In the 70 years since World War II, the U.S. economy has suffered through 12 recessions or about one every five and a half years. Some have been brief, but many — like the most recent—have been earthquakes whose aftershocks have continued for years.

In 1974, during a miserable period which featured stagflation, the OPEC oil squeeze, the ignominious end of the Vietnam debacle and Watergate, in “Mr. President, Have Pity on the Working Man,” Randy Newman sang, “I know it may sound funny, but people everywhere are running out of money. We just can’t make it by ourself.” Now, in another period of wintery discontent, the mood is similar, which may explain why so many voters are seeking a savior other than the usual party suspects.

It is not surprising the electorate has reaching a boiling point. For 30 years or more as the economy has changed due to technology and global trade and demographic forces, the middle class has come under increasing pressure, the working class has been decimated, and money has flowed to a small educated elite.

The Democrats have proposed more government programs to help the afflicted, but without a solution for the structural changes in the economy there’s no hope of raising sufficient money to pay for them. Voters realize this is a doomed strategy that only promises a painful day of reckoning.

For their part, the Republican stick to the discredited notion that cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations and deregulating the marketplace will lead to more investment which will trickle down to workers. But much of the investment is in jobs overseas or in technology that eliminates jobs rather than creating them.

But ever since Reagan cut taxes without cutting services to pay for them, this has been the Republicans’ road to electoral success. Unfortunately it has also been the road to deficits. Popular Reagan ran up a tab that required unpopular belt-tightening by George H.W. Bush and Clinton. George W. Bush, whose vice president said “deficits no longer matter,” played the same game. He bought a $2 trillion war and a prescription drug giveaway on credit and Obama got the blame for being slow to pay the tab.

Now here we go again. “Big-spending Democrats” are being denounced by the Republicans, though they have also realized that Mitt Romney’s frank dismissal of 47% of the American people as unproductive “takers” was not a vote-getting strategy. So they have taken to pretending to be friends of the working man, can be heard spouting populist rhetoric and claiming to be concerned about growing income inequality. But the tax and budget plans they are offering reveal the same old priorities — whopping tax cuts for the wealthy and entitlement cuts for everyone else.

Cruz, Huckabee and Paul all propose raising less revenue with the progressive income tax and more with a regressive VAT, a sales tax which hits the average tax payer much harder than the wealthy. Rubio, Kasich and most of the others also aim to make the income tax less progressive by lowering top rates to give the monied class a break. All want to cut corporate taxes and eliminate the estate tax. None favor an increase in the minimum wage. Instead of balancing the budget, they would increase the debt. The Trump plan, if implemented, is calculated to increase the nation debt by $11 trillion over ten years, Jindal’s by $9 trillion. All the rest by several trillion each.

Time will tell if the long-suffering middle and working classes are on to the scam. You’d think the tone deafness to the real needs of the mass of people would be hard to ignore as the rich get richer and the poor get more numerous. Most people are also hungry for more than a tax cut on the paltry income left to them as Walmart greeters. They want good jobs at good wages on which to build a life. It was once called the American Dream. It now seems like many to be a lost cause.

When things get this askew, bad things happen. Yet the Republicans seem to have little to say to millions who are high and dry other than — work harder. At what? This has more than a whiff of telling people who can’t afford bread to eat cake. (Or in today’s world, “Let them drink Venti Espresso Macchiatos.”) That didn’t end well.

The Comte de Mirabeau, a minor noble who became a champion of the people in 1789, an essayist on government admired by Jefferson, said: “In the last analysis, the people will judge the Revolution by this fact alone – does it take more or less money? Are they better off? Do they have more work? And is that work better paid?”

If a year from now the people apply that metric to the candidates seeking their support, will the revolution that the Republicans are selling deserve their votes, or a one-way ride in a tumbril?