Y REA?

Here’s Y in one picture.

FDR recognized that Germany and Russia had BETTER SYSTEMS than we did. Those BETTER SYSTEMS were competing against ours and huge numbers of Americans SAW the difference. Our system was totally fucked in 1932, as it is again now for the same goddamn reason.

Our alleged “capitalism” had failed on every level, agriculture, industry, small business, culture. We had succeeded in enriching the rich and slaughtering the poor, which has always been Wall Street’s wet dream.

On the agricultural front, this chart shows why Germany was attractive:

Germany had already electrified all of its farms. We had zero electricity on our farms, which also meant no running water or indoor plumbing. The REA started to bring our farms into line with Germany, and by 1950 we got there. Meanwhile, TVA and BPA were generating vast quantities of CLEAN CHEAP power to serve the farms as well as industry.

(This chart is also a great use of graphics, long before Photoshop made such tricks easy.)