Yesterday's man equates today's middle class with yesterday's poor

Have you read "American then (25 years ago) and now", posted here yesterday? Walt recommended that you read (or reread) The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream, by the late Studs Terkel. The book tells, in their own words, the plight of America's poor.

The Great Divide was published in 1988. It is a compilation of interviews Mr. Terkel did earlier in the 1980s. Ronald Reagan was president of the US of A in those years. His immediate predecessor, whose Democratic maladministration was responsible for much of America's economic distress, was a former farmer from the Peach State, one James "Jimmy" Carter.

Ronald Reagan is no longer with us. Jimmy Carter, like the poor, still is. And yesterday, just by coincidence, he offered a waiting nation his views on America's "economic challenges".

During an interview with The Associated Press, he said that years of tax breaks for the wealthy, a minimum wage untethered from the inflation rate and electoral districts drawn to maximize political polarization have reduced the quality of life for all but the richest Americans.

Note from Ed.: There's a video clip embedded in the Washington Times report, which I've been trying for half an hour to copy and embed here, but thanks to Blogger's screwed-up GUI, you'll have to go to the newspaper account if you want to hear the words from the horses's mouth. Back to Walt...

In the video, President Carter said there was "a great deal of discouragement since 2008." Well DUH! But how can that be? When the affirmative action version of Jimmy Carter was sworn in, you'd have thought the Choir Invisible was going to descend from Heaven and make everything right -- as right as Carter himself would have made things if only he'd had a second term. What happened to "Yes we can" and all the hopey-changey stuff?

Seems to Walt that people who create messes should have some ideas about how to clean them up. If Mr. Carter has a magic wand which could be waved to end the present impasse in Washington, he would do well to hand it to the incumbent... immediately!