“An uber lefty is comparing him to Carter!”
Remarkable in itself. But I’ll tell ya, when I project this thing out and how weird things could get, I have a much darker image. Things were crappy under Carter, let there be no doubt, and I was a tad more of a youngster and wasn’t involved in financial markets and of course life was simpler in hundreds of ways. So I know my perspective is a tad warped.
Perhaps the years have dulled my recollections (absolutely possible) but during the Carter era, employment wasn’t quite so hard to find and we didn’t have wide segments of the population ready to assert their entitlement to stuff and other peoples’ funding (the FSA = Free S**t Army as some call it) to support their feral lifestyles. Sure, everything doubled in price and everyone was depressed and did stupid dances and wore stupid clothes and probably lots of other stupid things....but the whole country didn’t descend into the horrific state that most cities were in by say 1974. Encapsulated, my view of the future has plenty of those “Mad Max” and “Escape from LA” images flying around, with widespread lawlessnes pervading many aspects of society. Kind of like the breakdown of the USSR, with police in on the criminality half the time.
I’m not very sanguine about our near future.
I wasn’t around in the 70s but I think you’re right about the employment situation. The unemployment rate isn’t quite to Great Depression levels but it is the worst we’ve had since then.