The Stage was set for today's disaster 100 Years Ago

The Progressive Era put us on our current course to disaster. 
Then the Government decided to tax our morals with prohibition. That led to massive organized crime. Thanks Progressives! m/r

New Year’s Eve 100 Years Ago
by BURT Folsom on DECEMBER 31, 2012

“Tax hikes, more spending, and the debt is unsustainable,” they lament. True, but we have recovered from worse than that, and have done so often in our history.

On New Year’s Eve 100 years ago, by contrast, most Americans were optimistic about the coming year 1913. And then disaster hit. During 1913, politicians in both parties endorsed three disastrous reforms: the federal income tax, the direct election of senators, and the Federal Reserve. Much of the grief our economy is experiencing today can be traced back to these three “reforms” of 1913.

The income tax was not poisonous at first. In 1913, Congress and President Wilson started slowly by exempting most Americans from the tax and putting the top rate at 7%. In the 1920s, the top rate was a higher 25%; in the 1930s FDR pushed it up to almost 80%, and then to 94% in the 1940s. (For more on these tax hikes, read FDR Goes to War, written by myself and my wife Anita.) In one generation, the United States went from telling rich people they had to pay 7% to telling them they could only keep 6% on all they earned over $200,000. The progressive income tax today is the biggest impediment to providing “equal protection of the laws to all citizens.”

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