COVID-19 is the climax to this 4T

[Bob Butler 54]

Nitpick.  The United States didn’t originally have a federal power to regulate the economy.  They didn’t need it early.  To some extent in the Gilded Age, the major rich bankers tried to intercede.  By the time FDR came around, the problems with the boom and bust economy got too big.  The federals were the only ones with enough power and certainly there was a need to regulate the economy.

FDR decided that gaining this power by constitutional amendment would take too long and might never happen.  Thus, there was an argument with the Supreme Court that he eventually mostly won.  The government assumed a power to regulate the economy.  The president, court, Congress, robber barons and people approved of the result.  A change in how the government worked was necessary, but they got it though legislation from the bench rather than constitutional amendment.

We perhaps paid for it when various courts went wild with legislation from the bench, but that always seemed to happen.  Note how the Jim Crow court nullified the Bill of Rights.

I agree that changing the imbalance of rural against urban is hard.  It would be extremely difficult to get rid of the slavery compromises from the bench, even assuming a progressive court, which isn’t likely in the short term.