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I do not know what country you are living in, but in my country, there is quite a bit of prosperity, both public and private; people are, in general, much better off than they were in my youth, and inconceivably better off than when my mother was a child, in the 40s; and many of the larger spending programs, such as the Interstate highway program, have had positive effects on general prosperity. It is reasonable to say that many social programs squandered money, but not that they "squandered much of the wealth of the nation". It is reasonable to say that taxes have gotten to be too much of a drag on the economy, but not to say that they have have been coercively taken from those that created wealth, since taxes are always obligatory, and therefore "coercion" is not a meaningful distinction between the pre-and-post New Deal America. It is reasonable to complain that the federal government was set on a course of arrogating powers, but not to pretend that there was not a far reaching consensus that that was appropriate, which is why FDR kept winning elections, and was considered practically a saint in many households.... |
