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Wednesday, April 2, 2008 12:00 AM

The Great Depression: The sequel

Is it coming to a soup kitchen near you? Here's how we'll know if the current recession is turning into something much worse.

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  • Wednesday, April 2, 2008 03:49 PM

    bernbart

    The best economic times this country has experience is when progressives were in charge.

    Which should hardly come as any surprise to anybody, since they are, after all, progressives. Conservatives are only out to milk the system for everything they can get, even if they damage the system in the process.

    The graph tells a story, and makes you wonder why we'd ever elect a Republican president:

    http://www.rense.com/1.imagesH/CHARTA.gif

    It gets worse the more you look at it:

    The Cheap-Labor Conservatives' "dirty secret": they don't really Like prosperity

    Maybe you don't believe that cheap-labor conservatives like unemployment, poverty and "cheap labor". Consider these facts.

    - Unemployment was 23 percent when FDR took office in 1933. It dropped to 2.5 percent by time the next Republican was in the White House in 1953. It climbed back to 6.5 percent by the end of the Eisenhower administration. It dropped to 3.5 percent by the time LBJ left office. It climbed over 5 percent shortly after Nixon took office, and stayed there for 27 years, until Clinton brought it down to 4.5 percent early in his second term.

    - That same period – especially from the late forties into the early seventies – was the "golden age" of the United States. We sent men to the moon. We built our Interstate Highway system. We ended segregation in the South and established Medicare. In those days, a single wage earner could support an entire family on his wages. No more.

    Time to bring back the Democrats, the Party of Economic Prosperity.

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