These are troubling times, but it’s not the end of times. Most of us remember the 1970′s. Gas prices doubled and drivers waited in long lines. In 1973-74 the stock market fell 48%. A vice president (Agnew), and then the president (Nixon), resigned in disgrace, Helicopters were evacuating Americans from the roof of the embassy in Saigon 

Mostly I remember Jimmy Carter. He was a  one-term Georgia Governor and a former peanut farmer. Carter ran for election sounding like a conservative but governed from the far left.  Much like today, the Democrats captured 61 seats in the Senate and 2/3rds of the House. They raised taxes on the wealthy, tried to fix prices, and increased spending. They instituted a slew of show trials in the Senate and effectively shut down the CIA for years to come.  Global cooling was the big worry.  The pundits of the time said we would run out of oil by 1985 and would not be able to feed the world’s population by 1990.

In Carter’s last year in office, inflation hit 13%. That was the year we bought our first home.  We felt lucky to get an 11% VA Mortgage. In his last 436 days in office, 130 Americans were held hostage at the American Embassy in Iran. 

Oh yes, the Swine flu first surfaced in 1976.  The government mobilized to vaccinate 40 million Americans at a cost $500 million in today’s dollars. One person died from the flu and 30 people died from the vaccinations. 

So we have been here before and we will certainly see good days ahead.  But what is different this time, and what worries me, is the accelerating class warfare.  You can’t love the employee and hate the employer. You can’t hate the rich and create jobs.

We have a local –and painful example of this. I live in a small town of about 14,000.  Our local industry is fishing and boat building –specifically there are three companies in town who build super-yachts –the kind that sell for $25 million and up.  They are now on their last builds. No new orders are coming in. So when the current builds are finished, about 500 highly paid workers will be out of work.  Yes some may revel in the fact that the rich are less rich now –but those 500 workers won’t be among them.  I think Abe Lincoln said it best:

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

 You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

 You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.

 You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.

 You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence.

 You cannot help men permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves–Abraham Lincoln

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