Let us not get too caught up in minutiae.
Yes, it was a different time, but the Obama administration is continuing a long line of Leftist Central Planning with the tacit assumption that they are “progressive” and therefore forward-looking. In fact, they are making mistakes that were made centuries ago.
They are exemplifying a mindset that distrusts popular will and consider it to be an impediment that must be thwarted if it cannot be manipulated. A government that is not legitimated by a popular mandate is always going to be a threat to the economy. If it is only possible to gain economic success if one also has political influence, the socio-economic order will be medieval; the vast majority will be poor, ignorant and disenfranchised lorded over by an arrogant and detached elite.
When their policies fail, they never take responsibility, blaming freedom instead. They are the ones who stand for the elite and it is the poor and middle class who will suffer the most. Only the super-rich can withstand the flat wages and soaring cost of living that result from collectivist statism.
What the current situation in America and throughout the Western world shares in common with Classical Rome is that this is unsustainable and our entire civilization can collapse as a result.
Indeed, on our present path, collapse is all but inevitable.
Pretty much this whole discussion has been about how “most” civilizations have collapsed because of excessive welfare payments to the non-working poor. This makes us feel all historically parallel to today.
The problem is that, as I have pointed out several times and nobody has attempted to challenge, no civilizations have collapsed for this cause, for the fairly obvious reason that such payments as a major contributor to a government’s expenses did not exist in the past. This type of government program is pretty much limited to the post-WWII period.
IOW, we’re watching the first time it’s happened right now. Greece, with much of the rest of Europe not far behind. And the USA somewhere in there.
I quite agree that the US (and European) systems are unsustainable. As, in the VERY long run, was the Roman system. But that’s pretty much all they have in common. True, the Romans at times attempted primitive forms of command economy control, but they were never able to sustain them for long, and such systems were NEVER based on the idea of funneling funds to make the lives of the poor more endurable.
As I assume you are aware, in the long run all governmental systems are unsustainable.