>There were numerous warning signs that the Roaring Twenties couldn't last forever. Even in the peak years of prosperity several hundred banks failed each year. Few illustrated the point better than the real estate boom in Florida, when properties were sold for fantastic sums and ended when a hurricane ravaged the peninsula and mocked advertisements promising "a soothing tropical wind." The stock market became a glorified casino. Barbers, stenographers, and bellhops cashed in on "hot tips" picked up while on duty. One valet was reported to have parlayed his wages into a quarter million dollars. Few bothered listening to the skeptics who warned that this couldn't go on forever.>Washington did not take any serious action to curb speculation. World War I had caused the national debt to balloon from $1.1 billion in 1914 to $23.9 billion in 1921. Conservative financial principles pointed to a diversion of surplus funds to reduce this financial burden. That same year of 1921 saw Congress launch the Bureau of the Budget, whose director was to assist the president in preparing careful estimates of receipts and expenditures for submission to Congress as the annual budget. This long overdue reform was designed in part to prevent haphazardly extravagent appropriations.
>Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and his fellow millionaires were eager to abolish burdensome wartime taxes on the grounds that the wealthy would store their money in tax shelters rather than invest in wage-giving industries. The Mellonites provided a strong argument that high taxes were hostile to business and also brought in less revenue than more modest taxes. Mellon thus devised several tax cuts between 1921 and '26. Congress repealed the excess profits tax, the gift tax, and reduced excise taxes, the surtax, the income tax, and estate taxes. An individual in 1921 with an income in excess of $1 million had paid $663,000 in income taxes, down to $200,000 in 1926. The net result was to shift much of the tax burden to the middle class. As to the claim that tax cuts resulted in higher wages, not strictly so. Business tycoons took advantage to invest in state-of-the-art factories, but not in wage increases, which lagged behind productivity.>Mellon, "the greatest Treasury Secretary since Hamilton", remains a controversial figure. He did reduce the national debt, getting it down to $16 billion. But his opponents argued that he didn't do enough to reduce it, especially when the economy was still red hot. He was also accused of indirectly encouraging the stock speculation carousel. If he had absorbed more of the national income in taxes, there would be less money for speculation. His refusal to do so epitomized the one-track mind laisse-faire mindset of the decade.
>Historians have often depicted the Roaring Twenties as "the birth of modern America", the decade when Hollywood, car culture, radio, recorded music, and liberated women became part of everyday life. Frederick Lewis Allen's best-selling book "Only Yesterday" probably did more than any other written work to project the '20s as a "revolution in manners and morals." Most Americans now lived in urban areas, traditional religious beliefs appeared to have died with the Scopes Monkey Trial, the rise of the flapper, and the shift from an economy based on capital goods to one based on consumer goods are all cited as evidence of this change. The advertising executive selling a Chevrolet appeared to have replaced the farmer behing a plow as the "average" American.>In reality, the America we know today had not quite emerged in the 1920s. The government and financial system to a large extent still operated on 19th century hands-off principles, modern social safety nets did not yet exist, and ethnic identities, especially in immigrant communities, remained strong. The changing role of women was the end result of trends that began with the industrial boom of the late 19th century. Outside major cities, a great deal of America remained a rural, homespun society without modern conveniences. This was especially true in the South, which did not benefit from the decade's prosperity and continued to be mired in a rural backwardness blighted by the ugly stain of Jim Crow. Further, it is incorrect to say traditional religion had become unimportant; especially in rural America the old-time Christianity remained as vital as ever. The event of recorded music also saw country-western, blues, and gospel records give a "voice" to a large part of the country that did not identify with urban flappers and jazz clubs.
>>18430923>cut taxes for the rich>let the free market sort things out>*stock traders in October 1929 - slow mo footage*Looneytoonarians absolutely btfo forever.
>>18430940fuck off LBJfag
>>18430921The interwar presidents before FDR. A corrupt dickhead who couldn't spend a day without getting in a scandal, the most boring man alive, and Herb.
>>18430924What ultimately crashed everything was the same old thing that caused previous American financial panics which was speculation and over-production. Too many goods and not enough people/money to buy them.
>>18430978thanks, Reddit
