I stole the meme and the comments made me look at his wiki page, sounds extremely cool for a Louisiana governor of that time, or any time to be honest.
Like really he shitted on an oil company for his atrocities in Bolivia, all the libs of that age called him an eViL dIcTaToR, but the policies I’m reading sounds good. Of course, again, for a Louisiana governor.
In March 1933, Long offered a series of bills collectively known as “the Long plan” for the redistribution of wealth. The first bill proposed a new progressive tax code designed to cap personal fortunes at $100 million. Fortunes above $1 million would be taxed at 1 percent; fortunes above $2 million would be taxed at 2 percent, and so forth, up to a 100 percent tax on fortunes greater than $100 million.[158][159] The second bill would limit annual income to $1 million, and the third bill would cap individual inheritances at $5 million
He was anti unions tho for bullshit reasons.
Huey is an interesting figure. There is a book called ‘All The King’s Men’ which is a fictional account based on his time as governor. Unfortunately, the book hasn’t aged well. It’s got some pretty racist stuff in it, but apart from that, I remember enjoying parts of it. Liberal critiques of the book usually claim it’s some book that mythologizes a populist figure like him, rather than the amount of times the N word is in it.
“He was a bad man because he was voted massively by the poor. Racist? Oh maybe, but that only makes him a man of his time.”
That is literally their argument and critique of the book. I read it many years ago in high school and remember enjoying it, then went online to read reviews and literally, ALL the critiques literally read like that. “this book mythologizes a populist who the poors voted for, wah wah wah”
Forgot to mention about All The King’s Men -
There was a movie made out of the book in the 1940s. Broderick Crawford I think won an Oscar for it, and it’s really only worth watching due to him putting in a good performance as Willie Stark (the fictional version of Huey). Crawford was a good actor from that era and he does well with a shitty script, but not enough to save the movie.
The movie sucks cause they basically paint him out as a dictator who wants to rule the world right down to his last words with him fantasizing about being remembered as a god figure. They changed several things from the book to really run with the liberal narrative that he was a populist dictator.
Sometime in the 2000s when I was in high school (and how I ended up with the book in the first place), there was a remake of the film with an all star cast that included Sean Penn, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, James Gandolfini, and Mark Ruffalo. The remake is bad too, but for different reasons. They did a better job focusing on the protagonist and his relationship with Anne. Sean Penn is horribly miscast as Stark and has a hilariously bad fake southern accent throughout the entire movie. The only one of the whole all star cast who puts any effort into the movie is Gandolfini who has a small role (and RIP to him. He was a great actor and a good person). The remake portrays Stark/Long as a loud mouth charismatic populist figure that stupid people vote for.
I’d like to point out that while the long plan was still a pretty decent idea coming from a non-leftist, 100 million dollars adjusted to inflation is 2 billion $, so there would still be a ton of wealth inequality, (although considering Jeff Bezos’s net worth is nearly 200 billion… it still would be much much better)
Chopping Bezos in 100 pieces would be nice.
I mean his fortune, obviously.
