A Rosy Past Remembered

If you spent even a few minutes watching cable TV talking heads this past month you heard dire warnings about how bad the times are now and how far we have fallen from a remembered time in the rosy past. Progressive politics, confiscatory taxes and big government interference in our lives were often among the proofs cited about how things have deteriorated. Here’s what I use to measure present times against that “rosy” past.

When my mother was born in 1918, she was not guaranteed the right to vote when she became an adult. No “Rosies” could vote, and it was not until 1920 that women gained that right. There are women alive today who were born into a nation that deprived them of that basic right. Today, 94 women serve in Congress.

Prior to 1935 the poverty rate for those 65 and older was between 70 percent and 90 percent. Color that bleak. Today, according to the Census Bureau, the elderly poverty rate is 9.7 percent.

Prior to 1965, just under 50 percent of those 65 years of age and older had health insurance. Since only half those policies provided comprehensive hospital coverage, only 25 percent of American seniors had adequate health insurance. For the other 75 percent, color their bank accounts deep red. Now, more than 97 percent of seniors have adequate health care coverage.

I grew up in those prosperous times with Eisenhower in the White House, "Ozzie and Harriet" on the TV, John Wayne in the movies and Mom at home in the kitchen. From 1954 to 1964, the 24 marginal federal income tax rates ranged from 20 percent on the lowest incomes to 91 percent on the highest. We don’t have enough Crayons to color all those. The current 6 rates are now 10 percent through 35 percent.

Before 1965, African American citizens were often deprived of their right to vote by the imposition of poll taxes and literacy tests and by more illegal forms of denial.  Color that outrageous. From 1991 through the end of 2007, 55 African Americans were elected to Congress. In 2008 an African American was elected President of the United States.

Progressive politics and government intervention have given us; the 19th and 24th Amendments to the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to outlaw discrimination in voting rights, Social Security to reduce elderly poverty and Medicare to provide health care to the elderly and disabled. There’s room for improvement, but these are the better, brighter times.

As for confiscatory taxes, does anyone want to go back to those “rosy” Eisenhower/Kennedy era marginal rates? All they bought us was big government spending - for programs like the GI Bill, the Interstate Highway System, the arsenal that eventually won the Cold War and the first steps that culminated in human footprints on the moon; you know, programs that created jobs that paid workers in greenbacks.