Late1930s to 1980--Period of Growth, Developing MIddle Class,

[OHdem10]

reasonable gap between salary of Employee and Employer.
It was unacceptable for Employers to make more than
20 times the employees salary. Peace, prosperity and
thriving Middle Class. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Democratic
Party were in charge.

1980s til now. Growth in Spurts, boom- bursts, Middle
Class have lost serious ground, The Gap between Rich
and Poor is now obscene, Wars Wars, country on Decling
and a Disappearing Middle Class. Ronald Reagan and
Conservative Republicans were in charge.

For those trying to dismiss the New Deal.

[HughBeaumont]

1. When did real wages start their long period of stagnation and decline?

Right after 1979.

[pnorman]

6. Thanks for this image:

[90-percent]

2. Very good point

I'm a 55 year old boomer. I remember the fifties as a lot of happiness and prosperity and the American dream. Seems like working people could pick and choose jobs and maybe bounce around until they are a good fit. Also didn't need a lot of certification to start a job.

If you worked hard, you got ahead at a reasonable pace and you could lead a balanced life - one wage earner instead of two, time for cub scouts and little league and a new car every three years.

Now in order to be meaningfully employed you have to do the work of four people, work unpaid overtime and try to be productive in an environment where the employer lets you know clearly he has six people to take your place if you "can't get the job done"

In hindsight, the working life in America in the last 120 years seems to have been one of drudgery and danger and meager rewards. UNTIL

FDR in the thirties and the expansion of Unions and the WW2 War economy.

Coming of age in the late fifties with all that middle class prosperity was a blip in American history. At 5 I thought this was just the way things always were. I clearly remember in the sixties there was concern about what working people were going to do with all their leisure time because technology made everybody so much more productive.

We are clearly undoing the working person gains of FDR and we are returning aggressively to the Victorian era of the 1800's, with robber barons and company police forces and union busting and a complete lack of respect for the basic human needs of the workforce.

In short, post WW2 we enjoyed SHARED PROSPERITY. In the last thirty to sixty years our Institutional Leaders have jacked law making some much in their favor that all the prosperity is going to the top .1% of the economic food chain.

There will be a point where this basic unfairness will start to trigger major social unrest in America. This will happen once a few more debt bombs burst and the ponzi schemes of the Big Banks and Wall Street will drive the economy even further down with more unemployment and reversing wage gains.

-90% Jimmy

[cali]

3. uh no.

simply untrue. As a decade, the 1970s saw a huge loss of the industrial base in this country. There was a serious recession. There was inflation in the second half of the seventies. I could go on.

[HillbillyBob]

4. Yea the 70s sucked

but the 80s with runnyraygun really started the slide in to the shit hole with rayguns drizzlin shits. I hope the hell rr is swirlin in that great shitter in hell, and I hope every idiot that voted for home rots in hell too.

I was Air Traffic controller in the navy when I got outed as a fag in 82 I could not get a job nor did i really want to work for the fuckin faa for minimum wage and 90 hr weeks..I still ended up working one shit job after another for minimum wage and getting screwed for the overtime worked. I could not get in FAA because of my Administrative under Honorable discharge..

I can't tell you how much I hate rpigs. I ll leave now because I will just send my blood pressure to stroke point.

[izquierdista]

5. I'll have to weigh in

Cali is right in that the '70s were a plateau decade. Expectations were lowered so that the right could pull their Reaganomics bait-and-switch in the '80s. Instead of building on the space program of the '60s, Nixon ignored it so he could bomb Cambodia and overthrow Allende. Carter tried to regain course in the late '70s, but he was too little, too late, and too conservative to get back on the New Deal/Great Society path.

If you look hard enough, you can see how the corporatists used the social change of the '70s to their benefit. Instead of family wealth doubling when women entered the work force in large numbers, it soon became necessary to have two incomes to support the average middle class household. Where did all the wealth go? It got sucked UP before it could trickle DOWN.

[sharesunited]

7. The death of Mao in 1976 was the big bang of the American economic decline.

[OHdem10]

8. Reagan's famours quip--The Feminists want to have jobs??

He started the Two Family members must work to support a family.

Up until this time, a blue collar family could have only the
Dad work, Mom stay at home, buy a modest home and automobile
and save for their children's college education.

[opihimoimoi]

11. Yup....ya got that right...:o) Opi

[indepat]

9. The fruition of a RW society having come full circle or:

the final throes of any semblance of a democratic republic. :P

[bemildred]

10. It was really Vietnam that started the decline, the economic erosion began in the 1970s.

Raygun's election and administration set the policies that caused that and led us where we are now in concrete is all. It was your basic imperial overstretch elitist arrogance sort of scenario, and then the ruling elites decided that it was so cool that we had to just keep doing it because it was bound to work eventually. And they have never to this day admitted that any fundamental mistakes have been made, that a better alternative was possible. Someday someone is going to write a really scathing history of this mess. I only wish Barbara Tuchman was still around, she would be perfect for the job.