Today's GOP

[whell]

Originally Posted by BlueStreak

Except, if you understood late 19th and 20th century history, you'd know we've already been down the path the GOP is trying to revisit. For most Americans----it SUCKED. That's why they rebelled against unbridled corporate power in the first place. Ford, Carnegie, Morgan and the likes may have built industry but they were also colossal dicks. Slave driving tyrants. I guess we have to put our kids & grand kids through it to figure it out for the second time.

Dave

Except, if you look at the progressive expansion of government since that time, you'd note that the legislative and corporate landscapes bear little resemblance to the late 19th and 20th century. At that time we had aggressive economic expansion, dreary working conditions, and a more limited role in the economy for the gov't.

Today we have a legal framework which supports worker rights, a government that plays a very active role in the regulation and direction of economic activity and about 2% annual GDP growth. We also have low to zero job growth and the longest stretch of unemployment over 8% in our history. For many Americans, IT SUCKS. Now that's not to say that worker protection is bad, all regulation is bad, etc. But the pendulum has swung far enough not only to make a return to the early 20th century extremely unlikely, but it may be choking our ability to pull more quickly out of this recession, for example.