Something that’s coursed through a few recent threads on policy and economics, and a concept I’ve written about and discussed for several years, is the overall idea that the postwar era was representative of normality in American economics and social structures - that 1955 was what America always had been and should always be, aside from a few bumps and wars and depressions.
This idealizing of the postwar economy and the social/political structures it fostered has been embedded in our thinking ever since, and is making a huge resurgence as “Make America Great Again.” All we have to do is fix these few problems, and there will be union jobs, ranch houses and station wagons for everyone who wants to work again.
It is, of course, absolutely horseshit. The postwar era was a very peculiar anomaly in many ways as the largely untouched US manufacturing economy ruled the world for a decade, with little competition, a tremendously expanded and modernized manufacturing capacity (courtesy of Mr. W.W. Two) and a consumer economy exploding after fifteen years of deprivation. Nothing about it was normal or baseline or appropriate to use as a reference for other eras, from the ca. 1970 recessions onward.
Anyway, throwing this thread out for general discussion of “1955” as a concept, with a note that a sparklingly lucid and insightful articlecan be found in today’s NYT. Best overall summary of the 1955 myth, from a somewhat different perspective, that I’ve read in years.
It was the best of times. If you were a straight, white male. If you weren’t, then not so much. When you exclude more than 50% of the populace from the good jobs, those who do have access to the good jobs have it really good.
Decreasing the supply of labour would certainly help with the wage situation.
Obviously black people suffered on account of being black. On the other hand they could also benefit from the relatively high wages and low prices of the era, and the modern problems with things like drug addiction in black communities had yet to develop.
This is an incredibly important point. To “recreate” the 1950s US economic dominance we would need to flatten large parts of Europe and Asia, eliminate a good fraction of the young male population of our economic competitors, and force those countries to take most of their wealth and burn it.
That isn’t going to happen in real life (I hope).
And that’s not even covering the rebound effects from the Great Depression. Or the revolution of manufacturing techniques and products the war brought about.
I have myself been pushing for recognition of this for many years now. It’s more than just a problem with how Trump’s campaign abused it, the mythology about the fifties infests and distorts almost the entire social and economic consciousness of American politics like a cancer.
One of the elements to include in your list of fifties myths that hurt us, is all the left-over-from-the-war “America-is-magically-wonderful” propaganda that we STILL have to deal with every day. After all, people who believe that we are MAGICALLY great, wont understand that we actually have to WORK to justify that level of pride. We can’t just hold elections to decide which foreigners and fellow Americans to shove into the mud, in order to regain “greatness.”
Don’t forget about raising the top tier marginal tax back up to 90+% as it was in those decades.
I do think that that helped. It encouraged business owners to keep their wealth in their companies, rather than to remove the wealth from the companies to put into their own pockets.
Yes, greatness has to be earned, and is not a zero-sum game. America doesn’t achieve or maintain greatness by causing other countries to fail. The global community is much more crucial than it was in the fifties.
A colleague has written to the effect that postwar America was a bit like the big, drunken, red-faced sales manager in the bar, going around punching everyone on the shoulder with a, “Hey, how 'bout that war I just won, huh?” attitude.
Which was a tad irritating even here and then; read Bill Mauldin’s postwar books.
Just because the tax receipts as a percent of GDP have been relatively constant does not mean the incidence of them has been so. I’m quite sure that wage income is much more heavily taxed now than then as both the SSI tax and Medicare tax are quite a bit higher now than then. Conversely the tax on capital gains has decreased by quite a bit.
The good economy of the 1950s was also very regional. Rust Belt factory towns aren’t doing as well as they were, but most people don’t live in Rust Belt factory towns. Many places had worse economies and standards of living in the 1950s, without the ranch homes or station wagons or union jobs. For example, in 1960, 40% of homes in Mississippi didn’t have a toilet.
Ike was President. He was a progressive Republican. Does that even exist as a position anymore?
On most issues the political powers that be from that time are to the left of modern Democrats. Massive Government spending on infrastructure projects and social programs. Federal Government beginning to move against State domestic institutions. The USG pumped a huge amount of money into scientific research. Foreign Aid at probably the highest level ever.
Michael Moore couldn’t suggest this with a straight face.
There was a transition from the WWII era to the Globalism era, and 1955 happened to be a year that was designated in retrospect as falling somewhere on the curve. Aside from that, I have trouble understanding what the conversation is about, or should be about.
I was a junior in high school that year, and although I was somewhat unconscious then, I wasn’t comatose and I think the absence of the year would have come to my attention. I’m quite sure it did take place, and it appears that it was historically documented. It was so commonplace, the Yankees payed the Dodgers in the Wold Series, which was in those days ws the definition of commonplace.
Of course, at the time all those Southern good ol’ boys were still Democrats. Both parties were in many respects entirely different beasts at the time.
Since you brought up baseball, I will run with that (a little). The comparison I like to make to the “America was so great in the 1950’s” is to a star baseball player. Even the best ball player will only have a few really good seasons. If you chart them out it usually looks like a standard line with a peak somewhere near the beginning-middle. The rest of the seasons will be more modest along the line. I think of it as loosely related to reversion to mediocrity. (yeah, yeah, some player’s mediocrity is still MVP level. But even they will see a decline.)
So, keeping all that in mind, I really think the best way to think about the 50’s in America is as an anomalous blip where everything looked rosy (to the white male middle-class culture). Expecting that to be the norm is like a ball player expecting every season to be the best ever.
All that said, yes, being the only one standing at the end of WWII is a major MAJOR factor. The infamous Steve Bannon sorta kinda recognizes this factor, which is why he want to blow up the world, so we can be the only one standing (again - as in Make America Great Again).
Perhaps we would have all been better off if the 50’s had never happened how they did, so we don’t carry them around as a totem of past greatness that we really shouldn’t expect to achieve again.
So, keeping all that in mind, I really think the best way to think about the 50’s in America is as an anomalous blip where everything looked rosy (to the white male middle-class culture).
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Yes, if you were a woman or black, those damn antibiotics, home appliances, food surpluses, Civil Rights Act, new infrastructure, full employment and generally peace and prosperity after two world wars, a pandemic and depression sucked!
