The best presidents are probably largely guys you never hear about, because of how little harm they caused.
Historians Consensus On Five Best U.S. Presidents
- Thread starter LuteHawk
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He broke the full faith and credit of the United States and introduced a stupid Ponzi scheme as a social insurance program. The consequence is a middle class that contributes over 10% of their annual earnings to a system that won’t be able to pay them back dollar for dollar what they put in.
There is no one who caused more harm to the average American than him.
22 tax increases have staved off the inevitable reckoning of this Ponzi, but those of us under 50 will bear the full fruit of his idiocy and the voting public’s economic ignorance.
The very wealthy pay VERY LITTLE into Social Security. Thanks to conservatives who do not want a strong middle class.
You want Russia to win in Ukraine, right? SOTE
Thank you for this post. If accurate you’re right…but it doesn’t change the fact that Reagan’s policies caused serious damage to the middle class. People living below the poverty level is far less than 1900. Now the top 10% own more wealth than the other 90%. In 1990 they owned around 50% of the wealth. My point about trickle down stands. I knew it would when Finance went at my job like a dipshit. Seriously thanks for the info from the Gilded Age. Pretty good show on HBO.
They'll get even less back.
It's a Ponzi, with all that entails.
There was never sufficient investment of receipts to cover outlays from earnings, so it's always been a grubby game of bureaucrats robbing Peter to pay Paul and promising Peter that he'll get the money back (and then some!) one day. But the reality of demographics mean that day will never come for those born 1975 or later. For those fortunate souls SSI scheduled benefits are a guaranteed loser, not even getting to the fact that receipts will only cover ~77% of promised outlays in a decade.
The worst president in our history foisted a multi-trillion dollar Ponzi on the country, and we have enough economically illiterate people that this act is actually celebrated by them.
I highly recommend the doc on PBS. It may be on Netflix as well but lots of good information on America during the late 1800s/early 1900s.
Coolidge is my favorite President.
Washington would be second, the ability to step away from power when everyone is ready to essentially give you the crown for life is an immeasurable testament to character.
When told by the American artist Benjamin West that Washington was going to resign, King George III of England said "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."
Yeah I know but I look at it through the what was considered normal at the time, not today. He was a great president for that time and one of the more successful president
That is a pretty good list. Someone might say what did Thomas Jeff. do that was so big and then you yell at them the Lousiana Purchase dipshit. I mean for practically no money he doubled the size of the country.
JFK and Johnson for civil and voting rights and Apollo is a good pick. Ike with the interstate system which he copied from the Nazis but after that Ike really didnt do a whole lot past letting business just roll along.
Reagan is a NO for supply side economic theory which is a loser, Iran Contra, and exploding the national debt (the first president to raise the national debt by about 2 times the whole debt in the previouse 200 years, just look it up).
REally, please explain and I want to read your rationale of who you would replace him with.
And by moving it fully to the state vs federal killed the program and completed the deinstitutionalization. From the first paragraph.
"President Carter had signed the Mental Health Systems Act, which had proposed to continue the federal community mental health centers program"
Your note is pasted from other sources and doesn't address my point or article. Carter tried to solve the escalating issue and worsening results, Reagan killed the Act and gets credit for it. His ownership is pretty widely accepted.
And without social security and medicare every worker would be taxed more or we would have older people and sick people without any money coming in and any medical coverage. All you workers would be taxed to pay for those people.
Social security and medicare are safety net programs, that is all, they are not supposed to make people wealthy but to protect them from being homeless, hungry, shirtless, and without healthcare.
You know what Biden in the state of the union in March said he was going to increase how much wealthy people pay into these safety net programs. It is stupid that we have a ceiling on incomes that can be taxed for safety net programs.
I am always going to be skeptical of a ranking like this that has 3 of the top 5 who served before the country was even 100 and the other two who were born in 1800s. Seems a bit too nostalgic and as always my whole life, bit heavy on the founding fathers, as always has been the case due to almost mythical like status. But, I don’t think TJ deserves top five nor Teddy.
Lincoln is the clear goat and Washington deserves his top five spot for legacy for locking down what the office should be in its infancy. FDR is deserving as well. I would add Eisenhower and LBJ to my top five instead of Teddy and Jefferson. Eisenhower was an incredible president and put in place the foundation of ensuring we truly were the greatest nation on earth as we blossomed in 50s. LBJ is a very underrated president for how he came to office and how he changed the US.
Washington should always be #1 over Lincoln.
FDR was super-powerful, but violated the constitution over and over again and created the welfare state. I would not have him anywhere near the top 5. More like the worst 5.
Agree on Teddy, but in TJ I look at the whole package, DoI, Louisiana Purchase - hard to come up with 5 who did more for the benefit of the country than those acts, although only one occurred while President.
Ike should be credited for bringing the war in Korea to close instead of grinding it out for years before throwing in the towel.
The U.S. relative status in the world in the 1950s is more consequent to not having capital destroyed the way the rest of the first world did in the previous decade. Building more instead of rebuilding.
LBJ made Vietnam worse and arrested the post WW2 decline of poverty with his ‘Great Society’ nonsense. His guns and butter nuttery is why we have a fiat dollar.
People are saying January 6th. I'm going to go with that as my final answer Butters.
No. You're wrong.
Key Differences Between Social Security and Ponzi Schemes
- Legitimacy and Transparency:
- Social Security is a legally established, government-managed program with transparent operations and financial reporting. Ponzi schemes are illegal and fraudulent.
- Source of Funds:
- Social Security is funded through payroll taxes and operates under the authority of federal law. Ponzi schemes rely solely on new investors' money to pay returns.
- Sustainability:
- While Social Security faces long-term financial challenges due to demographic shifts (like an aging population), it is designed to be sustainable through policy adjustments (e.g., tax rate changes, benefit adjustments). Ponzi schemes are inherently unsustainable and collapse when new investments cease.
- Intended Purpose:
- Social Security aims to provide a social safety net and reduce poverty among the elderly and disabled. Ponzi schemes aim to enrich the scheme’s creators at the expense of investors.
Criticisms and Challenges
Critics argue that Social Security shares some superficial similarities with Ponzi schemes, such as reliance on new contributions to pay current beneficiaries. However, these similarities are more structural than operational or intent-based. The challenges faced by Social Security, such as the ratio of workers to retirees, require policy interventions to ensure long-term viability but do not equate to fraudulent intent or operation.Conclusion
In summary, while Social Security and Ponzi schemes both involve using new funds to pay earlier participants, Social Security is a legitimate, government-managed program designed to provide social insurance, with mechanisms for transparency and policy adjustments. Conversely, Ponzi schemes are fraudulent operations with no legitimate business model, destined to fail when new investments dry up.
So what?
Are you completely debt free? Do you use credit cards at all?
I'm confident you will ignore these questions as well.
Well,
Ike -
Teddy -
Grant - because of Civil Rights
Johnson - because of Civil Rights
Jimmy Carter - people misread his soft spokeness. Started the military rapid deployment force. Though it devastated Iowa, his embargo started the real seeds of bringing down the USSR which could have been a good thing, but maybe looking back wasn't.
Ike -
Teddy -
Grant - because of Civil Rights
Johnson - because of Civil Rights
Jimmy Carter - people misread his soft spokeness. Started the military rapid deployment force. Though it devastated Iowa, his embargo started the real seeds of bringing down the USSR which could have been a good thing, but maybe looking back wasn't.
1971: The Nixon Shock - On August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon announced the suspension of the dollar's convertibility into gold, effectively ending the Bretton Woods system. This move was aimed at combating inflation and addressing a growing trade deficit.
1973: The U.S. formally abandoned the Bretton Woods system, allowing currencies to float freely in the foreign exchange markets. This marked the complete end of the gold standard for the U.S. dollar.
Significance
The shift away from the gold standard allowed for more flexibility in monetary policy, enabling governments to adjust interest rates and control money supply without being constrained by gold reserves. However, it also led to greater currency fluctuations and contributed to the complexity of modern financial systems.
What brought down the USSR was a leadership not bloodthirsty enough to keep it going.
That was a good thing.
You can tell by the lack of protests in Russia that the people don’t sense the leadership isn’t bloodthirsty enough to keep the thing going.
That vice president was easily among the bottom 5 ever.
He squandered the peace dividend at the end of the Cold War for a persistent military presence in the Middle East that has cost millions of lives, trillions of dollars, and immeasurable assaults on our rights at home.
An incumbent that only got 37% of the vote in his failed re-election bid.
War hero.
Shitty president.
You raise a good point, but when you ask those willing to converse, the destruction of the livestock herds in a meat centric society had a huge impact. That and Beatles music.
“There has never been a strong middle class without help from big Government.”
On a site full of idiotic statements made daily if not hourly, this one might take the prize for the most idiotic statement ever.
Congrats!
Coolidge and Cleveland come to mind.
But Americans prefer to live like helpless little sheep in need of their masters.
I didn't realize WWI or WWII or Korean Conflict or Vietnam War would be a part of the discussion. Failed.
Reagan's deficit was more than all previous presidents combined. You might want to rethink it.
Loyalty to the oath they took? trump definitely finishes last and it ain't even close. Jan 6?
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