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.
The short answer is that corporate lobbying exploded starting in the early 70’s.
This is a deep and complex topic but the TL;DR is: money talks and this was the moment in US history where the people with the money were allowed direct access to the lawmaking process in congress. For the first time in history lobbyists were allowed to sit in congressional committee meetings and not just wait in the hallway outside. From that point on, corporate America has had more ‘representatives’ in congress than US citizens do.
And businesses only care about profits, and the single biggest expense most businesses have is labor. Decreased labor cost = more profits. So one of the first things that happened is wages stopped growing.
There is so much to talk about here including how and why it happened, who caused it (spoiler: Nixon is a recurring character), and what other impacts it had (too many to list).
This website does a great job of laying out the argument and providing citations: congressionalresearch.org. There are also some very helpful charts that really drive home the impact the increase in lobbying has had.
If you’re interested in this sort of thing I also recommend reading about The Powell Memorandum, 1971 which is basically the blueprint for modern capitalism and advocates specifically for increased corporate lobbying. Fun fact: It is also considered by some to be a forerunner to Project 2025.
There are a lot of other good points being brought up like decreased union membership but I would argue that increased lobbying is the root cause and all other explanations are symptoms.