What really happened when liberals
were in power?
What life would be like without
liberals.
by Sam Smith
The Progressive Review
Since well over half of the country hasn't
ever seen a liberal president in office, and since the media
has generally bought the GOP line on liberalism, it might be
useful to consider what life would be like if it hadn't been
for liberals in the White House.
People who complain about liberals are
like the man from Virginia who went to college on the GI Bill
and bought his first house with a VA loan. When a hurricane struck
he got federal disaster aid. When he got sick he was treated
at a veteran's hospital. When he was laid off he received unemployment
insurance and then got a SBA loan to start his own business.
His bank funds were protected under federal deposit insurance
laws. Now he's retired and on social security and Medicare. The
other day, however, he got so mad that he climbed into his car,
drove the federal interstate to the railroad station, took Amtrak
to Washington and went to Capitol Hill to ask his congressman
to get the government off his back.
Here are a just a few of the things America
would be without were it not for liberals in the White House:
o Regulation of banks and stock brokerage firms cheating their
customers
o Protection of your bank account
o Social Security
o A minimum wage
o Legal alcohol
o Regulation of the stock exchanges
o Right of labor to bargain with employers
o Soil Consevation Service and other early environmental programs
o National parks and monuments such as Death Valley, Blue Ridge,
Everglades, Boulder Dam, Bull Run, Chesapeake and Ohio Canal,
Mount Rushmore, Jackson Hole, Grand Teton, Cape Cod, Fire Island,
and San Juan Islands just to name a few.
o Tennessee Valley Authority
o Rural electrification
o College educations for innumerable veterans
o Housing loans for innumerable veterans
o FHA housing loans
o The bulk of hospital beds in the country
o Unemployment insurance
o Small Business Administration
o National Endowment for the Arts
o Medicare
o Peace Corps
HOW BAD WAS LIBERALISM?
DC GAZETTE, 1985 - We've come across
some comments on the accomplishments of liberalism of the last
half century that are worth passing on. They were made by Alien
Ferguson, President of AFE Inc, before the National Economist
Club. Ferguson notes that the real gross national product rose
546% from 1933 to 1980. Real per capita disposable income rose
233% during the same period. In 1929, one percent of non-farm
workers took vacations. By 1970, the figure had risen to 80%.
The average work week dropped from around 48 hours in 1929 to
around 35 hours in 1980. By 1950, 34 million workers were covered
by unemployment insurance; by 1980 the figure was almost 93 million.
Social security, during the same period expanded from covering
46 million to 128 million people. While the share of income realized
by the poorest 20% of the population has not changed much over
the years, the percentage held by the wealthiest 5% has dropped
from 30% in 1929 to 15.4% in 1981, indicating a redistribution
of income to the middle class. Similarly, the percentage of total
wealth held by the top one percent was 36% in 1929 and down to
20% by 1969. Between 1959 and 1979, 9% of whites and 25% of blacks
moved out of the poverty classification. And a Congressional
Research Service study done in 1982 showed that without the various
liberal transfer programs, 24% of the country would have been
in poverty rather than the 9% that was the case.
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