Reply #45: Yeah, but that was true in 1945-2000, too, wasn't it? [View All]

[tom_paine]

Of course, wealth inequality being what it was and now is, after the Great Depression and the Great Compression (of incomes) that Krugman talks about, it seems like during that period in the flush of being a key component of the defeat of Hitler and feeling rightfully virtuous, Americans had a solidarity. More to the point the Rich didn't regard the Poor quite so badly as they do today.

Plus, lots of those rich boys had gotten out and fought in WWII, so they actually got to meet some of their Serfs.

So that shift in attitude between that generation and this generation of pampered rich boys who easily evaded war and view the poor as disposable tissues is a key difference.

What you say about the cocktail parties of the Ruling Classes has always been true, but in 1945-2000 America, for a brief and shining short era, maybe just 1945-1980, the promise of America was being fufilled somewhat.

Anybody who worked hard and wanted to work could usually find a good job with stable employment and some kind of decent retirement of Social Security plus pensions. Sadly, the African-American community did not get to share in most of this duirng it's height '45-'65, but more and more in the years following through Clinton.

I don't know, this post is getting a bit muddled. I guess what I am saying is that both wealth inequality and the degree with which the rich view the rest of us are both going in the same direction.

And I still maintain (perhaps I am in denial) that the Old American Republic, for everything it did bad and good, was still perhaps the Greatest Era of the Great Nation in Human History.

It created the framework taht the Bushies are now dismantling today: African-American and minority ENfranchisement, civil rights, women's rights, environmentalism. The Founding Fathers' dream they couldn't have envisioned.

Except perhaps the orginal Tom Paine (he was the only Founding Father steadfastly against Slavery as early as the 1770s) and George Washington, who said,

As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.

And we are so close to losing it... :grr: