“I'm a Depression historian. The GOP tax bill is straight out of 1929.”

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: November 30, 2017 at 3:36:47 PM EST
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] I'm a Depression historian. The GOP tax bill is straight out of 1929.
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> I’m a Depression historian. The GOP tax bill is straight out of 1929.
> Republicans are again sprinting toward an economic cliff.
> By Robert S. McElvaine
> Nov 30 2017
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/11/30/im-a-depression-historian-the-gop-tax-bill-is-straight-out-of-1929/>
>
> “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).
>
> Yet the plain fact that the trickle-down approach has never worked leaves Republicans unfazed. The GOP has been 
> singing from the Market-is-God hymnal for well over a century, telling us that deregulation, tax cuts for the rich, 
> and the concentration of ever more wealth in the bloated accounts of the richest people will result in prosperity for 
> the rest of us. The party is now trying to pass a scam that throws a few crumbs to the middle class (temporarily — 
> millions of middle-class Americans will soon see a tax hike if the bill is enacted) while heaping benefits on the 
> super-rich, multiplying the national debt and endangering the American economy.
>
> As a historian of the Great Depression, I can say: I’ve seen this show before.
>
> Fact Check: Would the GOP tax plan cost Trump money?
>
> In short, no. The president would benefit mightily from either version of the GOP tax bill. (Meg Kelly/The Washington 
> Post)
>
> In 1926, Calvin Coolidge’s treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, one of the world’s richest men, pushed through a 
> massive tax cut that would substantially contribute to the causes of the Great Depression. Republican Sen. George 
> Norris of Nebraska said that Mellon himself would reap from the tax bill “a larger personal reduction [in taxes] than 
> the aggregate of practically all the taxpayers in the state of Nebraska.” The same is true now of Donald Trump, the 
> Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson and other fabulously rich people.
>
> During the 1920s, Republicans almost literally worshiped business. “The business of America,” Coolidge proclaimed, 
> “is business.” Coolidge also remarked that, “The man who builds a factory builds a temple,” and “the man who works 
> there worships there.” That faith in the Market as God has been the Republican religion ever since. A few months 
> after he became president in 1981, Ronald Reagan praised Coolidge for cutting “taxes four times” and said “we had 
> probably the greatest growth in prosperity that we’ve ever known.” Reagan said nothing about what happened to 
> “Coolidge Prosperity” a few months after he left office.
>
> In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt called for “bold, persistent experimentation” 
> and said: “It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above 
> all, try something.” The contrasting position of Republicans then and now is: Take the method and try it. If it 
> fails, deny its failure and try it again. And again. And again.
>
> When Bill Clinton proposed a modest increase in the top marginal tax rate in his 1993 budget, every Republican voted 
> against it. Trickle-down economists proclaimed that it would lead to economic disaster. But the tax increase on the 
> wealthy was followed by one of the greatest periods of prosperity in American history and resulted in a budget 
> surplus. When the Republicans came back into power in 2001, the administration of George W. Bush pushed the opposite 
> policies, which had invariably produced calamity in the past. Predictably, that happened again in 2008.
>
> [snip]
>
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