Burden of Taxation

Then
Pierre S. du Pont, president of E. I. du Pont
de Nemours & Co., was-for understandable reasons-of the opinion that the rich should not bear the burden of taxation. Taxes, du Pont reasoned, ought to be paid by the working class, not the "productive" class (which he defined as large employers).(McElvaine)

Now
Negative Job Growth for 11 Years

Less Pollution

Then
Fewer pedestrians were to be seen on the streets since many men did not go to work and women shopped less frequently; for lack of warm clothing and fuel, many people stayed in bed most of the day during winter. The air became cleaner over industrial cities, for there was less smoke from factory chimneys. (Ellis)

Now
Will Economic Collapse Save Us From Climate Catastrophe?

Child Labor

Then
By 1929 the United States stood with two underdeveloped countries, China and India, as the only major nations allowing women and children to work at night.(McElvaine)

Now
GOP Set to Roll Back Child Labor Laws
GOP Set to Roll Back Child Labor Laws

Fundamentally Sound

Then
As the decline degenerated into the Crash, a wide array of leaders repeated phrases containing the words "fundamentally sound." (McElvaine)

Now
Disaster Not Averted

Community Oriented Values

Then
The economic collapse that started in 1929 obliged people who had begun to accept the new values of unlimited consumption and extreme individualism to take another look at those beliefs in comparison with the more traditional, community-oriented values that had existed in earlier times. (McElvaine)

Now
Rise of Commons Transforms Rust Belt City, in 2035

The 1930's

. . . in the words of Tom Wingfield, the narrator in The Glass Menagerie (1945): . . . that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy.
(McElvaine)

The Good Old Days

Then and Now
From the perspective of 2009, it certainly appears that it was the general deregulation intended to restore, as much as possible, the good old days of the 1920's . . . and George W. Bush's Coolidge-Mellon-style tax cuts on the very rich that has caused enormous damage.
(McElvaine in introduction to 25th anniversary edition)

Austerity Hawks Want a Return to 1920's Capitalism