I keep hearing about a return to values and the good 'ole days and my monkey mind instantly conjures up June Cleaver vacuuming her already perfectly clean floor in her adorable dress, heels, and pearls. I'm not saying that's wrong; there is a part of me that would love to stay home (minus pearls and cleaning) and spend my day inhaling the lovely aroma of the apple pie cooling in the window sill.
Hey, I got an idea! Let's borrow Doc Brown's and Marty McFly's DeLorean and go Back in Time with Huey Lewis and see what's happening in the 50's and then it bring it back. Come on!
Hmm. I like it here. It's pre-1973, pre-oil crisis, and pre-automobile emission control rules, so I see a lot of American cars: Buick Roadmasters, Cadillacs, and Pontiacs are thick on the road here, in fact, some 80 million of them. You don't really see any foreign cars...well, you do see a few VW Beetles, but you won't see a ton of those until the 60's. Of course, our American cars get horrible gas mileage and they don't have seatbelts, but thankfully, American car makers have really stepped up to the plate in our decade, manufacturing the Ford Fiesta, the Chevy Cruze, and the Ford Focus.
Oh, but wait, I'm hungry. I want to sit in this diner and have some breakfast, so I think I'm going to order some corn flakes. I love corn flakes. The cute waitress calls me "hon" and let's me read the ingredients on the side of the box. I enjoy reading the box while I eat cereal. Whew, what a relief, no high fructose corn syrup. Monsanto is around but they're busy making agent orange and not genetically modified seed, they won't do that until 1997, so I feel okay eating this. See, high fructose corn syrup has 14% fructose, much more than regular corn syrup. It disrupts your metabolism and messes with the insulin and leptin levels that regulate your appetite control. No wonder drinking diet coke always makes me hungry. HFCS doesn't tell you when you're full, so you keep eating more. It may also promote weight gain because our bodies make fat from fructose more readily than from other kinds of sugar (The Journal of Clinical Nutrition). It also elevates your triglycerides, which put you at greater risk for heart disease.
There is so much obesity in the United States that I honestly wonder that if we, in our time, were to stop giving subsidies to the corn growers which in turn encourage them to grow more corn (journalist and agriculture industry critic Michael Pollan points out that "all the corn needed for HFCS depletes soil nutrients which increase the need for pesticides and fertilizers") that we would have less high fructose syrup in our food (and really, it's in EVERYTHING) and as a result would be thinner?
That would be a great burden off of Medicare, who treat millions of people who are older and suffer from obesity related ailments, such as heart disease and Type II diabetes. Obesity rates have increased 214% since 1950. Only 28% of Americans in our time are at healthy weight. In the year 2000, it cost $117 billion to treat obesity related diseases. That's money we could put toward the national debt.
The tea party loves to talk about fiscal responsibility, and I think part of fiscal responsibility is also being personally responsible. We can help that in our time by buying organically grown, local foods and supporting small farmers, which could certainly be considered a small business. And if the Republicans are right, small businesses are the driving force of our economy. We should help them out.
I'm full from corn flakes and I see this super adorable family walking together. It's early, so I guess they're going to work. Let's see where they're going. I hop off my stool and follow them down the street. I bet he's off to work at a factory of some kind. In 1950, America was the manufacturing superpower with the strongest and largest middle-class in world history. 25% of workers were a unionized private work force and approximately 50% of Americans had pensions. That's really different from today, where the unions have fallen to 7% and only 6% have a pension.
From Wikipedia: "Employee benefit plans proliferated in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Strong unions bargained for better benefit packages, including tax-free, employer-sponsored health insurance. Wartime (1939-1945) wage freezes imposed by the government actually accelerated the spread of group health care. Unable by law to attract workers by paying more, employers instead improved their benefit packages, adding health care.
Government programs to cover health care costs began to expand during the 1950s and 1960s. Disability benefits were included in social security coverage for the first time in 1954. When the government created Medicare and Medicaid programs in 1965, private sources still paid 75 percent of all of the health care costs. By 1995, individuals and companies only paid for about half of the health care with the government responsible for the other half."
Well, let's look at taxes during the 1950's. Surely, there must be something wrong with that era. Hmmm...during the Eisenhower (R) administration, the top marginal tax rate was 91%. Whoawhoawhoa! That sounds like way too much, even for me. Let's look closer (from Politico):"So in 1955, for example, when the top marginal tax rate was 91 percent, that was the tax rate owed on a person's income over $300,000. That person would, however, pay 20 percent on the first $2,000 of income; 21 percent on the next $2,000 in income; 24 percent on the next $2,000 and graduated on up to the highest rate. On average, a person making, say, $500,000 would pay substantially less than 90 percent of their income in federal taxes.
The top marginal tax rates peaked in 1952 and 1953 at 92 percent for income over $300,000."
The top marginal tax rates paid by the richest Americans were far higher in the 1950s than they are now. In 2009, the top marginal rate was 35 percent on income above $372,958."
I think that's a great idea to bring back to our time! A wonderful ideal! The Tea Party would have that right if that's what they actually meant. Go back in time, bring the 1950's back in the DeLorean (minus the segregation and other travesties of the mid-century) and plug it into 2011. Workers would have rights again! We would be eating healthier foods, driving American cars, and people earning lots of money would pay their fair share!
Bernie Sanders (I) Vermont is a hell of a firebrand. He talked on the news today about shared sacrifice among all Americans, rich and poor, and that's an ideal that really appeals to me. Post World War II, Americans were a cohesive, can-do group. We had won the war and there was nothing we couldn't do. Women went to work to support the war effort. I heard stories from my aunts about not being able to wear nylons during the war years because the government needed the nylon. The president said, "no nylon," and out it went.
If that's part of this idyllic time, why can't the Tea Party stand behind that? Why not support our neighbors and farmers and local businesses instead of caving in to monoliths like Wal-Mart (who are very good at running Mom & Pop businesses right out of business)? Instead I read on the news about Tea Party presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann signing a pledge to eliminate porn and gay marriage. She, and the Tea Party, are really missing the point. It's not about wedge issues like abortion or pornography. It's about shared sacrifice, a willingness to work toward better means for all of us, not just the bottom lines of the corporations.
After spending some time in the 1950's I'm a little depressed. It seems that life is just more complicated in 2011, I mean, there are more of us. Detroit, a former manufacturing superpower is practically in ruins, no one wants to pay taxes and no one cares. We want our food cheap so we shop at Wal-Mart where all the trinkets are made in China and the food is shipped in from all over the world (doing great damage to our environment) covered in pesticides and pumped full of hormones.
Our 2011 entitlement runs deep.
In fact, our parents, who likely grew up in the 50's and 60's told us we could have what they had and even better.
All right, kids, back in the DeLorean, it's time to go back to the future.
