…back to 1920…

Took a long time, but it's where we are…

It will continue to slide… Quit worrying about it…
Prepare for a continued slide…

Are you going to elaborate, or is this a badly disguised "gotcha" thread?

It was LBJ's "Great Society." Like all other socialist Newspeak, it portended the exact opposite.

In no particular order:

Viet Nam
Bay of Pigs invasion
WaPost take down of R M Nixon
War on drugs LOL
JFK assassination
Warren Commission
ML King assassination
RFK assassination
Monica Lewinsky
Iraq WMD lie
Jeffery Epstein suicide LOL
Wuhan Lab
Fauci BS

your turn

Oh...oh...oh, I forgot 81 MM votes

1913 federal reserve and it's not even close.

Start with the Immigration and Nationalization Act of 1965. ... and LBJ. Topped off by the Democratic Party of the past 40 years.

Helicopter Ben said:

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1913 federal reserve and it's not even close.

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Truth….1913 is when the US government betrayed the constitution and the people

maroonthrunthru said:

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…back to 1920…

Took a long time, but it's where we are…

It will continue to slide… Quit worrying about it…
Prepare for a continued slide…

---

But now the slide is at breakneck speed and the bottom can be seen.

The New Deal
Great Society
17th Amendment
War on Drugs
War on Poverty
War on Terror
Vietnam

When did we start paying elderly politicians?

Helicopter Ben said:

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1913 federal reserve and it's not even close.

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Spot on.

Zeihan thinks the 1992 election of Clinton was a hugely underrated and consequential election in American history and he doesn't think it was a good thing. The Soviets had collapsed. The US -- which during the Cold War had traded some of it's own economic growth potential to Europe and Japan in exchange for security arrangements and allyship against the Soviets -- was closely examining ways to pull back and rethink it's long-term economic and security stances. Bush was probably the right person at the right time to handle the changing world but instead of handing him the keys we elected Clinton.

Helicopter Ben said:

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1913 federal reserve and it's not even close.

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Yep.

There is an argument to be made that the first step could have been the passage of the 14th Amendment which extended federal power and changed the US away from everything it had been previously.

Helicopter Ben said:

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1913 federal reserve and it's not even close.

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The Federal Reserve was in check with Bretton Woods pegging the US dollar to gold. The Great Society and Vietnam put the US in debt to the point Nixon had to get off the gold standard and float the currency. The problem was -- and remains -- the government spending.

all great answers and i would say accurate. to throw an additional historical event that to me from a political perspective really ramped up how politicos are viewed in america. the 2000 election with bush and gore. bush won but moving forward the media really allied itself against balanced reporting and went head strong into reshaping narratives.

Woodrow Wilson

**** that guy.

Amazing that some portion of the lawfare we see today is probably attributable to Monica Lewinsky.

What a course of events.

Heard on Levin tonight it was NAFTA and the manufacturing jobs left and didn't come back. The lady called it the "plundering" of the middle class- no more guys working in industry and having a middle class life. Now we we just have the elites and those serving them (proof in tonight's thread about the governments workers wanting government to provide all for them)

To add to that. If Gore gets a few thousand more votes in Florida, Gore wanted to use the surplus to pay down the national debt (debatable whether that might have happened, but Gore was a more fiscal conservative than Bush turned out to be).

9/11 still likely happens and the reaction in Afghanistan is probably similar.

2003 invasion of Iraq doesn't happen. Trillions of dollars are saved there along with likely better ME relations. Russian relations are probably better (Bush and crew completely disregarded Russian concerns of it creating ME/Levant/Central Asia instability and the Russians were 100% correct). Not sure if the Baltics are invited to join NATO.

We would be looking at a very different world today.

maroonthrunthru said:

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…back to 1920…

Took a long time, but it's where we are…

It will continue to slide… Quit worrying about it…
Prepare for a continued slide…

---

19th Amendment?

The day we started expanding who could vote to people without skin in the game. The founders knew universal suffrage was idiocy.

The manufacturing writing on the wall was when China was invited to join the WTO.

Peak USA was 1960.

Haven't had an increase in standard of living since...

Boomers. The entitled generation riding on the coattails of their fathers who were the greatest. First generation raised on consumerism and mass consumption. Gave us the sexual revolution and the begin of the slide to cultural rot that we're seeing play out today.

They can claim all they want about millennials and the rest of the new generations but they raised them and started it all.

WestHoustonAg79 said:

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Boomers. The entitled generation riding on the coattails of their fathers who were the greatest. First generation raised on consumerism and mass consumption. Gave us the sexual revolution and the begin of the slide to cultural rot that we're seeing play out today.

They can claim all they want about millennials and the rest of the new generations but they raised them and started it all.

---

Yep, and I'm not proud of it!

We've gone from a loose collection of states, and people having the option to live wherever they thought best; to an all encompassing federal government, homogenizing and dominating everything it touches with local politics playing second fiddle.

That isn't what the framers had in mind.

CDUB98 said:

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Woodrow Wilson

**** that guy.

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You mean his wife…

AtticusMatlock said:

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Helicopter Ben said:

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1913 federal reserve and it's not even close.

---

The Federal Reserve was in check with Bretton Woods pegging the US dollar to gold. The Great Society and Vietnam put the US in debt to the point Nixon had to get off the gold standard and float the currency. The problem was -- and remains -- the government spending.

---

True. But what allowed the government spending? Without the federal reserve, the government could never have spent so much. They would have to tax us honestly to pay for all of this nonsense. People would be outraged if they knew how much wealth is being taken from them, so they needed the stealth tax known as inflation. Unfortunately, it was a highly effective strategy.

The framers didn't think meat comes from a supermarket.

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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We've gone from a loose collection of states, and people having the option to live wherever they thought best; to an all encompassing federal government, homogenizing and dominating everything it touches with local politics playing second fiddle.

That isn't what the framers had in mind.

---

While I agree with you. Some of that has to do with to with tech innovation connecting the globe over the last 100-150 years (telegraph to phone to now / transportation time etc) accelerating globalization. If we wanted to continue to be the world super power it was necessary to a degree to keep our spot as king of the mountain.

whatthehey78 said:

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In no particular order:

Viet Nam
Bay of Pigs invasion
WaPost take down of R M Nixon
War on drugs LOL
JFK assassination
Warren Commission
ML King assassination
RFK assassination
Monica Lewinsky
Iraq WMD lie
Jeffery Epstein suicide LOL
Wuhan Lab
Fauci BS

your turn

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So you're saying...we didn't start the fire?

It also makes you realize how many shady dealings went on taking advantage of communication delay.

Having a gold standard absent a Fed Reserve or whatever banking system does not mean the government can't still outspend it's coffers. Look at the collapse of the Spanish Empire as an example. They had plenty of gold (or so they thought) and still went broke from overspending.

It doesn't matter what currency system you have. If you overspend and overleverage you're going to have problems.

That's when women could vote.

Been down hill since then