Saw a post about this at [email protected] and was a bit confused by exactly how badly the people there were going at each others throats in the comments. Nobody seemed able to agree on what precisely happened in 1971. Suggested explanations included:
- Neoliberalism being declared the state religion by Grand Moff Richard Nixon
- The gold standard being abolished
- The oil crisis
- The Republican and Democrat parties becoming increasingly divided
- Declining birthrates
- Institutional Racism
If any of you could give some explanations with, like, sources that aren’t just 10 pages of graphs with arrows pointing at 1971, that would be pretty great.
No sources from me but speculation. It’s the decade before, the 60’s where focus was on people, freedom, honest compensation for labor and social equality.
I know I will get push-back on this, it being perhaps to simple of a theory or me missing key elements. I will die on this hill though, it was the hippies.
The conservatives around the world got a collective heart attack from the 60’s and what transpired therein and this is when conservatism started to plan on breaking those wild communist activist freeloaders. We can see the effects today still. Mismanagement from the ‘left’ (or better yet, the world at large tbh) to capitalize on the spirit of the 60’ and truly change society. The focus on business and the suppression of those pesky ‘hippies’ and/or ‘communists’ started to gain traction and voila, there is the divide of the two lines somewhere in the 70’s.
For good measure, I have nothing against the 60’ and hippies, just pointing to these as a ‘shock to the system’ as an explanation for what happened in the 70’s and what we see today.
You are saying hippies disconnected wages from productivity growth?
You are saying the past 50 years has just been the wealthy trying to destroy hippies?
I am dubious.
No, you misunderstood. The 60’s was a social shock to the conservative system. They responded. And you can complain about conservatives (I know I do) but you have to give it to them on the long term planning bit, they got that on lock.
The inability to plan, push, execute and claim to keep society ‘left’ was a serious flaw. Conservatives had no such problems, they created systems to alter the course of society. The rise of the religious right in the late 60’s and 70’s influenced the creation of conservative think tanks, for example.
We are seeing the effects of this conservative push-back till this very day.
PS: the generation coming out of the 60’ is my parents generation. I find it ironic that a large part of that generation became conservative monsters. They are the very definition of ‘pulling up the ladder’. I have seen it up and close this change and I despise that generation of weaklings.
Religious affiliation is down from the 60s/70s by a lot.
Tons of liberal wins have happened since: desegregation, affirmative action, womens’ liberation, gay marriage, LGBTQ acceptance, etc.
Conservatives have racked up decades of losses on their preferred issues.
However, real wages stalled in 71.
It’s only now, after 50 years of that that conservatives find themselves with enough control to maybe slide things back their way a little.
Time to take the wages back.