Interesting, fresh indictment of Carter and the deregulation-financialization of the 1970s. Also, Paris Hilton’s doghouse. 

Summer 2009. Unemployment is soaring. Across America, millions of terrified people are facing foreclosure and getting kicked to the curb. Meanwhile in sunny California, the hotel-heiress Paris Hilton is investing $350,000 of her $100 million fortune in a two-story house for her dogs. A Pepto Bismol-colored replica of Paris’ own Beverly Hills home, the backyard doghouse provides her precious pooches with two floors of luxury living, complete with abundant closet space and central air. […]

The GOP has led the attack on Roosevelt’s legacy, but there has been surprising bipartisan support. President Carter got the ball rolling with his endorsement of supply-side taxation and his commitment to fight inflation by promoting labor market competition and raising unemployment. Carter’s policies worked to reverse the New Deal’s tilt toward labor and higher wages. Under his watch, transportation and telecommunications were deregulated, which undermined unions and the practice of industry-wide solidarity bargaining. Carter also campaigned to lower trade barriers and to open our markets to foreign trade. These policies were presented as curbs on monopolistic behavior, but the effect was to weaken labor unions and drive down wages by allowing business to relocate production to employ lower-wage foreign workers while still selling in the American market. 

Carter also began a fatal reversal of economic policy by refusing to support the Humphey-Hawkins Full Employment Act. Instead of pushing for full employment, Carter appointed Paul Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve with the charge to use monetary policy to restrain inflation without regard for the effect on unemployment. Since then, inflation rates have been brought down dramatically, but unemployment has been higher and the growth rate in national income and in wages has slowed dramatically compared with the New Deal era. […]

Any residual commitment toward collective bargaining under the Wagner Act was abandoned during the Reagan administration, ironically the only union president ever elected to the White House. Reagan, of course, is known as the president who fired striking air traffic controllers in 1981. He is also known for the devastating regulatory changes during his presidency and those of his Republican successors (the two Presidents Bush). Their appointments to the National Labor Relations Board helped to turn this agency from one charged with promoting union organization and collective bargaining to one charged with ensuring that employers were free to avoid unions. Under this new regime, private sector unionism, the unions covered by the Wagner Act, has almost disappeared.

The 1970s also saw a shift in tax policy away from the principles of ability-to-pay and income redistribution toward those associated with supply-side economists who argued for lower taxes on the rich to provide incentives to accumulate wealth. After campaigning for tax reform, Carter signed the Revenue Act of 1978, which gave small tax benefits for working people and dramatic cuts in capital gains and corporate taxes and on the top marginal rates. Since then, major reductions on taxes paid by the rich enacted under Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush have dramatically reduced the tax burden on the richest Americans.