And yet the 50s, often seen as the glory days of the classical American dream, also saw the highest tax rates in the nation’s history. AFAICR the top rate was around 90%.

Important point Nabs.

The 50s halcyon days lasted as long as the folks being slugged constituted a politically insignificant percentage of the electorate.

After 1970s inflation-driven “bracket creep” consigned the US middle classes to income tax hell, business interests and the American Right rode a populist revolt to power and to a major re-ordering of the US political economy, featuring much lower taxes, especially for corporations.

This was the moment the political economy of the US began to look very different from the political economy of other advanced countries.

Ironically, during the 1950s, when the US economy was truly exceptional, Eisenhower was conforming with the rest of the world by adopting keynesianism. Conversely, in the 1980s, when the US economy was simply the biggest among several modern economies, Reagan decoupled US political economy from the advanced-world consensus.

He probably was the best candidate, but how could people prove how open minded they were by voting for him? Other wise they’d actually have to be more tolerant in practice, and that would be too hard

He also explicitly stated he didn’t want the votes of people who would decide their vote based on misogyny or anti-black racism.

I don’t know what his position on the pivotal troll demographic was.

And yet the 50s, often seen as the glory days of the classical American dream, also saw the highest tax rates in the nation’s history. AFAICR the top rate was around 90%.

Yup, follow the money. Someone really should map the changing nature of the American political landscape against the rise and fall of its economic centres of influence. Like Olgesby’s “The Yankee and Cowboy War” but with a bigger and less ideological scope.

As someone else observed – a detailed look at the policies pursued during the Republican ascendancy from 1994 to the present reveals no pattern except a fanatical determination to subsidize some industries (energy, defense, agrobusiness) and remove any and every obstacle to the profits of others (Wall Street, credit, insurance, pharma, telecommunications). And this not for philosophical reasons but because, given the structure of electoral financing, members of the legislative and executive branches are simply the employees of these industries.

And the Democrats are no less spotless. See the dot.com boom and the more corrupt unions for starters.

Fun and perhaps not completely OT fact. Warren Harding’s last words, delivered in Alaska, were: “How do the bull seals control their extensive harems?”

The fact that they don’t have anything like the modern public health systems of Europeans or us tells us something as does the way in which Clinton tried to manifest same.

Indeed – it tells us something about the inadequacy of the Democratic Party as a vehicle for delivering something people want. Healthcare was probably the second most important issue in 92 after the economy. It was the strength of feeling on this – manifested in a special Senate election in Pennsylvania (from memory) in 91 – that began to convince people that Bush I was beatable.

He probably was the best candidate, but how could people prove how open minded they were by voting for him? Other wise they’d actually have to be more tolerant in practice, and that would be too hard.

I’m not sure there are any [self-described Australian Communists] writing!

Almost all of the conservative intelligentsia in this country have done some time apologising for Soviet or Maoist Communism – Windschuttle, McGuinness et al. If you take the attitude once a Com, always a Com, then they haven’t died, just joined ‘Quadrant’.