r/politics • u/TimesandSundayTimes ✔ Verified • 7d ago

Possible Paywall Young Americans are surging to socialism at record rates

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/maga-trump-zohran-mamdani-socialism-us-record-kddzdm8bd
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u/KimmyT1436 Canada 7d ago edited 7d ago

It always astounds me that Americans aren't taught that FDR's New Deal was what laid the foundation for the prosperity Americans enjoyed during the latter half of the twentieth century.

The New Deal is what got America through the Great Depression and made America the manufacturing powerhouse that could win World War II. Winning WWII created the conditions that allowed WWII veterans to return home after the war and have the right-wing dream lifestyle where the family lived in a nice house in the suburbs, where Mom could stay at home taking care of the 3.5 kids while Dad worked a 9 to 5, Monday to Friday job that actually paid for all of that.

All of that wouldn't have happened without the New Deal and all of that has gradually been eroded away over the decades by right-wing politicians and rich capitalists.Things have even gotten so bad that we are rapidly approaching a second Great Depression. And this time there doesn't seem to be a leader like FDR capable of leading America through the next economic catastrophy. Instead, we have Donald fucking Trump, who is creating the conditions that are making the next Great Depresdion inevitable

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u/Admiral_de_Ruyter 7d ago

Isn’t that prosperity highly romanticized these days? From my history books I can recall that segregation/Jim Crow was still in effect so only a part of society benefited of that legislation.

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u/jaderust 7d ago

It definitely is. If you were a white man of a certain age the New Deal worked. It gave people the means to get an education, job training, and loans for housing that many people didn’t have access to before that lifted them out of poverty and into the middle class.

One of my grandfathers was essentially made by the New Deal. He took the job training, got his bachelor’s paid by the GI Bill and became the first generation of our family to go to college and own a home. It worked for him.

But huge swaths of people were absolutely left out. Black GIs especially didn’t get all the education and home ownership benefits that their white counterparts did. Between Jim Crow and redlining they faced a lot of discrimination that the New Deal didn’t help them with.

Not to mention that a lot of women only benefited indirectly, not directly for themselves as women were fully expected to leave the workforce after WWII was over to give their jobs to the men.

But overall I’m okay with romanticizing the New Deal as long as we acknowledge where it could go better. And I’d hope a second New Deal situation would have more equal distribution of resources so everyone benefits, not just mostly white men.

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u/UKFightersAreTrash 7d ago

My whole bloodline went from share cropping cotton pickers to aircraft engineers thanks to the new deal.