THE 1950s — THE GOLDEN AGE THAT NEVER WAS:

To hear liberal pundits such as Robert Reich, Bernie Sanders and Michael Moore tell it, the 1950s were the golden age of the American middle class, when unionized factory workers took home good wages from jobs “making things”, when a 91 percent top marginal tax rate kept “the rich” in check, and when proceeds from those taxes funded wonderful programs that helped us all, such as the Interstate Highway Program and the G.I. Bill.  Budgets were balanced and people were happy.

Things worked then, they tell us, so why don’t we go back to the policies (and, in particular, the tax rates) that led to such prosperity?  We don’t need 91 percent rates again (as Senator Sanders and others will concede) just much higher rates on the rich, enough to pay for the kind of social programs that, presumably, will magically transform the U.S. into a larger version of Denmark.

This is lunacy, of course, but it is lunacy eagerly embraced by those too young to remember the 1950s, by those too historically ignorant to know anything about the 1950s and by those too intellectually dishonest (such as Professor Reich) to present an objective view of what the 1950s were really like – for workers, for the U.S. government, and for the general population.

Read the whole thing.

I’m old enough to remember when the left viewed the 1950s as an era of bland ideological conformity and paranoid red baiting. It’s certainly good that the left wouldn’t allow the pitfalls of that decade to occur today.