February 5, 2010

What's Behind The New Populism? : NPR

Interesting discussion of the history of populism in America, and this line about the recent past:
"The last 40 years have been a more conservative era, and liberals have had to fight against what has become a default assumption of politics: that big government is bad, that unions aren't necessary, and that the only part of government that should really be big is the military."

I would suggest that default assumption is that all government is bad (except the military) and that taxes always negative and are not an investment. Those assumptions have, in addition to the anti-union sentiment, helped undermine the strength of the middle class.

2 comments:

mstanley said...

While I am confident that a number of unions do a number of good things for their members, I'm also fairly certain that the UAW played some significant role in the troubles the three big American auto manufacturers are currently facing. Seems to me that unions have also done their fair share of damage to the middle class.

Streak said...

Ok, I am not sure that is as true as everyone says. Not saying that many of these unions don't need reform as well, but that seems to be more conventional wisdom than proven fact.