From Bad To Worse
The above is a Conservative campaign poster from 1979.
And it is awesome. Be careful not to stare at it for too long, for fear of melting your retinas.
Maggie Thatcher came to power in 1979 after Labour had successfully failed at everything. Stagflation gripped the economy, Trade Unions had unfettered power, strikes were so widespread and crippling that trash accumulated in the streets and dead bodies went unburied, and Britain humiliatingly resorted to an IMF loan in 1976.
It’s not quite as bad as asking Somalia for some cash, but it’s almost there.
Despite the lessons of Thatcher and Reagan, we are returning to a time when politicians believe that they should have more power over the market and, even more foolishly, that the market will withstand their sustained assaults.
So it is no great surprise to learn that, according to the US Labor Department, unemployment topped 10 percent in 16 states last month. In Michigan, it’s over 15 percent (for the first time since West Virginia last held that distinction in 1984), a catastrophic level of joblessness.
The national rate, as we all know, is a neutron away from 10 percent. Which is when things are going to get really interesting. Double-digit unemployment is up there with hyperinflation and warfare as a catalyst for domestic revolution.
While the Blame Bush doctrine fulfills the twin Democratic ambitions of obscuring their own agenda and dumping complete culpability on the previous president, it is not going to satisfy the more than 3.5 million people who have lost their jobs since Obama took office.
2010 mightn’t be so bad, after all…
July 19th, 2009 at 12:18
OK. If we can’t have Ronald Reagan back in 2012, I’ll settle for someone like Margaret Thatcher. And some good conservative legislators in 2010 who can’t be bought off at 2K apiece like with this cap and tax debacle.