100 years of change for Jimmy Carter and for the U.S.; 40% of America's lifespan
One hundred years. A milestone in every context.
Jimmy Carter, who arrived at his final resting place in Plains, Georgia, this week, was among a tiny fraction of the people in the United States who personally experienced a century of change. It works out to three in 10,000, to be exact.
When Carter was born in 1924, the president was Calvin Coolidge and there was no vice-president. President Warren G. Harding had died somewhat mysteriously the year before, thus elevating Vice-President Coolidge to the presidency. The amendment to the Constitution that provides for a new vice-president when the office falls open was not enacted until 1967.
Coolidge was the thirtieth president. Carter would become the thirty-ninth president. He would live to see the election of the nation’s forty-seventh president.
Carter’s lifespan amounted to 40 percent of the time the United States has been in existence. It likely has been the most dramatic century in the history of the earth in terms of the changes that occurred during this time.
In 1924, two U.S. Army Air Force planes completed the first flight around the world. It took 6 months. In 2024, a commercial airliner could fly around the world in about 42 hours. A military airplane could do it in about 15 hours.
The candidates in the presidential election of 1924 spent, collectively, nine cents for every person in the United States. The candidates in 2024 spent $138 per person, more than 1,500 times as much as it cost to become president one hundred years earlier. Meanwhile, the increase in population paled in comparison, a mere tripling, and inflation accounted for no more than an 18-fold increase.
Prohibition was in effect in America in 1924, so drinking was illegal. In 2024, 62 percent of adults in America drank alcohol, and even a moderate drinker could spend $5,000 a year on alcohol.
In 2024, space flight, computers, and artificial intelligence were realities. We take them for granted.
Here are some other things we take for granted in America today that did not exist in 1924:
· Antibiotics. Penicillin, the first antibiotic, was discovered in 1928, but not perfected and developed for mass use until the 1940s.
· Television. Experimental in the 1930s. Did not become a household item for large numbers of people until the late 1940s.
· Feature-length talking films. Introduced in late 1920s but did not become commonplace until the 1930s.
· Ballpoint pens. Widely introduced in the 1950s.
· Residential air-conditioning. Did not become practical until the late 1940s.
Some of these things – air-conditioning and television – require electricity, which raises a related issue.
In 1924, fewer than 50 percent of the homes in America had electricity. It was 1960 before virtually all homes in America had electricity.
In 1924, highways in much of the country, including most of the Midwest, were mostly gravel or dirt. It would be the late 1930s before most major roads were paved, the 1940s before access roads to smaller cities and towns were paved, and the 1960s before the Interstate Highway system began to become a reality.
Some things have not changed quite so much
President Harding had named one of the richest men in America to serve as one of his top advisers – Andrew W. Mellon, heir to one of the nation’s largest banking fortunes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a skilled investor who grew that fortune immensely – became Harding’s Secretary of the Treasury and chief counsel for all matters of finance.
Coolidge kept him on for the duration of his presidency as did Coolidge’s successor, Herbert Hoover.
Mellon began by pushing, successfully, for cutting taxes for the wealthy. He ended up with three successive rounds of such tax cuts, in 1921, 1924, and 1926.
He did significantly cut the national debt, which had ballooned as a result of World War I.
However, he did not see the stock market crash of 1929 coming because he failed to understand the risk of allowing investors to purchase large quantities of stock via debt financing. He also opposed any effort by the federal government to put the U.S. economy on a more sound footing as the Depression deepened.
Ultimately, Congress began impeachment proceedings against Mellon and President Hoover saved his governmental career by moving him to the most prestigious U.S. ambassadorship – Ambassador to Great Britain.
So that is the short story of the last time one of the world’s richest men played a power role in the Federal government.
And now, a century later, we have Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, named for a major advisory and consulting role in the next administration.
What could go wrong?
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