Does this sound like any other progressive candidate?
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...n-t-the-answer
Try this for a progressive economic plan:
Individual wealth capped at $600 million.
Annual income capped at $12 million.
Total inheritance capped t $60 million.
$24,000 basic income for all Americans.
Universal healthcare.
30 Hour workweek.
Four week minimum vacation.
Price controls on basic commodities.
That’s an actual plan, put forward by an actual America politician and potential candidate for the presidency. In 1934.
Though the numbers have been adjusted to account for inflation, this is the Share Our Wealth plan, as proposed by then Louisiana Sen. Huey Long. Long has come down to modern Americans mostly as corrupt and powerful “Kingfish,” and as the real-life inspiration for Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, but that view of Long is one that’s heavily shaded by those who felt threatened by his popularity. Which was pretty much everyone on both left and right. Long’s policies not only energized tremendous support in Louisiana, but generated a national base—particularly among minorities—that threatened established candidates. He was regarded as “the most dangerous man in America” by Franklin Roosevelt. At the same time Long’s enemies on the right, particularly in corporate and investment communities, leveled against him a familiar charge. They called him “a socialist” or even “a communist.”
But there’s a difference between the politics of 1934 and 2019. In 1934, real communists and socialists—as in supporters of Marxist theories that dismissed most concepts of personal ownership—were a significant factor in America. Those genuine communists, who were hated by “business leaders” but not yet so vilified as they would be in Cold War decades, had a different insult for Long.
They called him a capitalist. Because he was.
The Share Our Wealth program was progressive, in that it was absolutely designed to redistribute wealth that had even then gathered in an ever-shrinking upper class, and press it down not just to the middle class, but to every class. And every race. But that does make the plan ,or Long, socialist. Certainly not communist. Long’s plan was just not within what we’ve allowed to become a very, very narrow view of capitalism that treats every alternative as a threat.
Individual wealth capped at $600 million.
Annual income capped at $12 million.
Total inheritance capped t $60 million.
$24,000 basic income for all Americans.
Universal healthcare.
30 Hour workweek.
Four week minimum vacation.
Price controls on basic commodities.
That’s an actual plan, put forward by an actual America politician and potential candidate for the presidency. In 1934.
Though the numbers have been adjusted to account for inflation, this is the Share Our Wealth plan, as proposed by then Louisiana Sen. Huey Long. Long has come down to modern Americans mostly as corrupt and powerful “Kingfish,” and as the real-life inspiration for Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, but that view of Long is one that’s heavily shaded by those who felt threatened by his popularity. Which was pretty much everyone on both left and right. Long’s policies not only energized tremendous support in Louisiana, but generated a national base—particularly among minorities—that threatened established candidates. He was regarded as “the most dangerous man in America” by Franklin Roosevelt. At the same time Long’s enemies on the right, particularly in corporate and investment communities, leveled against him a familiar charge. They called him “a socialist” or even “a communist.”
But there’s a difference between the politics of 1934 and 2019. In 1934, real communists and socialists—as in supporters of Marxist theories that dismissed most concepts of personal ownership—were a significant factor in America. Those genuine communists, who were hated by “business leaders” but not yet so vilified as they would be in Cold War decades, had a different insult for Long.
They called him a capitalist. Because he was.
The Share Our Wealth program was progressive, in that it was absolutely designed to redistribute wealth that had even then gathered in an ever-shrinking upper class, and press it down not just to the middle class, but to every class. And every race. But that does make the plan ,or Long, socialist. Certainly not communist. Long’s plan was just not within what we’ve allowed to become a very, very narrow view of capitalism that treats every alternative as a threat.
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