Quote:
Originally Posted by Raev
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If it was the golden age, that implies things got worse immediately after, which doesn't really say good things about their policies, does it? The free market and individual liberty part was what powered America to the top of the world through the early 1900s. Then the banks got the Federal Reserve going, and government expanded hugely while Roosevelt was busy turning an ordinary recession into a Great Depression then World War II, and things went down from there.
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We were a second-rate backwater through the early 1900's, hardly even matching Great Britain and absolutely not the top of the world.
At no point since 1950 have things gotten as bad as they were prior to 1950. They may have diminished since then, but that's to be expected considering competing industry all over the world was destroyed in WW2. Things didn't really start nosediving until Reagan, and even then, we're still better off than the agrarian gilded-age shithole we were around 1900. I mean you're basically advocating for people like Andrew Carnegie to wield considerable power and influence again. That's basically what free market capitalism is. The people with the capital wield the economic power (and the political power too unless specific protections are in place, as we're seeing now).
Also consider that Nazi Germany and fascist Italy weathered the Great Depression better than any other economy in the world leading up to WW2, including the USA and Great Britain, and those were arguably the most socialist Western countries the world has ever seen.