Robert Reich
When I was 4, in 1950, my father (then a staunch Republican) warned me that I and my children and my children's children would be paying down the national debt Franklin D. Roosevelt had created. I didn't even know what a debt was but I remember having nightmares about it. Dad was right about many things but he was wrong on this one. A few years later the economy had grown so much that tax revenues had shrunk FDR's debt to almost nothing as a proportion of the economy. (It also helped that the top marginal tax rate in those days was 91 percent.) Dad is now almost 99, still very alert and able to do most things for himself, and a confirmed Democrat who thinks the current Republican party is "nuts" (as he told me yesterday). And I now have a 4-year-old granddaughter who's visiting over the holidays. I haven't mentioned the national debt to her.
I hope you and your family (regardless of their political persuasions) have a happy holiday. Hug them tightly.
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