re: #26 GeneJockey

As I think about it, their Golden Age is all concocted from historical revisionism. They want it to be the 1950s, but ignore that the very reason the 1950s were so good to so many was precisely because we put in place all kinds of regulations on banking and business, and encouraged labor organization, and established the Safety Net. They do a mashup of the 1920s and the 1950s, where regulation was the 1920’s Laissez Faire, but instead of resulting in the Great Depression, it triggers the growth of the Middle Class, and the rise of a much more affluent society.

The 1950s were also good for America because let’s face it, we really didn’t have any global economic competition.

Vast swaths of Europe were in ruins; Germany’s industrial capacity was pretty much bombed into oblivion, as was Japan’s. The British Empire, on which “the sun never sets” was bankrupt and exhausted. The Soviet Union, while an empire and an ideological competitor, was not a serious economic threat at that time. China was just coming off a disastrous civil war that saw the victory of Mao Zedong.

The world has changed radically since the 1950s, and it seems that those who want to go back to the “good old days” simply don’t comprehend this.