Reader BillM brought The American Prospect article The Hidden History of Prosperity to my attention. The following excerpts are from the article.

In the crisis of World War II, the nation made the political choices that created the robust egalitarian economy of the next 30 years. Can we respond to the climate crisis with similar policies to rebuild the middle class?

This article by Robert Kuttner debunks many of the myths that some leading economists and pundits try to use to explain the increasing inequality of wealth and the shrinking middle class.

Tinkering with education and training or even a higher minimum wage will not restore good earnings for the working and middle class. But the wartime experience demonstrates that a different structure of a capitalist economy, rooted in public investment and full employment, is possible. The current failure to spread productivity gains has little to do with technology, skills, or even globalization—and everything to do with our failure to constrain great private wealth, empower labor, and creatively use democratic government for national purposes.

The article then has a great discussion of the changes that the two Roosevelt presidents brought about.

Several aspects of TR’s presidency illuminate our current situation. Significantly, there was no deep economic crisis, and no war. There was, however, a set of robber barons with unprecedented concentrations of wealth. With indignation and passion, Teddy rallied his countrymen to right the imbalance. He did not fully succeed—that was left to his cousin. But he made a good start.

The significance of this description is that Theodore Roosevelt was able to bring about great change without the need for a deep economic crisis or a war.

With that lesson in mind, it seems like the article’s search for a deep crisis to trigger reform is not the most important part of the article.

First, because there is something else other than a crisis that is needed to get us started down the path of reform.  If the collapse of the world financial system weren’t a big enough crisis, one has  to wonder what would be. Timid leadership from Obama was enough to get us over the crisis stage without getting us to the  reform stage.  During the great depression, the timid leadership of Herbert Hoover similarly did not produce great reform.

Second, I am not sure that global climate change will reach, any time soon, an obviously enough crisis level to spur people to action in the face of the crisis deniers.

What it may boil down to is for the public to find the bold leader that they can get behind and support the changes that we need.  Any such bold leader on the horizon?  Hillary Clinton? Elizabeth Warren? Bernie Sanders?  Alan Grayson?  Which one does not belong in the above list?

Presented for your consideration, the video from the Politicus USA article Bernie Sanders Delivers A Gut Punch To the Republican Agenda To Screw Ordinary Americans.