You know right now, history looks like it is in a place to repeat itself

[kydo]

Last edited Fri Nov 29, 2013, 03:06 PM - Edit history (1)

As I watch the news reports for black Friday. I drifted in many thoughts. First retailers and the media will try their collective best to spin this disastrous shopping season. Sure some places there were crowds, but so far it looks like the crowds are way down.

Of course I probably am undiagnosed ADD as my thoughts quickly switched to images of that History Channel show about rich people that owned everything. What struck me is how eerily similar we still are to the pre union era in the USA. It feels like any gains made by unions has been almost completely undone 100 years later. Looks like we will have to fight that battle all over again.

Right now the USA seems to have failed to understand two important lessons from history.

1. Unregulated Capitalism is not sustainable. Examples are in the 1880's through 1920's meeting its conclusion with the Great Depressions. Unions and regulations have kept us from bottoming out so far but as regulations are removed and unions destroyed we find ourselves creeping closer to bottoming out again. We almost did bottom out in 2008.

2. Racism and Hate is also not sustainable. The rhetoric that spews fourth from the right these days is reminiscent of the Nazi Party and its beginnings.

100 years later these two issues are rampant in the USA again. The Great Depression and WWII has taught us nothing as we appear to be on the verge of repeating the same mistakes all over again.

For the record I hope the protesting and striking Wal-Mart workers is successful. I hope retail sales are down with stores that refuse to pay living wages. I hope stores and companies that do care about their employees by paying living wages thrive and have great sales this weekend.

I'm sick of corporations having more rights then people.

[displacedtexan]

1. My mother always said that during the great depression...

... There were lots and lots of wonderful things to buy but no one she knew had any money to buy them.

Sound familiar?

[SheilaT]

3. I also once read that during the Great Depression

stock prices dropped to a point where they were incredible bargains and (if I recall correctly) paid dividends that made them an even better buy. Even those people who a few years earlier would have been buying stocks -- and I'm talking the wealthy class at this point) -- even those people did not have the money to buy stocks.

Huge mansions that had originally cost millions to build sold for pennies on the dollar. People who formerly had large staffs of servants could no longer afford them.

My point being is not to feel sorry for the rich, but that the pain was widespread in a way that it currently is not. Right now the upper classes don't seem to be suffering at all, while all below the top are.

[Laelth]

13. Precisely.

And history suggests that the rich will have to suffer too before they'll be willing to do anything about our current mess.

As I argued here: http://laelth.blogspot.com/2011/01/turning-american-ship-of-state.html

-Laelth

[Not Sure]

2. Excellent OP

I think you're onto something.

[PatrynXX]

4. on something completely different :P

I have ADD and I don't think you missed anything.

and the thanksgiving dinner sorta got nasty of the economy. seriously when it's pointed out to Tea Party members than the debt will skyrocket when there is zero spending and zero taxes they start name calling pretty bad. sp when that happens I figure I won the argument.... basically the discussing went in that Tea Party things Taxes and spend is at an all time high when even the Wall Street Journal says it's the lowest since the 50's. we can't sustain this.

[antigop]

5. we are going to have to go through the labor movement all over again. nt

[kydo]

9. Yep, it sure keeps looking more and more like that.

Its not going to be any easier the second time around. Now a days corporations already have an advantage their predecessors could only dream about. Corporations have gained person hood status these days.

[Tab]

6. History Repeating

[AtheistCrusader]

7. I still have to buy materials, but

I'm making some Christmas presents right now. Not wrapping; fabricating.

I know I'm not the only one, so I think there's a change afoot. Maybe we can draw back from the precipice a bit...

[Major Hogwash]

8. When Reagan was first elected, my grandfather told me that it seemed to him . . .

. . . that every American generation had to learn firsthand that the trickle-down theory of economics doesn't work.
He was born in 1901, so he had quite a bit of personal history that he could pass on to me from his life's experiences by then.
He knew all about the Gilded Age, and the Robber Barons, and witnessed the Roaring 20's firsthand.

He told me that it seemed to him that the majority of people in this country had forgotten the last time that the trickle-down theory was tried in this country, and that it failed.
He said that when Hoover tried it, it was a miserable failure.
He said that when Reagan was first spouting it's attributes, he said he knew it would fail again.
And it did.

So then, when Bush reinstituted it again just last decade, it failed again miserably, just like most of us knew it would.

So, yeah, we have to keep learning the same hard lessons over and over and over again.

The laws of "right to work" (for less) were designed to kill unions.
It wasn't about fairness at all.
Those laws should be overturned, but the anti-unionist attitude that prevails in this country isn't going to change until it affects more people personally.

[Laelth]

14. +1. n/t

-Laelth

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. The 1% do seem to have learned from history.

they are furiously driving this country back to the Robber Baron era, when THEY were on top of vast riches.

History tends to repeat itself after the last generation who remembers it dies off.

[Corruption Inc]

11. Most people forget that the entire financial system collapsed in 2008

The consumerbots continue to follow the orders of their propaganda masters despite the entire thing failing on a worldwide scale just a few years ago.

We live in an era of corruption and until the corrupt are held accountable we are indeed doomed to repeat our failures.

[hobbit709]

12. If we truly learned the lessons of history, we wouldn't have history.

Because history mainly consists of the same stupid mistakes made over and over

[socialist_n_TN]

15. History will repeat itself until we get rid of capitalism.....

That's all.

On second thought, that's NOT all. I meant it when I said get RID of capitalism. Every time it's been "reformed" into some semblance of submission, it's shakes off the chains of regulation within a couple of generations. REGULATING CAPITALISM DOES NOT WORK! Long term, regulation is a pipe dream.