Im a Depression historian. The GOP tax bill is straight out of 1929.
“There are two ideas of government,” William Jennings Bryan declared in his 1896 “Cross of Gold” speech. “There are those who believe that if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.”
That was more than three decades before the collapse of the economy in 1929. The crash followed a decade of Republican control of the federal government during which trickle-down policies, including massive tax cuts for the rich, produced the greatest concentration of income in the accounts of the richest 0.01 percent at any time between World War I and 2007 (when trickle-down economics, tax cuts for the hyper-rich, and deregulation again resulted in another economic collapse).
Yet the plain fact that the trickle-down approach has never worked leaves Republicans unfazed. The GOP has been singing from the Market-is-God hymnal for well over a century, telling us that deregulation, tax cuts for the rich, and the concentration of ever more wealth in the bloated accounts of the richest people will result in prosperity for the rest of us. The party is now trying to pass a scam that throws a few crumbs to the middle class (temporarily — millions of middle-class Americans will soon see a tax hike if the bill is enacted) while heaping benefits on the super-rich, multiplying the national debt and endangering the American economy.
In 1926, Calvin Coolidge’s treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, one of the world’s richest men, pushed through a massive tax cut that would substantially contribute to the causes of the Great Depression. Republican Sen. George Norris of Nebraska said that Mellon himself would reap from the tax bill “a larger personal reduction [in taxes] than the aggregate of practically all the taxpayers in the state of Nebraska.” The same is true now of Donald Trump, the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson and other fabulously rich people.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/11/30/im-a-depression-historian-the-gop-tax-bill-is-straight-out-of-1929/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-d%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.83a50965570c
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I attended middle and high school there. High property taxes but a great school system...my parents wanted us to be well educated and chose this district for that reason. I ended up changing careers(which I paid for myself) from art/illustration to teaching (I had to eat, pay rent, etc.). The depression was barely gleaned over in my classes. I only learned about it from my family and TV. My grandmom still had her old ration stamps from WW2. My grandfather worked a zillion odd jobs and my parents would receive pennies on Halloween instead of candy. They used to collect and sell scrap as kids in Phila. My family is financially responsible and knows the value of money and herd work and this was passed onto my sister and me. I saved every penny I made as a teacher and went without movies, restaurants, new clothes, trips, cut my own hair and did whatever I could to put as much of my teacher salary into a 401K. Then I got sick, couldn't teach, forfeited the small health insur through the district (I only taught 15 years so retirement was not an option) and chose the new ACA instead...to save $150 a month. Now I can not get that insurance back, ever, and my ACA and medical bills will bankrupt me, my 83 year old parents and I will die in severe pain since I need a series of surgeries for the rest of my life. I feel as though my country is punishing me for being hard working, very cautious with my income, and planning for a realistic future living within my means until I die of old age. What happened to my country? Is it in the lost and found box someplace? How is this allowed to happen? 
