When I said Late Teens/20's, I meant the ideology of that group of people as a whole. That same ideology that is in DC now. The European style of socialism. These are the same people, this demographic group, that elected these idiots in DC. The 18-27 demographic leans very progressive and voted so in 2008. This is what I mean by "this generation is taking the country down the crapper".
I'm going to have to point you to my responses to Tarheel. In summation, the 18-29 year old voters only made up 13% of Obama's votes; the other 40% came from older generations. Yes, our generation played a part, but we were hardly
the reason for Obama's election.
You cannot say with truth that this country was not better off from 1800-1960 than it has been from 1961-NOW. Look at the numbers, look at the culture, crime rates, unemployment, GDP by %, morale (not morals - not gonna get into that), quality of life, and on and on....
Yes, quality of life has greatly decreased, which is why the average life expectancy in Colonial America was under 25 years in the Virginia colony, and in New England about 40% of children failed to reach adulthood. Meanwhile, nowadays, the average lifespan is 74 years. Quality of life has clearly taken a sharp downturn over the years.
During the crash of 1893, unemployment was around 20%. There were no food stamps, no welfare and no medical assistance. You were on your own, left with the kindness of strangers. Modern American industry started around 1830. Over these past 180 years, we have had one difficulty followed by good times, then another rough patch followed by another smooth patch, so on and so on. Just as with most things, various measurements of our success are going to be cyclical.
As far as crime rates, that has been decreasing, at least in regard to violent crimes. The FBI only kept up with data since 1960, so there's no real way to compare the crime rates of the 1800s to now. You also have to consider that technology has allowed us to catch and convict more criminals, whereas in the 1800s many crimes went unpunished due to an inability to identify the culprit.
The only reason the ONE big economic downturn that happened between 1800-1960, even HAPPENED was due to progressive policy (raising interest rates, deflation of the currency, explicit margin trading) and unwarranted and purposeful speculation by NY junk traders (one of whom was - yep FDR - before he was president). High Tarrifs and increased taxes actually discouraged investment in the US prolonging the Great Depression a good 5-7 years. This is much of the same depression economic policy Baracky Hussein is using now - and the same thing will happen.
Progressivism in the United States came about during the 1880s to 1920s. There was even a Progressive Party in 1912 that was founded by Theodore Roosevelt. Ever heard of the roaring 20s? We successfully transitioned from a wartime economy to a peacetime economy, much of this due to the progressive leaders at the time.
Yes, the Great Depression occurred shortly after in 1929, but even economic scholars can't agree on the cause. Those who believe in a large role for the state in the economy believe it was mostly a failure of the free markets and those who believe in free markets believe it was mostly a failure of government that compounded the problem.
Regardless, much of our success and failure is always going to be cyclical.