Nixon also reopened relations with China in 1972.
I'm having a hard time finding trade information from the 1970s (a quick search turned up: https://apjjf.org/2013/11/24/Dong-Wang/3958/article.html). You could argue that arbitraging cheap labor overseas has been happening for 40+ years. On the other hand, you could also argue that this has helped make the US richer than otherwise would have been the case.
WTF Happened in 1971?
21–30 of 46 posts
Re: WTF Happened in 1971?
#22Could also have been this: http://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1951-2000/The... Congressional votes became "transparent" in 1970. Such that a lobbyist buying a vote could check and make sure they got the vote they bought.
There is quite an in-depth analysis regarding this piece of legislation's effect upon the nation. It's diabolically counter-intuitive why we really don't want to know how our congressmen vote on legislation. Transparency in voting is poison to democracy.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cardboard+box+r...
Re: WTF Happened in 1971?
#23bitcoin fixes this
Re: WTF Happened in 1971?
#24The Powell Memorandum, the declaration of war by the Republican Party against the continued existence of a Middle Class. The war is going swimmingly (for them), and they have persuaded their victims to vote for it all. Look up "managed population".
It has nothing to do with fiat currency, and everything to do with deliberate policy to concentrate wealth in fewer hands.
Re: WTF Happened in 1971?
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I don't think anything magical happened in 1971. Rather it was a collection of events that spanned into the 1980s... How can you look at those graphs and not see the unmistakable, virtually overnight phase change? There are lines that run together until 1971 and then diverge. There are lines that cross axes in 1971. There are lines than run flat, and then begin a meteoric ascent in 1971. The whole point of putting t…
>The whole point of putting these graphs together is to show that something sudden happened then. Yes, it appears that way. Not all the graphs show a total change in 1971, but around it. Perhaps what happened was a multifactor process begun in the 60s and finished in the 80s? Cultural as well as financial?
It was a fundamental change to the most basic unit of economy we have (money). This was the date the financial system separated from reality and became based on... nothing!
Re: WTF Happened in 1971?
#26A lot of the charts should have an exponential y axis. Otherwise the climb gets steeper and steeper.
Re: WTF Happened in 1971?
#27Article points out one thing (moving away from the gold standard) that happened in 1971, but ignores all other cultural and social changes. If you believe the economy takes time to change, then you might as well blame the voting rights act in 1965, or Loving vs Virginia in '67, or the proliferation of terminals in mainframe computers in the early 70s. Very incomplete analysis, and lots of graphs with questionable pre…
The one graph missing from this is the workplace participation rate for women which increased rapidly from an average of 47% to 65% between 1972 and 1984 for OECD countries.
A large number of households would have gone from having a single breadwinner to two as more women entered the workforce. The expansion of the pool for workers would have had a supply-side impact on wages.
Initially many households would have seen their joint income increase substantially but most likely resulted in downward pressure on wages that saw that gain eaten away.
Two wages then became the new normal for later generations.
Re: WTF Happened in 1971?
#28Anyone else see the 80s as the real turning point? Eyeballing the graphs ‘71 seems a stretch.
Friedman, Reagan, Thatcher, were surely much more impactful. In the UK, Thatcher was the first PM to have a major impact on the country since the 1940s.
Regressive moves in taxation, privatisation, deregulation, etc are also more appealing to me as an explanation for rocketing inequality etc.
Re: WTF Happened in 1971?
#29Article points out one thing (moving away from the gold standard) that happened in 1971, but ignores all other cultural and social changes. If you believe the economy takes time to change, then you might as well blame the voting rights act in 1965, or Loving vs Virginia in '67, or the proliferation of terminals in mainframe computers in the early 70s. Very incomplete analysis, and lots of graphs with questionable pre…
A priori, one wouldn't expect those things to have such a dramatic and sudden effect. If you start from the mysterious graphs of many different financial metrics all going berserk at virtually the same instant - like someone snapping their fingers - you start to ask yourself "what seismic shift happened in the financial world at this point? What fundamental change was made here?" And if you ask this question in good…
The data sets are mostly confined to the US but it's describing a global (developed world anyway) issue. In that sense it seems like cherry picking rather than an honest look at the data trying to find a cause.
Re: WTF Happened in 1971?
#30Anyone else see the 80s as the real turning point? Eyeballing the graphs ‘71 seems a stretch. Friedman, Reagan, Thatcher, were surely much more impactful. In the UK, Thatcher was the first PM to have a major impact on the country since the 1940s. Regressive moves in taxation, privatisation, deregulation, etc are also more appealing to me as an explanation for rocketing inequality etc.
I would consider it a continuation.
Thatcher's era saw the breaking of union influence and control over employment in many industries. The few jobs that have seen year on year increases since then were those that managed to retain strong union membership such as teaching and nursing in Australia.
Deregulation, market liberalisation and financial globalisation were then factors enabling the offshoring of manufacturing to lower labour cost countries.
We've been talking for years now how technology and automation will be the next job destroyers but I think the flood of cheap capital is having a bigger effect. Even shareholders are getting left out due to share buyback schemes that's leaving the means for wealth in fewer hands.