Does this sound familiar?

From “Louis D. Brandeis, A Life” by Melvin I. Urofsky:

“As early as 1922, Brandeis recognized that the so-called boom had very weak under pinningns.  In the nineteenth century, innovations in production and transportation had led to cost reductions that had been passed on in the form of lower prices to the consumer.   Since 1900, quite the opposite development had taken place, with production costs and consumer prices rising, not for lack of invention, but because large companies increased their profit margins.  Distribution had become the job of middlemen, whose costs added to the final price of every product.  Consumers paid more, but workers did not see an equivalent rise in their wages.  As a result, a small percentage of the population realized great wealth, while the majority of Americans paid more for their costs of living on wages that failed to increase.  As the decade wore on , the discrepancy in income distribution grew worse.

“The following year Brandeis complained about the tax policies of the Harding administration and Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon, which benefited large corporations and railroads at the expense of the middle class.  If bigger companies were as efficient as they claimed to be, they could easily afford to pay higher taxes and should consider it a sort of excess profit tax.”

As for those who do not appreciate how the 2008 stimulus bill saved us from another Great Depression, here is another excerpt:

“By the time Franklin D. Roosevelt took the oath of office on 4 March 1933, however, four in ten Americans had lost their jobs, factories worked at minimal production or had closed, the nation’s banking system had failed, and farmers could not sell their crops.”