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Freedom & solvency are two things that scare the beejeebus out of them.
During the 60's, the smell of freedom was everywhere.. The largest group of young people..EVER (and all over the world) were coming of age, and they saw things they did not like, and set out to change them.
The republican mantra is con-trol..con-trol..con-trol.
We were OUT of control, and back then there WAS a media that paid attention.
To be fair, there were a lot of very poor people back then (there are still poor people..and more every day, although not AS poor), but our country was strong and solvent..and the envy of the rest of the world.
The republicans have an inate ability to sniff out money, and then glomb onto it.
Democrats see money, and figure out how to spread it around , to get the biggest bang for the buck..and how to use it as seed money for people to expand their horizons.
The policies that were in effect during the sixties made sure that the richest among us, paid the highest rate of taxes, and since "globalization" had not caught on yet, most of the profitable companies were American companies..and they were HERE..paying taxes and hiring people for mostly decent wages (not by today's standards, but prices were also less)
The stock market did not break ONE THOUSAND until November 14, 1972.
Ordinary people had pensions...not 401-ks..
They KNEW what their monthly retirement pay would be, and all they had to do in order to collect it, was to stay with the same employer until retirement...and most did, because the companies were not bought/sold/cannibalized out of existence.
Young people saw a FUTURE for themselves, and they knew that after they got the "wild & crazy" stuff out of their systems, they would grow up and play by the rules, so they had nothing to lose (or so we all thought).
It's no accident that the "visionaries" of that decade were brutally assassinated. If you eliminate the the ones with the hopeful dreams, it demoralizes the whole movement. No one who comes afterwards can ever measure up completely, and the "faithful" eventually fall into line and shut up.
Republicans HAD to wrest control over the reins of government in order to pilfer the treasury. They HAD to undermine ANY attempt at a just distribution of wealth to ALL people.
republicans HAVE to have an underclass, or their "system" will not work.
The civil rights movement proved to them that change could happen, and they abhor change, so their legislators saw to it that whatever change was promised through civil rights, never quite would come to pass....and every inch forward would be met with the strongest resistance possible.
I CANNOT believe that people in government do not know what needs to be done. They are just too scared to DO it. The way we ran government in the pre-Reagan years was working. Business people made money and lived well, workers did ok too. people SAVED money, they bought houses & cars, they took vacations, they could afford college for their kids.
Even the disadvantaged people had options back then, that do not exist these days. People of very modest means, could open a small store, and feed & house their families from the profits.
People only borrowed money to buy a car or a home. They paid CASH for everything else.
Hospitals were owned & operated by non-profits (many religious orders ran them back then).
Doctors were well paid, and had a very high standard of living, and their patients could afford to see them. Even poor people could afford to go to the dentist.
Since Truman left office, we have had 36 years of republican rule with only brief punctuations of democratic governance.
A look back in history shows us that most of the monetary problems we have, were brought to us by republican legislators and/or presidents.
The money-party knows how to spend it, but they don't know how to maintain solvency.
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