Free Catastrophe by Dick Morris

controls, which so limit their incomes that many just walk away from their properties. Likewise, taxpayers could become a hostage class, subject to the political impulses and inclinations of those who don’t share their tax burden.
    No politician will come to their aid, since their collective voting strength isn’t sufficient to win any election—not to mention the fact that any politician suspected of coddling the rich at the expense of the bulk of the voters who pay no taxes, and the sizable minority who reap benefits through “refundable” tax credits would be slated for extinction.
    In the meantime, the majority continue to receive refundable tax checks in even larger amounts. It is their job to eat the tax money, not to generate it.
    Of course, there’s a political fallacy in Obama’s worldview. The richest taxpayers may be impotent politically due to their small numbers, but they’re not impotent economically. The top 20 percent of earners account for 46 percent of all consumer spending. 81 They’re the ones who spend money. If Obama declares war on them, as he appears to be doing, he cannot recover economically without them. It’s to them that he must look to make sure the American people start doing everything they’re not doing right now: buying stock, paying taxes, consuming goods and services. Without their participation, the economy has no hope of recovery.
    Obama cannot succeed by waging war on the rich. It didn’t work when FDR tried it, and it cannot work now.
    OBAMA: FOLLOWING THE LESSONS OF FDR’S SECOND TERM
    As he prepared to become president in the days between his election and the inauguration, Obama and his aides made it known that he was focusing, with special attention, on two figures from our history: Abraham Lincoln and FDR. With luck, he learned important lessons from Lincoln, who has so many to teach.
    But he appears to have learned some more dangerous lessons from the story of how Franklin D. Roosevelt handled the economy during his second term—the years from 1937 until 1941, when the depression seemed to drag on with no end in sight.
    To understand Obama’s political strategy—so that we can defeat it—we need to learn how FDR faced a crisis very similar to that which engulfs us now. Unfortunately, Obama’s tactics suggest much of the same emphasis on class warfare and special interests that characterized Roosevelt’s second term.
    FDR deserves his heroic reputation as an American icon. He brought us Social Security, the minimum wage, securities regulation, and widespread unionization and, of course, saved us in World War II.
    But the most important brick in the wall of respect that has been erected to him was that he cured the Depression. In reality, he did no such thing.
    When Roosevelt first took office in March 1933, the nation’s banking structure was in a state of collapse and chaos. Most banks either had failed or were teetering on the brink. Long lines formed outside many banks, as anxious people clamored to reclaim their life savings.
    FDR handled the situation brilliantly, closing all the banks and then gradually reopening them—one by one—assuring the public that he had determined that they were sound. In his inaugural address of 1933, he denounced “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” 82
    The effect was electrifying. The crowds no longer beseiged the banks, and the system was restored.
    In his first hundred days in office, FDR bombarded Congress with proposals to catalyze recovery. For the farms, he proposed to limit production to raise prices. For business, he sought to stop deflation and increase wages.For the unemployed, he created the Civilian Conservation Corps, to put them to work in rural areas protecting our national resources. Elsewhere, he spent prodigiously on public works to offer short-term employment.
    Ironically, in view of his subsequent lurch to the left, Roosevelt’s