And now a word from the nineteenth century

“2. We demand that the amount of circulating medium be speedily increased to not less than $50 per capita.”

Once upon a time populists understood the money supply more than liberals do today. What are they, Japanese conservatives?

The populists of the day were also farmers, not wage labourers, which predisposes them to a familiarity with how commodity prices work – how resources can idle for lack of ‘circulating medium’. For the wage labourer, on the other hand, it’s all a bit opaque.

Recall that they regarded the urban unions of the northeast as bitter enemies regarding the silver question – hence WJB baldly threatening to burn the great cities.

When FDR formed a coalition with both farmers and unions in it, three decades later, it still had enough farmers for loose-money politics to be a winner, but not so loose that he could openly deride a strong dollar. FDR could only promise “raising commodity prices to such an extent that those who have borrowed money will, on the average, be able to repay that money in the same kind of dollar which they borrowed”.

‘Wealth belongs to him who creates it, and every dollar taken from industry without an equivalent is robbery. “If any will not work, neither shall he eat.” ‘

I know the USA isn’t Rome, but the division between populares and optimates looks alive and well.

Is there any good overview (book) on the gilded age ? Something equivalent to walker Howe’ s for the early 19th century ?(afaict the Oxford series hasn’t released one on the late 19th century yet, and all I’ve found is,Hal brands book which doesn’t seem to have received great reviews)

Ronan(rf),

There is Hobsbawm’s The Age Of Empire, the third book in his 19th C series

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Empire:_1875–1914

And you could maybe complement a broad text with work on a specific locality or topic, like in an Australian social history subject I took, we looked at Graeme Davison’s The Rise And Fall Of Marvellous Melbourne

“In the 1880s, a generation after the gold rushes, Melbourne rose to become Australia’s most populous, modern and self-consciously ‘metropolitan’ city. Its offices and warehouses leapt skyward, its suburbs sprawled and the tentacles of its commerce reached across the continent. In the 1890s, the housing boom burst, depression struck and Melbourne’s population and influence declined. In this classic work of Australian social history, Graeme Davison explores the economic, political, social and cultural consequences of the meteoric rise, and calamitous fall, of the city dubbed Marvellous Melbourne’.” (Amazon)

@8
Actually I think the USA pretty much is Rome. And the threat to the US is not the much vaunted ‘fall of the Roman Empire’ (as though that was a bad thing!) but the collapse in internal democracy, such as it was, which led to the Roman Republic collapsing and being replaced by the Empire. Certainly if you are looking for historical analogies, it’s the period 133 BC to 31 BC that strikes one as being relevant, not the 4th and 5th centuries AD (although, on the other hand, who really knows?).

– and I why do people have this wild desire to compare contemporary people or contemporary happenings to some people or times in history?

It’s obvious that the USA never can be pretty much Rome – or F…face von Clownstick can be Hitler as Hitler is this dude who on u-tube orders a pizza or complains about his I-phone. And about Rome being just like the USA – don’t you know that in Rome they spoke a completely different language – not even talking about the fact that in Rome lived Romans and NOT American?

And so – what kind of enlightenment could a hysterical – sorry ‘historical’ comparison between Rome and US deliver?

That the Pizza with Smoked Salmon and Caviar was actually invented by Wolfgang Puck an Ex-Austrian cooking in Los Angeles and NOT by the Romans?

Also Lears is highly entertaining insofar as he does not even try to hide his profound moral distaste for the era and especially for “heroes” like Teddy Roosevelt, who he skewers mercilessly throughout.

Sorry, age of empire

Amateur Hour

“the party was caught flat-footed by Trump’s victory, and there was no detailed contingency plan in the event Hillary Clinton was defeated. The widespread expectation was that President Clinton’s handpicked choice for DNC chairman would take over on January 21, a day after the inauguration. That Democrat — likely a prominent figure practiced in both fundraising and television pontificating — would be armed with a building brimming with operatives shipped down from Clinton’s Brooklyn campaign headquarters…In the words of one Democrat who remains a frequent television commentator, but who has noticed the ranks of prominent party surrogates shrinking as the number of talking points and centralized messaging memos wane, “People are afraid to go out there.”

It’s great. I’m using comparison’s between the 1.2 billion HRC flushed and Trump’s messaging to illustrate A/B testing, effective communications, and victory. It’s definitely time for the Dems clear out the dead wood.

“the party was caught flat-footed by Trump’s victory, and there was no detailed contingency plan in the event Hillary Clinton was defeated”

And people call the team who won clowns.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/democrats-donald-trump-232491