"I want my country back!" Ah yes, the cry of Conservasaurus Americanus in the early days of the 21st Century.
Those of us here in the Daily Kos community are familiar with the refrain. We've seen it on picket signs, spotted it on bumper stickers, heard it on talk radio and cable "news" networks.
"I want my country back!" And I believe they do. Or at least, I believe that they think that they do.
Mind you, I've little doubt they want their country to return to a time when, they feel, it truly was "their" country. A time when women stayed in the home, blacks stayed in the back of the bus, Mexicans stayed in Mexico, and gays stayed in the closet.
In short, they want a return to the America of the 1950s, albeit with cold war hysteria replaced with Islamofacist hysteria.
But do they really understand what else they're asking this nation to return to? Do they really realize what else has changed since those halcyon days of the 1950s? Do they really, really want those things to return?
I think not. Follow me below the virtual fold and I'll try to explain to them why they might want to heed the old adage "Never wish for something; you might get it."
You see wingnuts conservative friends, in the 1950s, over one-third of all American workers were represented by one of those evil unions that your crowd is always demonizing. They had negotiated contracts that provided them with good wages and benefits. With such a high percentage of workers earning good, negotiated wages and benefits, the country’s non-union workers were lifted up as well.
One individual, working one job, could provide for an entire family. Spouse. Kids. Even a house to live in.
And over half of American workers had a pension plan. A real pension plan, a defined benefit pension plan, not one of those bullshit 401Ks that were never created to provide retirement security for workers, but to defer taxes for the very highest paid members of management. And for the most part workers could count on their employer to honor their pension obligation.
That was before your beloved private sector, those “job creators” you’re always talking about, discovered outsourcing jobs to dirt-poor, often totalitarian ruled nations, where they could pay workers less for a day’s labor than they’d been paying Americans for an hour’s labor.
That was before your beloved St. Ronald Of Reagan signalled to employers that it was okay to permanently replace striking workers.
Today, less than 12% of American workers have union representation. And less than a third have a real pension, which in all likelihood their employers will underfund before running to a bankruptcy judge to be allowed to renege on their obligations, before re-selling the now “unburdened” company for billions of dollars.
You’d like to see women staying home to look after the kids, would you? Well, before your thirty-year “conservative revolution” worked its magic, that was actually economically possible.
Now let’s talk about taxes, shall we? Do you know what the top marginal tax rate on the richest Americans was in those glory days you pine for? Over 90%!(PDF) Today it is 35%, and your crowd is trying with all its might to get it lowered even more.
Capital gains? Back in the booming 1950s they were taxed at 25%.(PDF) Today it’s 15%, but even though your likely Republican presidential candidate is taxed less on the millions he makes picking up the phone to his broker and barking “Sell!” than you are on what you earn busting your butt doing actual labor, you’d like to see him pay even less. Maybe even nothing!
In that era that you seem so nostalgic for, taxes from American corporations averaged 5% of GDP per year. In the last three years, it has averaged 1.2%.(PDF) But anybody who suggests that corporations contribute more to the cost of running this country that has been so good to them is labeled a “socialist” by your crowd.
In the 1950s average CEO compensation was thirty to fifty times what their company’s average worker made. Even back then that was a disparate ratio compared to other countries. Today it is hundreds of times greater.
American productivity has increased 400% since the days you want to go back to, yet not only have worker's real wages not increased, they have actually declined.
And so in closing, my dear conservative friends, I suggest that the next time you’re inclined to say “I want my country back,” pause a moment and think. What is it that you miss so much? Is it just that people who weren't like you "knew their place?"
Or do you miss the days of prosperity, security, and economic opportunity that you and the politicians and policies you support have torn into shreds?
5:41 PM PT: Wow. Posted this in the morning, left for work with nine recs and just about to scroll off the front page. Came home and found it rescued with ten times the number of recs. Thanks to all of you for keeping this where more people could get a chance to see it.