Pivotal Decade : How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies

by Judith Stein

• ISBN13: 9780300118186
• ISBN10: 030011818X
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2010-05-25
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

In this fascinating new history, Judith Stein argues that in order to understand our current economic crisis we need to look back to the 1970s and the end of the age of the factorythe era of postwar liberalism, created by the New Deal, whose practices, high wages, and regulated capital produced both robust economic growth and greater income equality. When high oil prices and economic competition from Japan and Germany battered the American economy, new policiesboth international and domesticbecame necessary. But war was waged against inflation, rather than against unemployment, and the government promoted a balanced budget instead of growth. This, says Stein, marked the beginning of the age of finance and subsequent deregulation, free trade, low taxation, and weak unions that has fostered inequality and now the worst recession in sixty years. Drawing on extensive archival research and covering the economic, intellectual, political, and labor history of the decade, Stein provides a wealth of information on the 1970s. She also shows that to restore prosperity today, America needs a new model: more factories and fewer financial houses.

Author Biography

Judith Stein is professor of history at the City College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of The World of Marcus Garvey and Running Steel, Running America.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xv
"The Great Compression"	p. 1
1971: Affluence Challenged and Restored	p. 23
1972: The Last Election of the 1960s	p. 51
OPEC and the Trade Unionism of the Developing World	p. 74
1975: "Capitalism Is on the Run"	p. 101
1976: Morality and Economy	p. 130
International Keynesianism in a Troubled World	p. 154
Labor to Capital: Domestic Keynesianism on the Ropes	p. 176
From Virtuous Circle to Perfect Storm: Oil Crisis, II	p. 205
1979-80: "The Gnomes of Zurich Got Their Way"	p. 225
Age of Inequality	p. 262
Notes	p. 301
Index	p. 357
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