During the Gilded Age of 1865 to 1900 — a moniker coined by Mark Twain — the United States was on the gold standard, government regulation was slim to none, federal government deficits were nearly nonexistent and economic liberty was paramount. Consumer price inflation was essentially nonexistent. There was no central bank. And one of the results of all this was that real wages grew by about 40 percent between 1860 and 1890. The country prospered as never before. Now we have a central bank, we are off the gold standard, we have millions of federal government employees, federal regulations are piled to the sky, and federal government debts and deficits are spiralling up out of sight. And how has the average guy fared after all these changes? Very poorly indeed — real wages per hour for production workers and nonsupervisory employees in February 1973 was $23.24. In March 2019 it was — get ready for it — $23.24. So what all these changes have yielded us is a 46 year period where real wages for the average guy haven’t risen at all.
Is This The Golden Age For American Government Reform?
/by Thomas C. PattersonSince 2001, the last time the federal budget was balanced, federal revenues have shown healthy growth of 3.9% annually, while inflation averaged only 2.5%. These figures would normally signify a sound, sustainable economy. But spending has grown at a rate of 5.5%, so instead we have a destabilizing gross federal debt of $36 trillion. The response of the Biden/Harris administration to this looming catastrophe was to double down on spending. In an era of relative peace and prosperity, they kept mindlessly passing out money to win political points. Reforming an entrenched bureaucracy, much less eliminating it, is extraordinarily difficult. Yet the present could be a rare opportunity to repair this destruction to our way of life. We must be fearless and strategic in reducing government excess and providing a successful economic future for our descendants.