Argument For a Return to a "Gilded Age" Government

With how big and diverse of a nation America is, we would be far better off as a federation of largely autonomous states, which is precisely how America was in our golden age, historically known as"The Gilded Age".

"In United States history, the Gilded Age refers to the era of rapid economic and population growth in the United States during the post–Civil War and post-Reconstruction eras of the late 19th century.The Gilded Age is most famous for the creation of a modern industrial economy. During the 1870s and 1880s, the U.S. economy rose at the fastest rate in its history, with real wages, wealth, GDP, and capital formation all increasing rapidly. For example, between 1865 and 1898, the output of wheat increased by 256%, corn by 222%, coal by 800% and miles of railway track by 567%. Thick national networks for transportation and communication were created. The corporation became the dominant form of business organization, and a managerial revolution transformed business operations. By the beginning of the 20th century, per capita income and industrial production in the United States led the world, with per capita incomes double that of Germany or France, and 50% higher than Britain.

The Gilded Age saw the greatest period of economic growth in American history. Eventually, the United States produced over one third of certain international goods such as steel and oil. After the short-lived panic of 1873, the economy recovered with the advent of hard money policies and industrialization. From 1869 to 1879, the US economy grew at a rate of 6.8% for NNP (GDP minus capital depreciation) and 4.5% for NNP per capita. The economy repeated this period of growth in the 1880s, in which the wealth of the nation grew at an annual rate of 3.8%, while the GDP was also doubled. Real wages also increased greatly during the 1880s."

The Gilded Age was followed by the "progressive era", which was dominated by FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt), and socially progressive (which translates to naive and ignorant) measures-- stuff like the "Prohibition", socialist feminism (which has done more to destroy American morality than just about anything IMO), and "reforms" in virtually every aspect of life, and every business industry-- which incidentally culminated in the Federal Reserve, the hallmark of the Progressive Era. What the important thing here is that "progressives" then (and now, from the looks of it) got off to fixing government policies that weren't broken, and expanding the government's power to cover areas that people were happy and prosperous without such interference.

The Progressive Age effectively destroyed the prosperity of America through the expansion of government in the name of, ironically enough, "eliminating corruption" (pot calling the kettle black much?) Politicians started utilizing war (starting with the Spanish-American War, and later with such wars as World War I) to force the states to unite against a common enemy, and exploited the FUD(fear, uncertainty, and doubt) in the nation to insert pieces of nationwide legislation which, were it not for the wars (and other engineered socio-economic crisis's such as the two "Great Panics") would be condemned by the states and people as unconstitutional. Things have been becoming more and more corrupt in America since then, and our national debt and high rates of crime/other disturbing trends reflect that.