USA so called golden age, ca 1945 to 70s seems a myth to me?

[TheMeInTeam]

it depends what you define as counting for golden age. it was militarily and economically a hegemon for a while, and also at least a decent place to live. by some standards used for other nations historically that is as close to "golden" as humanity actually gets

 

[Zardnaar]

I remember effective government. Vaguely. It's been a long time since we had one, either federally or provincially, though the Liberals have tried to undo some of the Dark Decade of Stephen Harper. In fact, my province's government has become less effective every day for years. Now we have a BS!C woman as premier, who is determined to refuse to follow any federal laws she doesn't like, she courts the votes of domestic terrorists and separatists, and on the day of her swearing-in, she declared that the unvaccinated (covid anti-vaxxers) are the most discriminated-against group of people she's seen in her lifetime. Even when she was forced to address that, her speech did not acknowledge she was wrong, nor did it contain an apology.

Canada's motto is "Peace, Order, and Good Government." I guess one out of three is better than none (we're not currently at war with anyone, as far as I'm aware). Order went out the window with the Freedumb Convoy crap last year that disrupted normal life in multiple cities and blocked two of the international crossings between Canada and the U.S. Plans to storm Parliament (guess who was inspired by January 6 in the U.S.?), plus partying on and desecrating the National War Memorial and some woman actually dancing on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier... they didn't even charge her with anything for that. So much for order.

As for Canada winning a geography jackpot... yeah, we had lots of good stuff until various things happened. The fisheries on both coasts used to be excellent. Due to overfishing both domestic and foreign, they're not now. Pollution and climate change have taken their toll as well. There are lakes that used to be wonderful places for freshwater fish. Some of them are either dead now, or suffer periodic bouts of contamination. I'd never eat anything caught there now.

Oh, and "The Alberta Advantage"... even now there are people on the other side of Canada that resent my province for the O&G, as they imagine we're all rich here. I once asked another Canadian on a different gaming forum if she thought the roads here are pave with gold, and she actually said yes.

Well, most of our roads aren't bad; they were pretty good in lots of places when the government gave a damn and figured roads were important enough to keep in good condition.

The tarsands in the northern region of the province have received international attention and condemnation, and I understand that. It's an ecological disaster that our idiotic right-wing government insisted could be remediated within a decade.

Cow pies. Try a century or more, assuming they stop everything tomorrow.

I remember being surprised and angered some years ago at finding a Cenovus ad in my Reader's Digest magazine. That company supports fracking, which is great for destroying farms and ranches in the ongoing search for oil & gas. Formerly productive land becomes useless. I decided then and there to stop my subscription... but when it came to explaining why to them (so I could get a refund on the unused portion of my subscription), they were clueless. They insisted that RD did not support pollution because the magazine was printed on mostly recycled paper. The explanation about ads supporting fracking sailed over their heads. I got my refund, but it's annoying that they had no idea what I was talking about.

And don't get me started about the ongoing arguments between those who want oil tankers to be able to go where they want on the west coast and those who know that one leak could kill an entire ecosystem that's crucial for the people and animals that live there.

So yeah, we initially lucked out on geography. But we haven't made proper use of it or managed it correctly, due to failure to adapt to climate change, and the greed to make a fast dollar rather than do what's necessary for long-term sustainability.


"Golden Age" is a subjective term, and can apply to many aspects of society.

Every country has its problems. Our government hasn't hot that level of stupidity yet. You're probably looked after better there though than here. Living solo on a benefit here is almost unheard of.

If you think Canada is bad look at the rest of the world. There's a relative handul of places I would consider over Canada in the "choose your birthplace" hypothetical and none of them are perfect.

 

[Hygro]

alright so a few notes here. the post is kind of vague and half-true, i'd like to just dig into some of the vagueness and how it can mislead, intentional or not. like specifically in regards to scandinavian geography, because i have quite a few thoughts on that.

first off, mentioning scandinavia, germany, canada and australia as examples of states that are generally doing well... that's true. but that "several of those states won the geography jackpot"... uh. it's a half-truth. like germany did. australia and canada ambigious imo.

scandinavia for sure didn't. like, norway and denmark randomly found oil, but beyond that, crap arable land (generally), scandinavia comparably little natural resources, particularly compared to germany and the us. sweden has some heavy industry and some very agriculture-friendly areas, but most of it just isn't, and if one wants to explain scandinavia's success with oil as a natural resource, and therefore good geography, it can never explain sweden, who's doing just as well. in regards to arable land, denmark has historically had its two of its most lucrative areas taken away (schleswig-holstein and scania). today, danish agriculture is all about proper mechanization, which we have to do in order to compete on the european market. point is, it's crap. and beyond that, denmark is a sand bank of nothing - and oil.

(my point is not that we're tundra, because we're not; it's more that a lot of danish land is a bunch of sand and clay. norway is mountains. it's crap)

scandinavian prosperity both is a reasonably recent and isn't. denkt has some good points in regards to life expectancy, but... ok i'm gonna talk from mostly the danish perspective. historically, the nordic countries managed to achieve some quite impressive imperialism, but it could never stick due to low population. the danelaw was possible due to britain being an example of the dark ages actually making sense to call a period, whole area was a mess. swedish imperialism in europe was possible in germany due to german infighting; elsewhere it was good military doctrines and largely periodic as other, more powerful countries eventually reformed their armies and could properly execute on their many disadvantages. same holds true for the short-lasting advantage of longboats. so yes, that scandinavian prosperity is recent is quite true, at least how improbable it should be in regards to a base of resources and population. just look back to historical scandinavian mass migration to the us; there was a reason for this. the population dent is still felt today. scandinavia was not doing well. point is, yes, the current absurd levels of HDI, GDP per capita, good GINI, etc, is recent, and compared to eg germany and the us, it's done in spite of pretty awful geographical conditions; like to be clear, the geography of the us and germany is just trouncing scandinavia. so what's been done is actually, yes, mostly policy.

and with that, let's return to the thread. so no longer musing about what you wrote specifically.

the thing is that in spite of all the domestic horrors in the us (in regards to women and minorities), up until the 70s and 80s, the us and scandinavia were generally following the same political path. in different implementations, not as universal, and sometimes not as extreme, but if you look back at a lot of us policies before neoliberalism, you'd see things that are standard practice in scandinavia today. high tax rates, practical subsidies (even if just to white kids), stuff like that. the recent destruction of common prosperity in the us is a very intentional one. not necessarily because of callousness, but because people with money want more money that they don't need. and sometimes because of callousness. it was a golden age, not necessarily because things were good, but because they were getting better, so damn fast.

i always looking at geography first when explaining something. it's always geography, except when it isn't. the sound due and triangle trade built denmark until sweden finally won the bloody centuries of war and took scania. then we were left with mostly crap natural resources as eg germany was consolidating its soil.

one of the reasons for the vast amount of disorder today is that many us citizens - rightfully - recognize that there is so much natural wealth in the us that is not being allocated accordingly. there is a discrepancy here - a contradiction, if you will. you don't see greenlanders rebelling against the greenland government for taxing agriculture too much, or danish mining communities collapsing because their government aren't investing in areas afflicted by a dying industry. see, denmark doesn't have any real domestic mining, and greenland is an ice sheet. the us is at the forefront of goods industry, agriculture, tech - and when the us doesn't have a resource, they've ensured (forcibly or not) postcolonial deals globally to get the resources they want, cheaply. all while the poor are denied access to this, and are often actively discriminated against beyond that very basic principle. in the us, one could just allocate the resources to ensure prosperity; it's obviously working in scandinavia despite our conditions.

the nordic model is not perfect, but it allows countries without real resources to punch way above their weight. and the us were well on the same path for a few decades of the 20th century, the supposed golden age of the country.

(sidenote 1, scandinavian ethnic cohesion is not really an argument here; denmark and norway are a gathering of a multitude of incomprehensible dialects - in denmark, they're only recently disappearing; sweden and denmark fought a centuries long ethnic vendetta. cohesion in scandinavia is a very recent thing and quite artificial; and if it really matters, the us's lack of cohesion is on the us themselves. if you speak english, you can mostly make due from the atlantic to the pacific. italian, german and scandinavian descendants have no relevant nationalist aspirations in the us. non-federal state nationalism is mostly politically insignificant. if cohesion was as big of a factor as the detractors of the nordic model claim, it would not be the reason for the us to be that bad.)

(sidenote 2, yea i'm expecting eg hygro to just show up and kick my rear end with some corrections and maybe worse, and i welcome it! anything actual economists write mostly supercede my own position)

Wasn’t expecting to see my name as I went to hit the like button after reading all but side notes 1 and 2. This was a great explanation of what went down.

 

[Lexicus]

The fact that this thread could even be made is testament to how far conservatism has sunk the US in the last five decades.

 

[Joij21]

I believe America's real golden age was the Era of Good Feelings just after the war of 1812 finished in 1815. So from 1815 to the early 1830s.

That was a time in America where the population was fairly united and not as divisive as it was during the Revolution. You have to remember only one third supported the patriotic cause with another third being loyalists to Britain, the rest neutral. After Britain went to war with America again (thus proving it's repeated bad will) most of the population rallied in favor of the newborn government, thus forging the early American identity for the first time. The post war years after this war are called "the era of good feelings" because of this general unity that was created. As a matter of fact it was during this period that the U.S. became a one party system under the Democratic Republicans led by Thomas Jefferson.

This period also corresponds with the Romantic literature movement in America. Many classic American novels were written in this time, Moby Dick, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, etc. So there was a decent chance for America to have developed into an intellectual society, but that didn't really happen because not long after this period Andrew Jackson would split the unified party and create the Democrats, leading to mindless populism and creating many of the political tensions that would eventually escalate into the Civil War.

And yes blacks did not have a good time during this period, it was a dark age for them as the cotton jin had just been invented, prolonging their slavery by making the institution more profitable. However the Civil War I believe didn't have to happen, and I believe it ruined intellectual discourse within the nation by fracturing the intellectual elite along Northern and Southern lines and made the country more prone to idolizing myths, figures, and buzzwords like it does today in an attempt to reconstruct itself out of the divisive devastation (it should also be known that America became significantly more interventionist as a result). But nevertheless the nation was already in decline before the Civil War with Franklin Pierce perhaps being the icing on the cake of ineptitude, however that death spiral was caused by Andrew Jackson and his trash politics. Basically this era instead should have been a time whereby slavery was abolished through political means and not requiring the politicians to cannibalize each other over the issue for political gain. The Reconstruction era was a disaster do I need to say more?

This other golden age that people like to talk about (1945-1974) is not so much a golden age, as there was no significant home grown intellectual movement behind it, but rather a golden age of American Empire. The Era of Good Feelings being the golden age of American Republic. An Empire does not need intellectualism to thrive it needs power to do so. This period was a time of global power and control over other nations through both military, economic, and industrial might. Propaganda, bread and circuses, is more useful for such times, hence this period is the root of leftist bane. You can't turn Americans further left because that would require a strong intellectual valuing culture which doesn't exist because it is currently too inebriated from this particular period.

It's basically a continuation of Reconstruction, the nation couldn't control it's domestic instability after the Civil War so it had to become more interventionist and export that instability overseas through endless foreign wars and proxy wars. This continued until it had to become an empire with a vast military industrial complex, backed by a buzzard like financial sector, encased and safeguarded by a global banking cartel, further supported by a debt based fiat system propped up by a petro dollar system. 74 marks the end only because that's when the bubble of empire started to burst as a result of the disastrous Vietnam War, but Richard Nixon came to the rescue and gave the system life support to prolong it a few generations further at least.

We've been on life support ever since and that's why we don't consider this age to be part of the previous age. The decline in wealth/real wages is a direct result of the empire switching to life support.

 

[Hygro]

There was a guiding intellectual philosophy, the high modernism that graduated to postmodernism.

If you listen to the 1960 presidential debate, they’re arguing in a clear, conservative, plain language Keynesianism. Because that intellectual wing of discourse was 100% dominant. Even now when economics is more “solved” we have a much greater variance of lines of thought, though it was far worse by the late 70s - 80s when the era broke for the new era. There was far less …muckery about economics then, the driving philosophy was uncontested.

The military had won, using science and social science to aim. The populace was United in victory and trusted the institutions, which were run by a short run of the most progressive presidents America has seen, who delegated roles to leading scientific experts as an uncontested virtue. The debate was between who was a better more qualified expert and not whether the category was valid.

I write this in black and white terms to highlight the character of difference between them and now.

But the governing philosophy of that time was like an endgame of first-order-consequence utilitarianism: maximize the economy, maximize electricity, maximize education, maximize infrastructure, maximize music, maximize sobriety (and by the end psychedelia), maximize civil rights, do everything great all at once at the speed possible against right wing resistance and general ignorance.

It’s not totally different from now except there’s way less buy-in, and way more self doubt and eagerness for self correction by the left wing, and waaaaay less buy in and boy oh boy by the right wing. The growth of progressive things overall across categories is lower against regression today. Though it does seem like post covid is a new era from the 80s-10s…

 

[Joij21]

There was a guiding intellectual philosophy, the high modernism that graduated to postmodernism.

If you listen to the 1960 presidential debate, they’re arguing in a clear, conservative, plain language Keynesianism. Because that intellectual wing of discourse was 100% dominant. Even now when economics is more “solved” we have a much greater variance of lines of thought, though it was far worse by the late 70s - 80s when the era broke for the new era. There was far less …muckery about economics then, the driving philosophy was uncontested.

The military had won, using science and social science to aim. The populace was United in victory and trusted the institutions, which were run by a short run of the most progressive presidents America has seen, who delegated roles to leading scientific experts as an uncontested virtue. The debate was between who was a better more qualified expert and not whether the category was valid.

I write this in black and white terms to highlight the character of difference between them and now.

But the governing philosophy of that time was like an endgame of first-order-consequence utilitarianism: maximize the economy, maximize electricity, maximize education, maximize infrastructure, maximize music, maximize sobriety (and by the end psychedelia), maximize civil rights, do everything great all at once at the speed possible against right wing resistance and general ignorance.

It’s not totally different from now except there’s way less buy-in, and way more self doubt and eagerness for self correction by the left wing, and waaaaay less buy in and boy oh boy by the right wing. The growth of progressive things overall across categories is lower against regression today. Though it does seem like post covid is a new era from the 80s-10s…

Yeah I don't hold this rosey picture of 45-74 like you do. To say it was more progressive compared to today is really stretching it. There were more welfare protections, especially since the system was more self sufficient back then it could support it. However that's about it. It failed because the Vietnam War strained the previous system to the point where the Bretton Woods gold based system couldn't handle it, plus France outright exploiting it by endlessly exchanging dollars for gold depleting our reserves making the value of the dollar further go down while the war drove up prices, and the Arab oil embargo as a result of the U.S. aiding Israel on top of all that.

Hence debt backed fiat and the petro dollar system as it's replacement, with offshoring and easy lines of credit to lower operating costs of domestic (now foreign) industry which corresponded to declining real wages. But which nevertheless temporarily solved the inflation crisis. Funnily enough I feel COVID is actually the 70s inflation coming back home to roost. In other words this inflation we are experiencing is the actual real cost of goods we would have experienced over the past decades had they not kicked the can down the road and did what they did. Now that the can can be kicked down no further things have shot back up to what they are really worth.

 

[Farm Boy]

Draft boards swept through low income areas. Bar clearing brawls happened when somebody put The Green Berets song on the juke. When the country became "unbelievably polarized like never before" with the election of Trump, Dad degenerated into hysterics at the ignorant navelgazing of the usually lefty speakers. "They have no idea what they're taking about." Essentially!

 

[EgonSpengler]

Draft boards swept through low income areas. Bar clearing brawls happened when somebody put The Green Berets song on the juke. When the country became "unbelievably polarized like never before" with the election of Trump, Dad degenerated into hysterics at the ignorant navelgazing of the usually lefty speakers. "They have no idea what they're taking about." Essentially!

I agree. I think there was more political violence in the '60s-early '70s than there is today. The Weather Underground disbanded in 1977, but I think you could maybe go all the way up to the MOVE bombing in 1985 as maybe the last "60s-style" act of political violence. Of course the violence around the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War get "above the fold" coverage whenever anyone talks about that era, but if you're queer, you might throw the Stonewall Riots and the White Night Riots after the assassination of Harvey Milk into the mix. Between JFK in 1963 and Milk in 1979, I wonder how many important social and political figures were assassinated?

(In retrospect, the Rodney King riots in 1992 feel to me more like a precursor of the George Floyd demonstrations than it does an extension of the riots of the '60s. The Oklahoma City bombing and the Unabomber feel disconnected, to me, from any larger movement or moment in history. For me, the Oklahoma City bombing was so jarring in part because it seemed to just come out of nowhere.)

Violence aside, I think the divisions around the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, and 2nd-Wave Feminism in the '60s-'70s was at least as polarizing as political & social issues today. My own family had a moment of dissension before I was born - my mother and her father didn't talk for about a year, according to family lore - and I imagine a lot of other people's did, too. I remember Willie Nelson saying in an interview not too long ago, "in the '60s, the major difference between folk music and country music was how you felt about the Vietnam War."

 

[Lexicus]

Draft boards swept through low income areas. Bar clearing brawls happened when somebody put The Green Berets song on the juke. When the country became "unbelievably polarized like never before" with the election of Trump, Dad degenerated into hysterics at the ignorant navelgazing of the usually lefty speakers. "They have no idea what they're taking about." Essentially!

The ideological sorting of the parties and decline of bipartisanship is a real phenomenon

 

[Farm Boy]

It's more of a real phenomenon if one was used to a party being legislatively dominant, like most of the period in question for this thread. If never felt so good if your community wasn't part of the in. Such as if it were a draft board magnet.

But yes, you are right. There are less compromises. Every party wants to impeach the other president like half the time. The Republicans are deep ending in their own way, and the Democrats killed their own blue dogs enough and gerrymandering their own stuff hard enough that they're now lying about fairly widespread moderate Republican stances on abortion. So, given I hear Democrats and expect to see the Daileys(Soporanos, w/e) it seems pretty situation normal despite uncompromising idjits trying to **** up the place with their fecal visions for the world. On a high point, that infrastructure bill was pretty interesting. Before the big executive fiat pork from hell.

If I follow the plots of new and old shows. The time spent on political points from 1960 to now, I'm going to guess the change is tool based. The 20 second video attention span perpetually in our pockets or hands might actually be making people too stupid to hold a bipartisan idea or even an off script political idea in their heads.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Instamatic cameras and land line telephones were not match for the instant impact smartphones and the internet. "Film at 11:00" versus livestreaming.

 

[Gorbles]

they're now lying about fairly widespread moderate Republican stances on abortion

Depends what we're accepting as "moderate Republicans", here. Without touching the example topic itself, given how that'd send the thread.

 

[Farm Boy]

Right, right. Those people, I'm sure!

 

[Gorbles]

It's all "those people". The pushback is presenting it as even-odds, when it's not. Some are worse than others, and these can be found in one place more than the other.

 

[Farm Boy]

Right, they suck. And somebody said something that could be butchered into some weird contrived conclusion, "even-odds?"

 

[Hygro]

Yeah I don't hold this rosey picture of 45-74 like you do. To say it was more progressive compared to today is really stretching it. There were more welfare protections, especially since the system was more self sufficient back then it could support it. However that's about it. It failed because the Vietnam War strained the previous system to the point where the Bretton Woods gold based system couldn't handle it, plus France outright exploiting it by endlessly exchanging dollars for gold depleting our reserves making the value of the dollar further go down while the war drove up prices, and the Arab oil embargo as a result of the U.S. aiding Israel on top of all that.

Hence debt backed fiat and the petro dollar system as it's replacement, with offshoring and easy lines of credit to lower operating costs of domestic (now foreign) industry which corresponded to declining real wages. But which nevertheless temporarily solved the inflation crisis. Funnily enough I feel COVID is actually the 70s inflation coming back home to roost. In other words this inflation we are experiencing is the actual real cost of goods we would have experienced over the past decades had they not kicked the can down the road and did what they did. Now that the can can be kicked down no further things have shot back up to what they are really worth.

There was more anything because people chose it politically, not because 70 years ago we had more capacity to do anything more or better.

The 70s inflation was two shocks, both subsided by the resumption of oil production independent of policy.

There’s no “kick the can” connection. The only connection is we have our own new supply side shocks, covid and the quiet world war fought in one country.

 

[Gorbles]

Right, they suck. And somebody said something that could be butchered into some weird contrived conclusion, "even-odds?"

Even odds? The thing I said?

Alright, you do you. Keep going with that whole "they're at best equally bad" thing.

 

[amadeus]

Anyway, as has already been said nostalgia is fraught with cognitive bias—“golden age” kind of implies things have declined since then, but I’d rather have today’s technology and earning power than the fifties or sixties.

I was watching an old film about railroad crossing safety and not having your car get stuck on the tracks. Is that something we think about as a really credible risk today? All those little things we take for granted.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Anyway, as has already been said nostalgia is fraught with cognitive bias—“golden age” kind of implies things have declined since then, but I’d rather have today’s technology and earning power than the fifties or sixties.

I was watching an old film about railroad crossing safety and not having your car get stuck on the tracks. Is that something we think about as a really credible risk today? All those little things we take for granted.

If you're at an uncontrolled crossing and stupid enough to try to beat the train, yes, it's a credible risk. Anyone can have a vehicle malfunction at the worst possible time.