegal immigration.
    I think animations are an extension to the emojis.


  7. #7
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Captainron View Post
    I just want the illegals and the want-it-all foreigner shut out. And my experience with illegals go back a long ways---to picking vegetables with them, and knowing one who had come in 1976 to go to bible college. Today it is vastly different.

    And no thank you----I don't want a rip roaring economy, because that just compounds the bad problems that do exist. It's like fertilizing your lawn and the weeds take off instead. People should know self sufficiency and how to make your own real estate investments. Everything else simply gets us back to the spot where powerful groups are manipulating society to their benefit, not the general public.
    It depends on how the economy is spurred. When a roaring economy means GDP growth based on illegal alien labor and profits from foreign made goods, creating a false economy riding on the stock market and credit instead of high citizen wages and low personal debt, then that is the trouble of the 80's and every day since. When a strong economy means high citizen wages, full employment from lots of domestic produced goods, and low personal debt, then that is the economy that gives all of us the real American Dream, ownership of a home with a nest egg or an affordable apartment with a big savings account, cars you buy cash or pay off in a couple of years, with the peace of mind of employer provided or your own health insurance if you want or need it and retirement income to look forward to with confidence.

    When you hear "experts" talk about investor confidence or hear businesses try to explain uncertainty and how it affects their decisions and choices, it's no different than an individual, because we, each of us, are a little business all to ourselves, income and expenses, capital and credit, profit and loss, savings and reserves. So our confidence and uncertainties affect almost every decision we make as well.

    When Americans are worried, upset, angry, disappointed, disgusted, poor, trapped, disregarded, betrayed and overwhelmed, we can't think straight, we can't solve problems, we can't set out on new ventures, we don't pursue new ideas, we lose our best judgement, clarity, ingenuity, creativity, all the things that make us Americans, because we've lost our sense of comfort, well-being and domestic tranquility.

    What's happening in our country is one of the saddest tragedies of human civilization, because it is a slow withering of the spirit of a people that not only liberated most of the world, but saved it twice, did so expecting nothing in return, and got exactly that.

    A lot of people talk about American Exceptionalism. I don't buy that. I don't believe we're exceptional because of who we are. We're exceptional because of the environment we created for ourselves and our posterity. But along the way, we've abandoned that environment, we didn't protect and preserve it, we allowed our government to destroy it.

    Trump sees this, he's watched it happening, and after so many others have failed to fix it, he decided to run for President to fix it for us. I hope he can, I believe he can, but he has to win to be able to do so. What's wrong can't be fixed from the sidelines. It has to be fixed at the helm.
    Last edited by Judy; 09-30-2015 at 09:24 PM.
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    MW
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    Judy wrote:

    The FairTax introduced every session since 1999 is the people's tax, a tax of the people, by the people and for the people. The people who developed the FairTax for our country are like ALIPACers who just knew what was right for our country and what wasn't, who were fighting for us, the same way we fight for American Workers most of whom don't even know we exist.
    The unfair tax plan is not a plan by the people and for the people. The unfair tax plan development was funded by wealthy businessmen from Houston, TX. It's a plan that hurts the poor, elderly, and middle class, but helps the rich to get richer. Please do your own research, as I have, from unbiased sources to arrive at your own conclusion.

    "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" ** Edmund Burke**

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    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nkosi View Post
    Well thanks Judy!

    I didn't know if anyone would think that I wasn't being serious about illegal immigration.
    I think animations are an extension to the emojis.

    You're welcome. I truly enjoy them, and I'm sure others do too.
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    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MW View Post
    Judy wrote:



    The unfair tax plan is not a plan by the people and for the people. The unfair tax plan development was funded by wealthy businessmen from Houston, TX. It's a plan that hurts the poor, elderly, and middle class, but helps the rich to get richer. Please do your own research, as I have, from unbiased sources to arrive at your own conclusion.
    I've already drawn my own conclusion, as have you.

    When I think about all the dishonest crap you've posted about the FairTax, there's a part of me that hopes we return to the tax brackets of the 1960's so everyone in the Anti-FairTax Lobby of which you are surely a part, gets exactly what you deserve!



    Under the FairTax:

    1. the poor pay no tax
    2. the middle class pays far less tax
    3. the elderly pay almost no tax, unless they're rich and spend a lot of money then they pay a lot of tax
    Last edited by Judy; 09-30-2015 at 09:44 PM.
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