How we got into this fix

                 Maximum tax rate  for         

                    Ordinary Income     Capital Gains       Corporations  

                                                                                                  what else was happening

Ike                     91.0                        25.0                     52            Interstate highways program

Carter                 70.0                        39.9                     48

Reagan               28.0                        28.0                     34

Clinton                39.6                        28.0                     35              Nafta

 Bush                  35.0                       15.0                      35        

Now what?

 Trump and Bernie represent a completely expectable,even rational  response when an high- import trade policy  overlays a , low- tax( and therefore necessarily low public- investment ) economic policy. Particularly for a society which still has a vestigial recall of  when we acted rationally. 

Just maybe we'll dodge a bullet this election because T&B are dividing the "Day of the Locusts"  vote.

So far. 

But we're living on borrowed time. 

Add to this economic picture whatever the degree of racism is  among  non- college- educated whites.

It ain't going to work.

When it comes to trade policy I swap Krugmann for Keynes whose one-liner was "let all goods be homespun" It's transparently wasteful per se and contrary to ecological sense to serve the ,say, Dayton market with goods shipped from Shanghai. And ,given the combination of Reagan's tax policies and Citizens' United the prospect of public support to provide a decent life for our unemployed is exactly zero.

Madness.. . 

Madness!