Has the regeneracy arrived?

[David Horn]

(01-03-2017, 08:18 AM)Mikebert Wrote: American inequality peaked in 1916, declined to 1920, then rose to 1916 levels by 1929, and then went down, bottoming only in the late 1970's.  Peacetime government spending had been about 3% of GDP for half a century before 1929.  Over the next couple of decades peacetime government spending rose about six fold, as did the number of federal employees.  In the two decades after 1929, America emerged as the world hegemonic power.  These major changes in the nation's historical trajectory were contemporaneous with the 4T, not the period around 1920, despite the revolutionary zeitgeist present then.

Since 2001, or 2008, there has been no change in trajectory.  The slow-motion collapse of the middle class that has been going on for decades, continued on. This is what the 2016 election was about.  People were writing about it 25 years ago, and are saying the same things today.

So we have two choices of interpretation.  We can argue that no 4T is occurring and the theory is invalid, or opposite: that one has been underway but is failing.  Not every struggle generates a distinct winner.

It could just be that nothing is so drastically important that it forces a unified response.  Inequality is bad, but the most negatively affected are out-of-sight-and-out-of-mind.  ACW is getting worse, but it hasn't produce an environment disaster yet.  We are still more-or-less free.  The economy in general is meh.  It's hard to get wound up to fight the good fight if the fight isn't absolutely necessary.

Of course, that may still change.