Umair,
In my experience, all of the features of American society and economic situation in 1970 were true, to more or less the extent you describe them. However, there were other aspects that were true too, and no less influential.
The internal economy of the U.S. was much more heavily regulated in 1970 than it was after that disaster called the Reagan Revolution, circa 1982. Much of the profits from agricultural production in the country depended on government subsidies and were subject to government price controls. Profits from industrial production were likewise influenced by regulation through price controls on raw materials and a then-barely realistic minimum wage, greatly influenced (and increased) by still strong workforce unionization. Some consumer goods were still under price controls (particularly grains, energy, some “staples,” and dairy) and inflation in all sectors had not yet taken a big bite out of paychecks. “Financial services,” such as interest rates, lender capitalization, and bank diversification, were heavily regulated as were down payment minimums and borrowing terms for real property. The majority of working age men still benefitted from a significant prosperity boost provided by the post WWII GI Bill. Most full time jobs still came with decent health insurance (remember $10 copays and $1 prescriptions?) paid almost entirely by the employer — a legacy of the wage controls imposed by the government during WWII.
But perhaps the most influential, yet subtle, aspect was that 1970 marked the absolute end of the massive infusions of government money in, and imposition of iron-clad regulation on, the national economy during the transformation of the debased and struggling, highly exploitive, depression-era economy of the 1930s into a highly regulated wartime economy. In this conversion, the government literally nationalized many “vital” industries, regulated almost every cent that changed hands, and dictated the terms of almost all other transactions. There were rationed food and gas coupons, travel restrictions, and near universal wage and price controls.
The union structures, made stronger by the New Deal, were artificially strengthened to facilitate efficient production and a fair distribution of the government money granted private industry for the manufacture of the equipment of war. Women, encouraged by effective propaganda, entered the workforce. Minorities, prevented by overt racial discrimination from serving in the military, were able to find (semi-reasonably paid) jobs in the booming war industries. The strict wage and price controls, some left over from the New Deal, stretched the buying power of the dollar although there was relatively little to buy in wartime so much of the income was saved.
The last vestiges of this era of strict regulation crumbled in the 1970s. Rampant inflation took hold, the Vietnam War drained the consumer market of well made durable goods. War profiteers grew wealthy supplying the Military Industrial Complex, beginning with the artificially created Cold War. Corporations were deregulated through a new breed of professional corporate lobbyists. American “consumers” were suckered into an economy flooded with cheap disposable goods, depleted services, dead-end low wage jobs, expensive debt, and hyper-inflated prices for everything life seemed to require. The early 1970s was the genesis of the era of the predatory, enslaving, rapacious capitalism that has run rampant today. We have returned to the Gilded Age of the robber barons and the destitution of the modern day serf. We can thank, at least in part, the American system of higher education for training the new breed of corporate Neo-Con we see today. I should know because I began my working life in 1970.
I certainly agree with your observations in this piece, but there is much more to the economic conditions we endure today than the end of segregation alone. Thank you very much for your contributions. I hope they reach a wide audience, and get that audience to think about the vicious exploitation of the slow motion oligarchic coup we experience now.
Robert
