Everyone In America Is Even More Broke Than You Think

[bread_and_roses]

125. I am dusputing your account of the '70's & your defense of capitalism

Not discussing the election.

Because memory is unreliable, I went looking - here's Krugman:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/slandering-the-70s/?_r=0

There was, obviously, a major deterioration after 1973. First came the worst recession since the 1930s — I’m old enough to remember when people called 1974-5, not 2007-9, the Great Recession. Then a recovery that did produce gains, and did eventually raise incomes above their pre-recession level, but not by much.

What you can see, however, is that this pattern of recessions followed by disappointing recoveries has been the norm for the past 40 years; it began in the 1970s, but it didn’t end then. Here’s median income changes from business cycle peak to business cycle peak:

Now, I'm not "slandering the '70's" from some right-wing perspective. And I think this era is worse by far - there has been next to NO recovery for ordinary workers and "Main Street". But the '70's were a time of high inflation and high unemployment. The fact that the right wing used the recession of the '70's to demonize progressive policies does not mean it did not exist - just that the rabid right-wing used it as a lever for their own agenda.

Had it not been impossible to actually critique capitalism in this country since - I don't know, the '30's? - there might have been an alternative explanation promulgated from the left. But the Right-wing narrative essentially went unchallenged and so was heard and believed by the ordinary working people who were hurting. Hello, Reagan and "Morning in America!"

Boom & bust, boom & bust: "this pattern of recessions followed by disappointing recoveries has been the norm for the past 40 years" - that's your capitalism.

As for which Party gets the Presidency - well, the Democrats throw the hoi polloi a few scraps - better than the scraped plate Republicans, yes - but not by much. We continue to lose.