Pitting ignorant, gullible morons with no sense of historical perspective.

The BBQ Pit
1

This gem came in my inbox today:

How about a blow-by-blow?

(I didn’t author this but think it makes a valid point about which our progeny should be aware.)

If it were a valid point, that would be honorable.

COMMENTS: Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago and our nation was the most prosperous in the world, had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world

We will get to the taxes in a moment. First, our prosperity. Our prosperity around the turn of the century was looking up, but we were not the most prosperous nation on the world. We were still in debt to a great portion of Europe, and our class division was huge.

National debt? Over a BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS! $12.00 for every man woman and child in the country. That’s about nine zeros off of “absolutley no national debt.”

Largest middle class? Yeah, except for the dirt poor farmers, Southerners and millions of southern and eastern European immigrants that lived in slums, sure! They could be the largest middle class in the world if you discount the wealthy industrialists that basically controlled the economy and enslaved the working class.

and Mom stayed home to raise the kids. Think any of the candidates running for office today would challenge this leviathan?

Oh, except for the huge Women’s Liberation movement that was gaining momentum at the time, wherein women wanted control of their own destinies, rather than being slaves to men and the “traditional role?”
As for the taxes, did it ever cross your mind that the reason no automobile or phone taxes existed was because those inventions hadn’t become widely popularized yet?

Income tax? I doubt you have heard of the Populist party, even though in the 1892 election they carried a twelfth of the popular vote and four states, but they sure as hell favored an income tax at the time.
Do any tax experts know if any of those taxes actually existed at the time?
What is the point here? Even if there were a point, spewing made up bullshit about the rosy history of America doesn’t bolster it.

I have made generalizations about the conditions at the time, but according to my history books, that was the general idea.

(If I messed up any historical points, please correct me.)

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[QUOTE=Ilsa_Lund]
Do any tax experts know if any of those taxes actually existed at the time?

[QUOTE]

Most of those taxes did not exist at the time, yes. Mainly because the federal government back in those days did a whole lot less than it does now, and most federal revenue was gathered by tariffs. In fact, the federal income tax only came into being via the 16th Amendment after the Supreme Court ruled that a federal income tax was unconstitutional.

As to it being the “good ole days” before all those taxes were raised, the average life expectancy back then was probably in the mid-40s (less for women, many of whom died in childbirth), and the tariffs that the government collected back then were great when we were a developing economy, but (as most free-traders believe) wouldn’t work too well now that we depend a lot on imports and would face retaliatory tariffs for our own exports.

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I don’t know much about the fiscal situation and taxes 100 years ago, but I had to take you up on your point about stay-at-home moms.

By drawing the link, you’re assuming that a mom staying at home to raise children is the equivalent of being a slave to a man. I have to disagree with you vehemently. Many moms (and dads) believe that one parent staying home to raise their children results in a stronger family union and healthier children. They might not have a new sportscar AND a honking big SUV in the driveway, but they think it’s worth it. Many “two working parent families” wish they were in the position to have a stay at home parent; some of them are working towards financial goals to one day be able to accomplish that. If a job takes 8 hours a day of work, why wouldn’t a family? You’re not a slave to anyone. You’re the CEO of the family.

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I certainly agree with you. But most of the time back then, mom stayed at home because she had no choice but to do that as she was relegated by society to the work of wimminfolk’. If you do it by choice, that’s fine. But women really were subjugate back then to a large extent.

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CheekyMonkey613, I do not get that impression. I think Ilsa_Lund only wanted to point out that married women in those days didn’t have much of a choice but to stay at home and have kids, while nowadays they can choose to continue working or stay at home and have kids. The availability of choice is what makes all the difference.

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Well that’s good then, Ilsa. I was hoping that’s what you meant. Carry on. And I’ll sit back quietly and learn about taxes. :wink:

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Then again, the husband stayed at home too. Home being the farm, where everyone worked. Only living off the income of the man was something only the upper class could afford.
The housewife that stayed at home and raised the kids is largely a social phenomenon of the period 1945-1965.

So the statement is wrong on so many levels.

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What about the world’s largest middle class?:rolleyes:

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The Gaspode, I think I understand what you mean, but wasn’t there already a large class of manual laborers without a farm in the 1900’s? They certainly didn’t work at home. Maybe things were different in your country.

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Yes, there was a large class of manual laborers in industry by the 1880’s, prompting the formation of early labor unions like the American Federatio of Labor in 1893.

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They may not have worked at home–but neither did their wives. They couldn’t afford to. They either did factory work themselves, or service jobs. The Gaspode is right–the housewife that stayed at home and raised the kids is largely a social phenomenon of the period 1945-1965. Or more specifically, the idea that the majority of women always stayed home to look after the kids and depended entirely on her husband’s income until recently is incorrect, since the only time that was true was 1945-65.

I know about.com sucks, sorry–

http://www.kccluw.org/laborhistory_Kate.htm

I have also read, but have lost my copy of, The Way We Never Were , which I highly recommend.

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I know this deal specifically with the U.S., but how about all those textile factories in England in the late 1700’s? And staying home and taking care of what kids? Child labor, anyone?

As with our own memories, we tend to gloss over our collective memories too. Records surviving from 100, 200 or 300 years ago are mostly from high middle and upper classes*. The lower end of the scale were simply to busy surviving to care.

I’m in no way bashing moms (or dads) who stay at home to raise the kids, but this recent trend and nostalgia about ‘how it was’ is so obviously misleading and, as the OP said, using it as an argument to try to force change today is very dishonest.

IMO this may lead to even greater social strain and frustration, where the lower classes are, as always, the losers.

*I know it’s not fashionable to talk about classes in this day and age, and that it smells slightly of Marxism, but it’s a good shorthand way of defining socio-economic (sp?) structures

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Actually, from what I know of history, a great many women did work outside the home or on the family farm at the turn of the last century. Also, in those days, a woman did not have the right to own property, not even her own pay. Instead, her earnings became property of the man responsible for her, usually her father or husband. One reason I am a feminist is I greatly appreciate what others did so that I can have my own home, my own transportation to work, and control of what I do with my own earnings.

That era was also an era of rampant monopolies and government corruption – see JP Morgan, the Standard Oil Company, the activities of the various railroad companies, Teapot Dome, although that came a bit later, and others. Forget a 40 hour workweek – if you worked in the mills or mines, it was more like a 6 1/2 day work week, and you shopped in the company store or traveled several miles on foot. As for being fired for unionizing, that was the least of your worries. Not far from where I live, people were shot for that offense.

I’ll take the 21st century, taxes and all, thank you!
CJ

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I think we’re actually all in agreement here. I never wanted to dispute that women also worked outside the home a century ago, in fact my post was to support that idea (confused though it may have looked). However, it looked as if The Gaspode claimed that the majority of both men and women worked at home, while in fact (as we seem to agree) rather the exact opposite was the case: a large number of both men and women worked outside the home.

For the rest I bow to the greater knowledge of Siege and all others.

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The good old days… Not. As much as we hate ourselves and our prosperity, this is as good as it’s ever been. Sorry.

[lack o’ segue]

While we’re on the subject: history does NOT “repeat itself.”

If it did, what would be the point of bothering to learn it? For that matter, why bother living in this endless auto-rewind universe?

The quote goes something like this:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Thanks. That’s been bugging me for years now. I actually feel better.

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: Warning: major nitpicking ahead. Enable nitpick shields. :

Beagle, while the Santayana quote may be what some (most?) people think of, there is also the French expression “l’histoire se répète”, literary: “(the) history repeats itself”. This does not mean that history as a whole necessarily repeats itself; it is a mere conclusion that in a specific case the same story unfolds itself again. Of course, this may lead to confusion if the translation is abbreviated to “history repeats itself”.

So there is a valid way to say “history repeats itself” without misquoting Santayana. Of course one could use the French expression untranslated, but then it would seem pretentious. Can’t win, can you? :wink:

: Nitpick alert over. :