The country has obviously become more liberal in terms of civil rights, but there hasn’t been a combination of President and Congress in 40 years that supported expanding the social net except for a small slice of time from 2009-2011, and they did it in the most neoliberal way possible. In that sense, we almost certainly have more right wing political policies in practice, if not in spirit.
First problem with using the Great Society as a comparison point is that it was also a blip. It's preceded by ~25 years of the conservative coalition dominating Congress and followed by a 24 years with either a Republican or Jimmy Carter in the White House. It also coincided with the Vietnam War, so bringing up this idea specifically in the context of foreign policy like Occam did is a bit silly.
Also I get the impression people think there was a robust safety net which got rolled back in the Reagan/Bush/Clinton years which mostly isn't the case. The ACA, CHIP, and even Medicare Part D were all addressing holes in the coverage of Medicare and Medicaid that had been there since the start.
I meant over that “since the 1930s” as a comparison. It would be hard for me to swallow an argument that we have more progressive government today than the New Deal, economically and in terms of social programs. Obviously, 1930s people were racist by today’s standards and didn’t respect equal rights for women, lgbt, and resetera posters.
I don’t know if I would ever call our safety net “robust” but it’s certainly gotten worse over the years:
Since the 80s:
- introduced taxes on social security benefits
- Welfare “reform” basically ended the welfare program as we knew it
- decline of the defined benefit pension plan for retirement
Maybe not all of those things can be laid at the feet of government, but people are not wrong to think that there is less of a safety net today, at least in some respects.
It would be kind of hard to weigh that against the cost of college, Medicare Part D, or the ACA. It really depends on what sort of support you need
