The cities burned. We were losing 200 troops a week in Viet Nam, the KKK operated openly, our roadways were death traps (as were our autos) and the seeds of new industry had already been planted in europe and asia that would put us out of business.

Welcome to DU! You'll actually have fun when you figure out that stomping on people's posts is actually kinda rude and pointless.

Friend, there is no reason to jump on me. Your romantic remembrance of time is misguided or if not misguided at least ignorant of what was going on at the time. Oh, and thanks for the Welcome.

and rape victims were at fault, and gay beatings went un-reported and un-accountable, yeah, the 50s and 60s were just peachy.

in the 50s and 60s?

You mean all those asians we killed? Yeah, that's really something to aspire to.

It might clue you in as to what we are actually talking about here. Hint: TAXES

...of communism. With not-to-be-forgotten exceptions, it transmitted prosperity widely rather than concentrating it among a few rich people, whereas countries that purported to have communist ideologies were police states. As opposed to post-Reagan, where the rich are gathering everything and using that excess to squeeze the rest of us even more.

I've been using that phrase in my sig line since 2001. It has nothing to do with wars in Asia.

which is "We're #1", then you have to frame the discussion within those bounds.

The post says nothing about returning to racism, gender oppression, or any of those things. So why bring them up?

Refusing to see and acknowledge what we've done well in that same time period is as much a blindness as refusing to see what we did wrong.

that Big Business and government were still separate, competing entities. Of course they already had far too much influence over our government, but it hadn't evolved to the point where they could literally dictate terms. And it is also worth noting that this is also the time when they really started skewing the tax code for their exclusive benefit.

K&R

in the immediate postwar era much of Europe's manufacturing capacity was laid waste and recovering from the war, and European countries had the task of rebuilding to do; the US was undamaged by the war and its manufacturing facilities easily transitioned from war production to peacetime. Since then Germany and Japan have both recovered from the war and the US share of the world's total industrial output has declined greatly; it's never again going to be what it was then. Also in 1950 the US produced HALF of the world's total oil; that figure is now around 8%. The factors that led to the US economy of the 1950's and '60's are not as simple as tax rates.

I think this OP needs to be thought through a little better.

had nothing to do with the tax rate

Not many people in this country felt strongly that we were doing the right thing, or that it was in our best interests.

that is the only way

Jingo all the way.