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, only uneducated guesswork.
Two events of 1971 stand out to me, as I knew of them beforehand:
The latter strikes me as probably a big factor. The world was basically using oil for everything (Even more so than now), and an oil shortage (or fear thereof) is likely to send a drastic shock to the system. Manufacturing, logistics, energy, EVERYTHING becomes more expensive, resulting in having to do more with less.
Shortly after the (percieved) shortage, there was an oil glut and overcorrection. I’m not clever enough to say what effect this would have in exact terms, but I highly doubt that an already turbulent world economy did well because of it.
So what your saying is your brother single-handedly altered the trajectory of the US economy
I always knew their brother had something to do with this ever since 2 minutes ago.
That’s what I’m taking from this, as well.
Oil rebounded, but Reagan/Thatcher era neoliberal policy remains. I’m not saying the oil crisis wasn’t a factor, but I think this lasting wage stagnation has more to do with explicit policy that promoted oligopolies than it does to do with the supply of energy resources.