We are now experiencing a paroxysm of efforts to Make America Great … Again. This should raise questions in every American mind: which greatness are we hoping to re-create? How was that greatness initially achieved? I suspect most would like to re-create the best aspects of the long period, in the middle of the 20th century, when prosperity was becoming more widespread in America. From 1933 until 1980, the U.S. experienced generally steady improvements in many fields. From 1933, at the nadir of an extreme economic depression, the nation recovered, and then prospered. There were largely unbroken advances in Americans’ shared infrastructure, in their social safety net, and in housing, education and healthcare for most Americans. There was also progress in the status and opportunities of marginalized Americans. Many of these changes, especially those for the marginalized, were fitful, and woefully incomplete, but were still significant advancements.
During this period, there were substantial improvements in rates of home ownership, level of education achieved, life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality, and other important metrics.
How did this happen, and why did it end? Fortunately, the essential answers to these questions are simple, and the historical evidence is clear. There were a number of factors that contributed to our prosperity, but the following four were critical:
1) In the mid-1930s, the New Deal put Americans to work building and staffing schools, hospitals, clinics, parks, libraries, bridges, public art, electrical generation plants, roads, railways, ports - you name it - thousands of projects that helped to make Americans healthier, better educated, and more satisfied, and to provide and improve infrastructure to facilitate every sector of industry, agriculture and commerce. This laid the groundwork for the US to become, for decades, the most productive and most prosperous nation in the world. It included many projects to protect the natural environment, planting trees, establishing protected wilderness areas, limiting erosion and protecting topsoil. Alongside the infrastructure initiatives, the New Deal created social safety nets. In 1934 FDIC insurance on bank deposits was established, to prevent the loss of family savings, as had repeatedly devastated millions up to that point. In 1935 Social Security was created, raising millions of the disabled and elderly out of poverty. Many of the structures and institutions initiated during the 1930s continue to usefully serve us today. These programs built immense capital that was owned not by a few oligarchs, but by the public: you, me, and everyone. These programs also lowered the unemployment rate, and helped raise the wages and improve the benefits of workers. Since the New Deal period, there have been similarly inspired programs to further improve Americans’ lives. The most important are Medicare and Medicaid, passed in 1965, which have paid for critical healthcare for hundreds of millions of Americans, and saved many of these from financial ruin.
2) Before the great depression, the U.S. federal government had been antagonistic to the trade union movement, and was frequently quite belligerent. Under President Franklin Roosevelt, this stance was largely reversed, and laws were established and policies adopted that guaranteed workers’ rights to unionize and to strike, and banned certain employer anti-union tactics. This allowed growth of union membership, which peaked at 1/3 of all non-agricultural workers, and led to considerable rises in pay and improvements in benefits and working conditions for most of the population. Non-organized workers had always been free to ask for fairer conditions … and then been free to become unemployed. Organized workers had the ability to demand fairer conditions, and the capacity to have that demand met. And as the strength of the labor movement grew, workers in non-unionized businesses and sectors also benefited: bosses were induced to improve workers conditions pre-emptively.
3) During the 30s the federal income tax rate for the wealthiest Americans was increased substantially, reaching 79% in 1936. Then, during the Second World War, the rate was further increased, peaking at 94% in 1944, and staying high, at 91% from 1945 through 1963. It was then reduced, but kept in the 70+% range until 1982. Similarly, the estate tax rates for the largest inheritances were raised into the 70+% range from 1935 until 1982, when they started to drop. These high rates helped to pay for the government programs described in item one above, limited and then paid off the federal deficits incurred during the depression, and the larger deficits incurred during WWII, and dramatically reduced wealth inequality in the US. This last is one of the most important aspects of being a great nation. Working class Americans of the middle of the last century had improved security and confidence, which helped them to be healthier, happier, smarter, more productive, and more satisfied citizens. Wealthier Americans were less prone to the arrogance and incompetence which are hallmarks of gilded ages. They were more likely to see themselves as fellow citizens, to treat others with respect, and to gladly contribute their efforts to common goals.
4) During the period from 1933 to 1980, important scientific and educational institutions were founded or expanded to benefit Americans and open our horizons. Federal bodies such as NIH, CDC, NASA, NOAA, EPA, the National Laboratories of the Department of Energy, the Smithsonian Museums, etc., were advanced, along with collaboration with universities and non-governmental research institutions. These institutions conducted a very wide range of research, including basic non-applied research that private companies would never have paid for, but which provided a foundation for deeper understanding of our world and the cosmos, and for the invention of a startling range of modern technologies. The development of the transistor, the printed circuit, the internet, and the decoding of the human genome were among the achievements of government labs or funded by government money. In addition to massive research achievements, the government did tremendous work to educate and inform citizens in almost every field.
If we would have America recover its prior greatness, we need to resume and reinforce these projects. However, since 1980, when Ronald Reagan claimed that government was inherently bad, the trend has been to limit and reduce these programs, to facilitate concentration of wealth in fewer hands, to weaken the social safety net, and to let public infrastructure deteriorate. This has been done with zealous relish by Republican administrations, and with feeble compliance by some Democratic ones. But the current administration really seizes the proverbial cake. In every one of the above areas, Trump and his sycophants are methodically working to make America weak, poor, ignorant, unhealthy and subservient. While exceeding their proper authority in many spheres, they are failing to meet their responsibility in any. Instead of building America, they are focused with laser-like precision on targeting innocent scapegoats, manipulating the gullible, disempowering the capable, exalting the incompetent, punishing the weak, alienating allies, humiliating the excellent, rewarding the avaricious, and comprehensively demolishing every public institution of our nation, and profaning the democratic principles it rests upon. They have managed to do this while demonstrating remarkable ignorance of every art and letter, and every science, save those of deceit, bullying and self-aggrandizement. Atop the ruins of American democracy, they are pasting together a paper mache idiocracy.
We do know what must be done to make America great again: pursue the measures that actually worked in the past, and are the opposite of what the Trump administration is doing. Replacing the government in future elections is obviously essential, but simply waiting for elections will be disastrous: every day more destruction is done, and it becomes harder to rebuild. Every one of us must stand up and work diligently in every way we know, and every way we can invent, to stop the destruction, reverse the nation’s course, and to inform, mobilize and nurture opposition.
(Mr. Nuese resides in Sebastopol, California.)
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