why most folks on this board think the way they do -

Posted on: January 18, 2020 at 12:13:35 CT

In 1955, the federal government was relatively small but exercised enormous effective power. The federal budget was $68 billion, which is about one-thirty-sixth as large as that of today's government. In fact, the whole federal government was smaller than a single department of the government today: the Department of Education, which, ironically, is the one that the Republicans keep saying that they will abolish.

But the size of the state by today's standards masked its effective hold on the public mind. The G.I. bill, it was believed, would educate all soldiers, while the federal government would reconstruct the Europe the Nazis destroyed, even while it protected us from the demonized Soviets who had been our allies in the war the day before yesterday.

The Cold War purported to pit US capitalism against USSR communism, but the truth was that there was very little enthusiasm for market economics in the United States. It was not taught in the classrooms. Mises himself could not find a paid position as professor of economics. Keynesian thinking — which imagined the government to be an effective manager of the macroeconomy — was seen at the only real alternative to socialism.