What The Hell Just Happened? 2-24-2024
A brief discussion of the Republican Party and the economy.
“Money is like manure. Spread it around and things will grow. Pile it up and it just stinks.” (Paraphrased from Thornton Wilder who stole it from Sir Francis Bacon)
It has come to our attention that some of you seem to believe that Republicans, the self-anointed “Party of Business”, are better with the economy than the Democrats could ever be. We need to talk. This is the equivalent of preferring tigers to watch your goat herd over dogs. OK, facile analogy, but a good visual.
It is also an ongoing point of disinformation in this election year that America is suffering from a stultifying inflation cycle that prevents jobs and discourages spending. “Shit just costs too damn much”, in the parlance of our times. In addition, this perceived condition is directly attributable to the delusional policies of a gibbering, elderly President Biden who controls everything, yet can’t seem to get it straight who is the president of Mexico and who is the President of Egypt.
First of all, the causes of inflation beginning in 2020 were directly attributable to the mishandling of a world-wide pandemic by…What the hell was his name? And secondly, if Biden is a drooling dotard who can’t tie his own shoes, how is he responsible for everything everywhere all at once? Good name for a movie, but a bad example of critical thinking. The numbers today show the lowest unemployment since World War II and the lowest inflation numbers in the industrialized world. So what gives?
Let’s set the record straight. We at What The Hell Just Happened must once again return to the well of history where most answers lie. Strap into your “history appreciation chairs”, I invite you all to play along with our home game.
Sherman, set the Way-Back Machine to 1929!
The Great Depression began in October of that year. The Republican Hoover Administration decided that the Federal Government would print a bunch of money and give it to failed businesses to spur growth. It did not. It did allow the so-called “Robber Barons”, captains-of-industry that owned and operated business in the U.S. to ride out most of the depression in style, if not glory. The rest of the population, now broke and out of work, stood on long lines for a piece of bread and a bowl of soup.
Then F.D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, was elected. He wooed the voters with statements like “First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” This is really just the converse of saying “We have nothing to be confident about except confidence itself”. FDR had some good writers on his communications team, so he wisely used the “fear” line. It got him elected
Immediately, FDR instituted a series of federal policies and programs to put people back to work. He called it “The New Deal”. He also raised the tax rates on corporations and wealthy families. These, now fairly taxed, bankers and industrialists branded him as a “traitor to his class”, having benefited from the “Old Deal” himself.
FDR initiated New Deal programs like the Works Progress Administration-(WPA), Civilian Conservation Corps-(CCC) Tennessee Valley Authority-(TVA) and others. The result of which was that most of the unemployed now had jobs and America had truly begun the era of three letter acronyms- which persists today to the chagrin of many.
Roosevelt also pushed to repeal the 18th amendment, which would end prohibition, because let’s face it, he was no fool and as fun as soup lines were, when you get a buck in your pocket what do you really want to spend it on?
In Europe at this time, the Germans groused about paying reparations for having started World War I, which led to wild super-inflation followed by deep depression. This opened the door for opportunists like Mussolini and Hitler to stir up those on the bread and soup lines by creating crazy conspiracy theories about immigrants, Jews, communists and liberal artists coming to take away their soup.
Meanwhile, back home, things were getting back on track. Having learned some important lessons from the days of Laissez-faire capitalism under Hoover, FDR and Congress passed some laws strengthening labor unions and weakening corporate monopolies. Then everyone had a drink.
In Europe, the fascists were feeling their oats and started to invade all the little countries around their homelands. This was a prompt for the U.S. to get in gear and prepare for a big war. Or at least sell war materiel to the Allies at a decent profit.
We dove headlong into making tanks and planes and ships and jeeps and all the bombs and bullets you could imagine. Everyone who wanted one had a job. Movies made smoking tobacco and fighting in war glamorous and glorious. Canned Spam became immensely popular. The depression was now in the rear-view mirror of our shiny new 1941 Chevy sedan.
Then Japan declared war on the U.S. in the most cowardly and yet unambiguous manner ever known. So, off to war we went. For this brief moment in history, America welcomed women into the workforce. “Rosie the Riveter” became an icon. Women had their own professional baseball teams as portrayed in the excellent movie “A League Of Their Own”.
Americans sacrificed on a personal and national level for three years while the war ground on. Harry Truman became president toward the end of the war because FDR had the temerity to die. You just can’t keep good help.
Truman pushed the Nuclear program that would unleash unspeakable destruction on our enemies. America became the only country on earth to use nuclear weapons.
After the big boom in Japan, it was boom time in America.
We entered into the Post-War economy and established laws and programs to help veterans go to college and buy cars and houses.
Industry pivoted nimbly back to making all the stuff the new middle class wanted to buy. And fortunately, The Soviet Union provided us with a reason to keep that defense industry chugging along making nukes and subs and bomber planes. It was truly a time of prosperity for most white, male citizens.
Because fear of being nuked out of existence by Russian Communists was constantly pushed by lawmakers and the media, the Republicans declared that they had the chops to lead. Somehow, war hero Dwight Eisenhower and his sweaty, beady-eyed vice presidential pick, Richard Nixon managed to get elected.
In 1958, a recession hit. Unemployment rose and manufacturing and housing slowed. The cars looked cool but most of the movies were either hopeless sci-fi epics or stirring western epics that thinly disguised the aliens or the bad guys and Indians as proxies for commie spies. Economists of the day like Milton Friedman decided to push the Hoover branded concept of “Trickle-Down Economics”. The basic idea was, that government should leave the wealthy alone and not tax them and in time, some of this prosperity would trickle down to the consumers who created all that wealth in the first place. This began a concerted Republican effort to un-do The New Deal once and for all. The Republican economic motto of the day was “A rising tide floats all boats”.
What actually happened was that the rich bought super yachts while the rest of the population couldn’t afford to fix the leak in their row boats.
And so it went until the Kennedy/Johnson Administration, which created lots of jobs but also escalated the War in Vietnam. The economy was strong, but society struggled with the war, civil rights and political assassinations.
A few years later, Nixon resurfaced to usher in what would come to be called “Our long national nightmare”. Nixon ran on the “I am not a crook” platform which was good enough for the “Silent Majority”. This was a time of rickety economy and social unrest.
What was Nixon’s great economic achievement? He took the U.S. off the gold standard. Dick Nixon, who could fuck-up a hard-boiled egg, then proceeded to cheat, got caught and was forced to resign.
For a brief moment Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer and nuclear engineer from Georgia, became president. He put solar panels on the white house. He was a truly moral and empathetic leader, which as we all now know, is not what we want in a president. His term in office was marred by terrible inflation due to rising gas and oil costs which were controlled by Iran, Saudi Arabia and OPEC. Unemployment rose and people began to sleep in their cars, not because they were homeless like today but because you had to line-up to fuel-up or you wouldn’t have gas for the week. It was a disaster for the Carter Administration caused almost entirely by our “friends” in the middle-east.
By the time Reagan came along, the Republican Party had repudiated almost all Democratic fiscal policies. After he tore the solar panels down from the White House, Reagan declared an era of full-on anti-government, anti-tax, anti-social security, anti-Medicare and pretty much anti-your-Auntie sentiments. These were fueled by blatantly racist tropes like “Welfare mothers riding in Cadillacs”, which made FDR’s “Fear” line look like Shakespeare.
After Reagan cut taxes for the wealthy, he also ran up a huge deficit by building up our military. This was not good for average Americans. But it was great for defense contractors, which is why there is now an aircraft carrier named after him. Republican presidents since Saint Ronnie have adhered to these policies as though they were the Holy Writ.
Hopefully, my summary that Republicans were never better with the economy than Democrats has been ably demonstrated in this brief historical review. Below is a chart that sums this up.
Class dismissed.
Nice summary about who actually has the much better record on running a national economy. We should name an aircraft carrier after you. Or at least a very cool cigarette boat.
Wonder why so many mentally ill are on the streets? Look no further than Reagan. “You seen one schizophrenic, you’ve seen them all.” I paraphrase. Thanks for the history lesson, mon frere.