As for campaigns that pine for rosier economic times, in today's economy who wouldn't miss the job and income trends that prevailed from 1947 through the late 1960s? Manufacturing jobs were plentiful for young men without a college degree, and each cohort of men aged 25 to 29 earned more than three times as much as their fathers had made at a similar age. Since 1980, young men have earned less, on average, than their fathers at the same age.

But idealizing the era when America was the economic powerhouse of the world, bipartisanship reigned and male breadwinner families were the norm requires overlooking much else. Nostalgia is never random. We cherry-pick the past, highlighting what we like and leaving out the things we don't, even if they were closely intertwined.

So when Trump says let's "make America great again" and Clinton says let's make it "whole again," they neglect to mention how much the prosperity of the postwar era depended on a system of regulation and taxation that neither of them shows any inclination to reinstate.

In that era, fully 30% of the workforce was unionized, compared with 11% today. Public spending on transportation and water infrastructure was three times higher than today. The airline, trucking, rail and banking industries were tightly regulated. Corporate taxes were twice as high in relation to national income, with top-earning individuals facing much higher tax rates than today. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of business interests 42% of the time, compared with more than 60% in recent years, a study found.
Many Bernie Sanders supporters, and some Trump ones, would welcome a return of those features. But in that era of rising real wages for male blue-collar workers, manufacturing was so dominant that wages for service work -- such as health care aides and fast-food workers, now among our fastest-growing occupations -- could be kept low without threatening the living standards of most American families.

What's more, female white-collar workers could not earn enough to support themselves. A black or female college graduate working full time, year round, earned less than the average white male high school graduate. And almost a third of the elderly were poor.

In the foreign policy realm, the bipartisanship of that era is what let Presidents Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy secretly help overthrow the popularly elected leaders of Iran, Congo and Guatemala, launch the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and kick off our disastrous involvement in Vietnam.

Hillary Clinton may laud Henry Kissinger as an old-style diplomat who "transcends partisan differences," but that's precisely what allowed him to sanction the 1973 coup against Chile's popularly elected president, Salvador Allende, and give explicit consent to Argentine's "dirty war," in which 30,000 people were killed.

southindian wrote:Americans are idiots. Well, they are humans no different than most in any part of the world... and I'm thinking does education really matter? How are these Americans any different than the poor, gullible running behind Amma, MK in southindia, Didi or the corrupt in northindia?

"Make America great again!!!". What does it mean anyway? In 2016 networked world US cannot live in silo...on an island.

Still... the unemployment rate is down. Inflation is low. Gas prices are low. Dollar is best in the world. US is the only standing developed economy.  Security is not an issue... for now.

And these morons are sloganeering for something which they themselves don't know anything about.

I hope sanity prevails in November.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

southindian wrote:Americans are idiots. Well, they are humans no different than most in any part of the world... and I'm thinking does education really matter? How are these Americans any different than the poor, gullible running behind Amma, MK in southindia, Didi or the corrupt in northindia?

"Make America great again!!!". What does it mean anyway? In 2016 networked world US cannot live in silo...on an island.

Still... the unemployment rate is down. Inflation is low. Gas prices are low. Dollar is best in the world. US is the only standing developed economy.  Security is not an issue... for now.

And these morons are sloganeering for something which they themselves don't know anything about.

I hope sanity prevails in November.

hindi mein likho, saudi, hindi mein likho. ye angrezi batein chod-do.

Hellsangel wrote:Il Professore, why did you hyphenate the last two words? And how come no phonetic casing for Hindi?