In such a landscape of postwar monopoly, the United States, which had not recovered before the war despite eight years of statist policies, could sustain, for a brief time, Krugman\u2019s dream tonics of a top income tax rate of 91 percent (with plenty of loopholes) \u2014 or almost any tonics within the broad parameters of free-market capitalism. Yet soon by the mid-1960s and 1970s, America reentered a competitive global economy, became increasingly dependent on soon-to-become-costly imported oil, and found its high-cost unionized labor, high taxes, and highly regulated 1950s economy inflexible and hardly able to adjust to the rise of dynamic competitors like Germany, Japan, South Korea, and later China. That is why the fossilized 1950s paradigm, which Krugman is nostalgic about, by the time of the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations had stalled and was plagued with periodic bouts of high inflation, high unemployment, high interest rates, stagnant inner cities, a growing rust belt, and a generally stagflating economy. If Obama succeeds in taking us back to Krugman\u2019s 1950s dreams, then he likewise better hope that horizontal drilling and fracking, and in large part on federally leased lands, can return the US to energy independence, that technological breakthroughs increase productivity even more, and that rivals such as Japan, China, and Germany recede either because of demographic ossification or a desire to go backward and command and control their economies even more than we do.<\/p>\n
\n
\u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Paul Krugman\u00a0weaves a fantasy tale\u00a0of how high taxes, big unions, and government regulations created a booming 1950s economy \u2014 the implication being that in reactionary fashion we can now in a second term return to our heyday under Obama\u2019s envisioned union support, growth in government, tax hikes, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[146,47],"tags":[12,149,147,175,1030],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-54","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5707,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/krugmans-california-dreaming\/","url_meta":{"origin":314,"position":0},"title":"Krugman’s California Dreaming","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online It is rare, even in the case of Paul Krugman, to read a column in which almost everything that is stated is either wrong or deliberately misleading. But his\u00a0recent take\u00a0on California\u2019s renaissance is pure fantasy. I wish it weren\u2019t. Krugman starts with the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12120,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/victor-davis-hanson-rachel-maddow-robert-muellers-legal-dream-team-paul-krugman-all-have-lessons-for-2020\/","url_meta":{"origin":314,"position":1},"title":"Victor Davis Hanson: Rachel Maddow, Robert Mueller’s legal dream team, Paul Krugman all have lessons for 2020","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 7, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Fox News The Washington Post recently published a surprising indictment of\u00a0MSNBC\u00a0host, Stanford graduate and Rhodes scholar Rachel Maddow. Post media critic Erik Wemple wrote that Maddow misled her audience by claiming the now-discredited\u00a0Steele\u00a0dossier was largely verifiable \u2014 even at a time when there was plenty of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7293,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/liberals-exempt-from-scrutiny\/","url_meta":{"origin":314,"position":2},"title":"Liberals: Exempt from Scrutiny","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 6, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"It doesn't matter if you belong to the 0.1 percent as long as you say\u00a0the right things. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 The qualifications of a Tommy \u201cDude\u201d\u00a0Vietor\u00a0or Ben Rhodes that placed them in the Situation Room during Obama-administration crises were not years of distinguished public service, military\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7477,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/egalitarian-grandees\/","url_meta":{"origin":314,"position":3},"title":"Egalitarian Grandees\u00a0","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 28, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"If you\u2019re loudly green, you can have a carbon footprint the size of Godzilla\u2019s. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Charting liberal hypocrisy is now old hat. From academia to the Sierra Club, elite progressives expect to live lives that are quite different from what they envision for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The World"","block_context":{"text":"The World","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1974,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/who-really-is-anti-science\/","url_meta":{"origin":314,"position":4},"title":"Who Really Is “Anti-Science”?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine In any national election we can depend on the usual liberal\u00a0ad hominemattacks on Republicans and their candidates. One chestnut already appearing is the charge that Republicans comprise the \u201canti-science party,\u201d as even a Republican, presidential primary candidate Jon Huntsman, fretted recently. Huntsman\u2019s angst arose\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Global Warming"","block_context":{"text":"Global Warming","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/global-warming-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4098,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/political-vultures\/","url_meta":{"origin":314,"position":5},"title":"Political Vultures","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The sick are of turning insanity into politics by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Very few Americans are fans of both\u00a0The Communist Manifesto\u00a0and\u00a0Mein Kampf, as the Tucson killer, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, apparently was. Fewer still post on the Internet fears about \u201cbrainwashing,\u201d \u201cmind control,\u201d and \u201cconscience dreaming\u201d; have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5632,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions\/5632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}