8/18/2011 - Comparing today’s recession/depression to the 1980 recession

“Much like today, Americans were concerned not only with high unemployment but increasing budget deficits in the early 1980s. A September 1983 Gallup poll found that three-fourths of the public agreed that the federal government’s budget deficit was a great threat (42%) or somewhat of a threat (34%) to the continuing recovery of the economy.” — Andrew Rexler, PEW

Technology and Globalization have combined to permanently render tens of millions of Americans jobless. The increases in GDP are increased profits that are flowing to the wealthiest Americans. This will continue unabated. Technology and ideas, once out of the bottle, cannot be returned to the bottle.
The question is this: What are we as a country going to do with the tens of millions of formerly employed people who are not needed in this economy?


One potential solution is to tax the survivors and then pay these people to work on public works projects much like the CCC’s did during the Great Depression only on a much larger scale. If we don’t do something like this, we’re going to have tens of millions of hungry people to worry about. A hungry person has nothing to lose. We can pay taxes to employ them in public works projects or we can pay taxes to build monstrously large prisons to hold them all. Alternatively, we will see a trade/currency war the likes the world has never seen where countries with their manufacturing/industrial sectors gutted be returned back to their former glory.

We should decrease the taxes for anyone who is the top 1%, or those making more than $300,000 a year; that would surely end the depression fast, right? – they DO create the jobs, right? This is what Reagan’s Trickle-Down Economics taught us, right?

Only problem is we have 25 years of proof that it doesn’t work.
Compare Pre-1979 with today.

1. Middle Class is MUCH smaller in terms of actual numbers and of course percentage-wise today than just 25 years ago
2. 2. Pre-1979 the highest tax rates for the top .1% was over 62% for nearly a CENTURY. Over the last 9 years (Bush Tax Cuts for the Rich) the top .1% pay their lowest amount EVER. Not in like 5 years, not like 10 years, EVER.
3. 3. Middle Class education is getting worse and worse every year. – Check the recent ranking of the USofA, and what do you see? – Dude, we are getting KILLED. – Less funding started with Reagan.
4. 4. Health Care Insurance – As of last year, America now has more people UN-insured than insured. That is the first time on record that is true, and we started keeping track of that in the 50′s.

Point is this: The top 1% now control more wealth than any other time in American history, an astounding 92% – That is just a hair short of what Surf and Nobility class of the Middle Ages would be defined as (95%), which means they have more and more power, since the rest of us our worried about our next meal we surely don’t care about politics, which allows them to trick us to think that “small government” is better – even though we all just saw what 8 years of small government produced – Financial Crisis and Gulf Oil spill, just to name two





http://www.thecomingdepression.net/main-street/comparing-todays-recessiondepression-to-the-1980-recession/