Let America Be America Again

I agree that this encapsulates what this election is all about.! Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

It is precisely that, and ONLY that theme that will send the President packing.

Hammer the economy theme, hammer it, hammer it, hammer it.

Bring every discussion back to it.

If the President wants to talk about child birth, point out the plummetting birthrate due to the economy. If he wants to talk about immigration, point out the 23 percent unemployment among African Americans. If he wants to talk about cooperation in Washington, point out the failed bi-partisan stimulus bills.

Hammer it, hammer it, hammer it.

The Heinlein quote is both wrong and foolish.

No, it is not. I am reading him literally even though it is a rhetorical flourish, because it miseducates.

You had during pre-modern eras periods of advance and retreat in levels of prosperity. Robert Heinlein did not have a comprehensive understanding of why this occurred; serious students of economic history are uncertain about that. See Philip Daeleader on late antiquity and the early medieval period.

As for the modern period, catastrophic retreats in levels of prosperity are generally coincident with wartime. You also see it in economies whose measurable aggregate production is heavily dependent on net exports of minerals and their national income fluctuates a great deal according to the terms of trade.

You could say you saw it in Soviet Russia after the 1st World War and much of Eastern Europe after the 2d. You still have to try and disentangle the effects of the war from the effects of the abuse of manufacturers, financiers, merchants, artisans, and peasants.

It should be noted that proprietors are not a ‘tiny minority’. They are certainly atypical, but the number of people in business for themselves full time is at any one time in the seven digits in this country. Being a notable in industrial history, whether your name is Carnegie or Jobs, is rare. The thing is, the benefits attributable to innovation in a discrete economic sector are often surprisingly small. It is the collective effect of many tiny efforts which comes to matter.

We are not living in Roumania ca. 1946. The current regime’s regulatory practices and ham handed capital allocation will one supposes cause such injuries as the economy gradually comes to a point of stagnation. That modern industrial civilization will disappear is something we can be fairly sure will not occur. That 25 years worth of economic improvements will evaporate (as happened during the period running from the fall of 1929 to the spring of 1933) is also unlikely (and most likely to arise from trouble in the financial sector). The real threat is can be seen in the history of Argentina – decade after decade of minimal net improvement punctuated by political and economic crises which never seem to resolve anything in a salutary direction.

Heinlein’s is an aynrandesque reverie and not true to our situation.

Your two examples include one of the most lunatic autocrats of the post-war period and another president-for-life quite possibly mad from tertiary syphilis. These are not common problems.