Tag: Great Depression

GOP tax plan doubles down on policies that are crushing the middle class

The following article by Steven Pressman, Professor of Economics at Colorado State University, was posted on the Conversation website December 20, 2017:


GOP tax plan doubles down on policies that are crushing the middle class
December 20, 2017 6.26am EST
A big part of that check is being drawn from middle-class accounts. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

The U.S. middle class has always had a special mystique.

It is the heart of the American dream. A decent income and home, doing better than one’s parents, and retiring in comfort are all hallmarks of a middle-class lifestyle.

Contrary to what some may think, however, the U.S. has not always had a large middle class. Only after World War II was being middle class the national norm. Then, starting in the 1980s, it began to decline.

President Donald Trump has portrayed the tax plan Congress is wrapping up as a boon for the middle class. The sad reality, however, is that it is more likely to be its final death knell. Continue reading “GOP tax plan doubles down on policies that are crushing the middle class”

I’m a Depression historian. The GOP tax bill is straight out of 1929.

The following article by Robert S. McElvaine, a historian who teachers at Millsaps College and author of “The Great Depression:  America, 1929-1941.”:

People gather on the subtreasury building steps across from the New York Stock Exchange in New York on “Black Thursday” on Oct. 24, 1929. The Great Depression followed thereafter. (AP)

“There are two ideas of government,” William Jennings Bryan declared in his 1896 “Cross of Gold” speech. “There are those who believe that if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.”

That was more than three decades before the collapse of the economy in 1929. The crash followed a decade of Republican control of the federal government during which trickle-down policies, including massive tax cuts for the rich, produced the greatest concentration of income in the accounts of the richest 0.01 percent at any time between World War I and 2007 (when trickle-down economics, tax cuts for the hyper-rich, and deregulation again resulted in another economic collapse). Continue reading “I’m a Depression historian. The GOP tax bill is straight out of 1929.”