"We warned the president -- don't ever, ever agree with the Republicans,"

[JDPriestly]

47. Stockholmer, Actually Roosevelt's progressive movement

was a response to two developments in my view.

The first was the Gilded Age which brought about something we see today -- unbridled monopolies, the accumulation of extreme wealth by a few oligarchs (while the rest of us all over the world live in varying degrees of poverty) and control of the government by those same oligarchs. The inequity in the distribution of our nation's natural resources and wealth resulted in repeated and surprisingly regular economic crises -- in each of which the oligarchs strengthened their financial and power bases.

The natural reaction to the Gilded Age and the misery that it brought to ordinary people -- workers and farmers -- was a movement of (surprise!) workers and farmers. That movement was particularly strong in Minnesota and Iowa as I understand it. I know about this because one of my ancestors was involved in it. That populist movement lead to the formation of cooperatives, especially rural cooperatives some of which still operate on a very reduced scale today and cries for other reforms.

The Teddy Roosevelt progressive movement arose out of the concern for somehow dealing with these opposing oligarchic/populist movements. I believe that Teddy Roosevelt was also interested in preserving the beauty and recreational value of the open spaces that still remained in the West and was part of a movement that saw the need to rid the country of the graft and corruption that existed prior to the formation of a clear legal requirements for the hiring, firing, pay and benefits for public servants.

The problem with the libertarian, free-market, no-regulation idea is that we tried it, and it failed. It led to even worse market manipulation and fluctuations than we have today. It permitted the rich to take even more advantage of the poor than they do today. It promoted charlatanism in the field of health care and know-nothing idiocy in government, to say nothing about the corruption that was, although it does not seem possible, even worse and more blatant than today.

America's biggest problems are that Congress has abdicated its constitutional responsibility and authority for issuing our money, calling up our military, deciding on military expenditures and the treatment of prisoners of war and many other duties.

The president has filled the void that Congress has left.

Another of America's problems is that we do not regulate our financial sector well enough.

The Fed is a huge problem. It needs to be completely rethought and restructured. Essentially, the Fed is a den of foxes guarding the hen house. What a stupid idea! The Constitution provides that Congress should issue the money. We should return to that concept.

We have a lot of other problems like making sure that the rich pay a larger share of our taxes.

In my view, the portion of a person's income that the person pays in taxes should be determined by the likely portion of the person's income that can be spent for non-necessities measured by how much income the average person has after paying for basic existence. That sounds complicated, but as I see it, it is the only fair way to allocate the tax burden.