The politics of envy in play on Election Day - AGAIN.

 From Bob Livingston's Personal Liberty Alerts

How Democrats have managed to maintain the myth that their policies are beneficial to Average Working-class Joe (or Jane) is one of the great mysteries of all time — ranking up there with quasars and how Joe Besser ever became one of the Three Stooges.

For Democrat big-government policies have been devastating to the "working" man.

Democrats have long practiced the politics of envy. They preach that their policies help the working man (or woman) and paint the Republicans as the party of the rich.

They like to pit the poor against the rich. They promote the notion that if someone earns more than whatever Democrats consider a "living wage" (a despicable term) then that person is somehow evil. Many Americans have fallen for it and the Democrats have been reinforcing these notions, born from failed policy, for almost 100 years now.

Corporatocracy and forced high wages

The Roaring '20s were arguably the most prosperous decade in American history, writes Robert P. Murphy Ph.D., in his book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal. It wasn't just that Americans grew richer. Their lives changed with the growth in the automobile and the spread of electricity and invention of gadgets and appliances that ran off it.

Meanwhile, Fed was flooding the credit markets with cheap money which led to a speculative bubble that burst in 1929, according to Murphy. On Oct. 28, 1929 the stock market lost almost 13 percent of its value. The next day saw a drop of almost 12 percent. The Great Depression was on.

Unemployment soared, surpassing 28 percent in March, 1933. Annual production dropped 27 percent. Republican President Herbert Hoover's policies didn't help. Murphy writes:

"The shocking unemployment rates of the Hoover years were a direct, if unintended consequence of his high-wage policy. Hoover urged business to maintain wage rates, even though profits were plummeting and prices in general were dropping. With firms desperately trying to cut costs to stay afloat during the Depression, Hoover insisted that the relative price of labor increase. It is no wonder then that this period witnessed the sharpest pullback in demand for workers in American history. FDR continued these policies."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, like Hoover before him, thought the Depression was caused by underconsumption, according to Murphy. So he sought to raise wage rates (rather than put a floor under them) and he pushed through Congress industrial and labor policies that limited competition and raised labor bargaining power.

Murphy writes:

"One of these policies was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) (1933-35). This act created the National Recovery Administration (NRA), which provided a vehicle for the major players in each industry to create a so-called "Code of Fair Competition." In reality, these codes were anti-competitive rules that forbade industries from lowering prices. In short, the NRA worked by fostering giant cartels, which made products artificially expensive and punished small businesses trying to compete against big businesses. As a condition for being allowed to form such a cartel, Roosevelt insisted that each participating 'industry [raise] wages and [accept] collective bargaining with an independent union.' By 1934, over 500 industries had adopted such codes, cover almost 80 percent of private, nonfarm employment. With these 'voluntary' codes in place, big producers could raise prices without fear of losing market share, because the Federal government itself would punish any 'unpatriotic' upstarts who dared try undersell large firms." [Emphasis in original text]

With small businesses unable to set their own prices lower not only were they unable to compete with larger business, but poor and middle-class citizens were unable to s shop around for a good price or purchase as much as they needed.

In 1935 the Supreme Court threw out the NIRA as unconstitutional so Roosevelt used the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to achieve his goals, according to Murphy. The NLRA granted unions incredible bargaining power by forcing businesses to accept collective bargaining. As a result, union membership more than doubled and the number of "strike days" doubled in one year—from 14 million in 1936 to 28 million in 1937. This surge in union strength—and the high wages it brought—was an important factor in the persistently high unemployment rates of the 1930s.

Other "highlights" of FDR's policies that hurt the poor and middle class were the Works Process Administration (WPA), which hampered the economic recovery. By giving the unemployed an option that paid well enough, the WPA siphoned workers away from truly productive tasks that would have restored the economy to a long-run sustainable condition.

In other words, the government paid them not to find a job. Does this sound familiar to you?

The Raw Deal

There are many New Deal programs that still exist to this day, though few of them really help the "working man." One of the worst is Social Security. In Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform, Carbone writes:

"Former Social Security Commissioner Stanford Ross criticized the founders of Social Security for generating public support by advancing the fictitious belief that a worker 'pays for' benefits with 'contributions' rather than taxes, and has an 'earned right' to particular benefits. Ross advised Americans to reject the 'myth' that Social Security is a pension plan and accept it as a tax on workers to provide for the 'vulnerable in our society'.

"Senator Patrick Moynihan went further, calling Social Security taxes 'outright thievery' from young working people."

All in all, Democrat policies during the first half of the 20th Century did much more to hurt the working poor or middle class than to help. This is not to absolve Republicans of responsibility. They were complicit in that they didn't do enough to try and stop the practices before they were implemented nor have they done much to repeal them. Establishment Republicans are no conservatives and like big government almost as much as the Democrats.

The fallacy is that either party, the Democrats, in particular, have been able to position themselves as the party of the "working" man. In fact, today, the establishment wings of both parties have done more much more to benefit the rich than the poor.

With such vast sums of money exchanging hands in Washington D.C., is it any wonder the elected class have grown arrogant and unresponsive to the needs of their constituents? They're convinced they can spend any amount of money, steal any freedom, impose any onerous regulation or create yet another bloated bureaucracy and you will like it. If not, they have enough dough in their pockets to pay for enough glitzy television advertisements to convince you that whatever they are up to is for your own good.

Washington is controlled by the corporatocracy. That's why the legislative deals are done in secret, behind closed doors. They don't want you to know that.

But their constituents today aren't the constituents of yesterday. The electorate is becoming more informed, and many who sat silently on the sidelines grumbling about what was going on in Washington are becoming more vocal. Still, the elected class tries to ignore the increasingly vocal constituency except with platitudes and virtue-signaling. But while corporatists, lobbyists, lawyers and PACs feed the campaign coffers, it's the voters who pull the levers in the voting booths. If you aren't one of the millions who voted early, remember what you are capable of tomorrow, dear reader.

Yours for the truth,

Bob Livingston