The Twinkie-Era Defense

"Today, of course, the mansions, armies of servants and yachts are back, bigger than ever—and any hint of policies that might crimp plutocrats’ style is met with cries of 'socialism.' Indeed, the whole Romney campaign was based on the premise that President Obama’s threat to modestly raise taxes on top incomes, plus his temerity in suggesting that some bankers had behaved badly, were crippling the economy. Surely, then, the far less plutocrat-friendly environment of the 1950s must have been an economic disaster, right?

"Actually, some people thought so at the time. Paul Ryan and many other modern conservatives are devotees of Ayn Rand. Well, the collapsing, moocher-infested nation she portrayed in 'Atlas Shrugged,' published in 1957, was basically Dwight Eisenhower’s America.

"Strange to say, however, the oppressed executives Fortune portrayed in 1955 didn’t go Galt and deprive the nation of their talents. On the contrary, if Fortune is to be believed, they were working harder than ever. And the high-tax, strong-union decades after World War II were in fact marked by spectacular, widely shared economic growth: nothing before or since has matched the doubling of median family income between 1947 and 1973."

 

Paul Krugman in The New York Times argues that "you can have prosperity without demeaning workers and coddling the rich."