This is a very good Twitter follow that points to 1971 as the turning point in American economics, happiness, productivity...life, etc. Yeah, the Boomers are ****ed up. But can we blame them? Do you blame the parents when a whole generation of people is ****ed? https://twitter.com/WTF_1971 and whomp-whomp:
We had this question before iirc my answer then and my answer now Coalescing of the elite as a backlash to the civil rights movement, class warfare.
Breton woods ended is what they want to answer. But the real answer is that capital moves around a lot faster now and labor is still fixed.
Taxes and tariffs. The WTO exists to reduce any barriers to open trade web has been very effective. Retail investment used to be expensive, now it’s “free”.
Nixon was a terrible POTUS (father of the modern regulatory state), but the US wasn't going to be able to meet its dollar to gold convertibility promises long before he took office. So he was just admitting what was already reality. But making it official definitely accelerated the debasement.
Example: I can issue a microloan to a laborer in South Asia a lot easier than I could become a participant in the South Asian labor force. Capital flows to where labor is cheaper (higher return on investment) and moves on when the cost of doing business is too high. We were globalized before WWI and we are globalized right now. But that is probably coming to an end because the global demographics that enabled our last 70 years of growth are not reproducible.
If we're talking money, Triffin's Dilemma stressed the old Gold standard. Europe caught up rebuilding after WW2 and they were keen to manipulate-not-manipulate currencies for the benefit of their exports and factories. Meanwhile Johnson's Great Society plus Vietnam is eerily similar to Dub****'s unchecked spending and human disasters. So they rewrote Bretton Woods, meandered and shifted into petroDollars. If you follow and semi-understand Jeff Snider, the EuroDollar system comes into play around the 70s and starts growing into a system the Fed can't influence today.
71 feels like it was sorta the grimey entrance into the 70s. Jim morrison died and clockwork orange was around this time. I think interesting footnotes to the era. As you start to look more at that period of late 60s into 70s it is intriguing with 71 for some reason being a thing. But then the other day I asked myself 'what happened in 72?' the hostage deal in Munich? The whole era has a bit of boringness to it as well. I assume the parties in Hollywood in 71 were legit. So like 68-72 it becomes like a rabbit hole of stuff. Db cooper another example. Probably this is all happening as the 50th year since and we can frame it that way ..but I view that era and it intrigues me more and more. Probably similar to how my daughter views the 90s. Some sense of something lingers. I think we probably remember all the lame parts of the 90s. The early 70s specifically 71 being one of those where part of the charm was it's innocence and not much really happening. I remember the pre cell phone era too..It was fun and play outside.. but it's also because we didn't have jack squat else to do.. creating games from nothing..I remember being on a trip in mexico no tv nothing but encyclopedias. It was so boring I'd pick a letter and read..talk about brutal. Talk about 'enjoy the silence' and the other reason why I've got my walkman and my Depeche mode on.. turns out this stuff is great..we almost have too much now. Might I missed on Depeche mode? I can go watch 500 different videos about Napoleon or any given topic. Back then and more so in 71 it was a few like 3 news - tv channels..and we liked it.. We loved it
We tie our currency to B-52s and aircraft carriers. When we lose our ability to project force (and this day will be soon due to proliferation of militarized drones, AI, and supersonic missiles) and thus enforce global trade, both our currency and way of life will plummet because you can be sure the Middle Kingdom is not going to look out for anyone but the Middle Kingdom. Life in the UK post decline from global power has remained good because the Western System supports the UK. I think the most optimal system will be regional trade blocs. Example is in North America, Mexico US and Canada work to supply everything it needs to member nations with similar systems in Europe, South Asia, East Asia etc.
I highly recommend this show https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/originals/1971-the-year-that-music-changed-everything/
I would think a change in the money supply would apply to both men and women. You wouldn't see this: Maybe the reason for declining wages was that women entered the workforce much more, and thus the supply of labor increased dramatically. Which fits with the fact the family income kept up with productivity until around 1990 when the technology boom really took hold:
