Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

Dad told me more than once, in a times-have-changed-for-the-worse manner:

When the stock market crashed in 1929, reporters at the Boston Globe cheered.

When it falls now [in specific reference to a 1970s or 1980s drop, I think] it is like a funeral.

I tried to point out that the aftermath of that stock market crash of 1929 was the Great Depression – the most recent big one of many in U.S. history, actually – and it hurt a lot more than just the rich.

On the other hand, it led to a resurgence of political and labor organizing movements that brought about the greatest increase in equality, fairness and opportunity in U.S. history.

And Dad's point is this:

What does it say when those paid to pay attention to what's going on – Dad always respected journalism as a calling more than my definition there – identify completely with the super-rich in a time of great and growing inequality?

That was another of Dad's negative mantras: all the work of the movements of the 1930s and 1940s to bring wealth down toward the majority, undone in no time with the Reagan administration.

How the bad can be done so much more quickly than the good.

I never could articulate my interpretation of that. The basic truth is evident, but there are a few points I tried to make. For one, although the increase in inequality has been astounding (with the reversal starting about 1973, before Reagan, and the following decades eclipsing the 1980s), plutocrats with their continuing best efforts have not completely succeeded undone the gains and reforms of the Depression era even today. Primarily, I want to change the focus. The problem lies in the changes of the 1930s and 1940s being reforms, not fundamental changes to an unfair, corrupt system.