this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
449 points (75.9% liked)
Asklemmy
43974 readers
794 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Having not lived in those times, how was the capitalism different (and seemingly better) through 1950-1970?
They are probably referring to the regulations and tax code at that time. America had (at one point) a 93% effective tax rate on the richest people. That is now less than 20% (if I recall correctly). Regulations also were less in favor of corporations and more in favor of people. That has flipped.
A combination of several things. Tax rates that encouraged reinvestment into businesses through higher pay and R&D. Stronger or more heavily enforced anti-trust laws that meant tens of thousands of more middle management, board and CEO positions across the country per capita. Stronger unions were more able to use collective bargaining for better working conditions, though there power and ability was already falling due to the red scare.
Obviously there were also plenty of problems then as well. So there shouldn't be a 1-1 return. The US population has basically doubled since the mid 1950's, which few seems to mention regarding the current housing situation. The auto industry was busy ruining mass transit across the country, or already had. The red scare hurt unions. Racism has always been a problem for people who didn't win the genetic lottery of their generation.
In reference to OPs question, it was not a guilded age. There was one before, and we're in one now. That suggests that the pendulum needs to swing back towards that direction. Depending on how things go in the near future it could slow the swing towards guilded (if labor actually starts winning) or not (if children are made to be workers, women to be only mothers and the Biden admin blocks the teamsters like they did the rail strike). Our constitution is fairly explicit about how government should run, but is rather quiet about the economy. The people need policies that works for the people, and they will determine that.
Apologies for using generalities, but it's a random thread on the internet. It's not a great use of time to get into fine details, especially when late to a post, unless it gains interest.