Mink's (and the liberal left's) Double Standards

[moondog]

FDR issued an executive order on April 27, 1942 to increase the top income tax rate to 100% on all earnings over $25,000. It was rescinded by the Senate a short time later. Now try and find any information on that event here on the internet, and you won't find it. But it is a matter of historical record.

[The Big Dog]

One needs to remember that in April of 1942 we were engaged in a global war against dedicated and powerful adversaries. The government was, according to Roosevelt on April 28. 1942, spending $100 million each day in trying to bring the strength of the nation to the point where that war could be fully and successfully prosecuted. The speech I linked is a Fireside Chat given the day following the above linked message to Congress with the intent of selling people on the needs of war. What is telling, as Moondog notes comes at about the halfway point.

Indeed in these days, when every available dollar should go to the war effort, I do not think that any American citizen should have a net income in excess of $25,000 per year after payment of taxes.

The program also instituted wage and price controls, at government mandate such as had been seen in World War 1 and put in place then by the progressive Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Remember, if you will, that many at the peak of power in FDR's administration, were Wilsonian progressive retreads who had served the cause during the Wilson administration.

Now while some of what FDR proposed in wartime was likely necessary to keep inflation in check and to keep profiteers at bay, it was at it's core very much in line with the concepts of statist progressivism and bordered on the very fascism that our boys were waging a war against on the other side of the great oceans.

However, when the plan and speeches are reviewed in total and in context with the time, they are in some ways masterful and in some ways... correct.

[moondog]

It is never correct to destroy the economic machine that controls the very prosperity of this nation. And that is all that FDR's tax policies did. In fact, before WWII, FDR had a top tax rate of 79%.

The very wage controls he put in place were the first minimum wage. That very minimum wage caused more unemployment just when we were beginning to get our feet back under us as a nation.

His price controls did even more to damage the economy. Can you imagine being put in jail because you can afford to charge only 35 cents to press a suit? But, NRA price controls tell you that you may only charge 40 cents and no less. But, if you charge 40 cents you will lose all your business to more conveniently located laundry shops. These controls did not exist prior to the N.R.A. or as it was originally known the N.I.R.A. (National Industrial Recovery Act). Eventually the N.R.A. was deemed unconstitutional. And it was certainly one weight put around the neck of America's economic recovery by someone who did not have even a remote idea how the economy operated.

The funny thing is, our President Elect is similarly challenged on Economic understanding as FDR was. And they both believe in "fairness." The parallels are quite interesting.