1980s: The decade things started to go to shit

[ksen]

If you look at just about any graph of historical trends there always seems to be a trend of things turning south in the early 80s.

Surely that can't be a coincidence, can it?

And the current GOP wants us to continue the policies of the early 80s? Why do they think the policies that started these trends will actually work to reverse them?

 

[boneyard bill]

If you look at just about any graph of historical trends there always seems to be a trend of things turning south in the early 80s.

Surely that can't be a coincident, can it?

And the current GOP wants us to continue the policies of the early 80s? Why do they think the policies that started these trends will actually work to reverse them?

I don't know what graphs you are referring to, but you obviously did not live through the sixties and the seventies. When Reagan ran for re-election in 1984 he could proclaim, "Morning in America, again," and people could relate to that very easily because conditions had been so bad when he took office, and they had been bad for a long, long time.

The eighties was like a return to fifties when Ike took over and took care of all the problems Truman had left. It was a time of peace and prosperity, and optimism returned to the public consciousness for the first time since the Kennedy Administration.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Gotta go with Boney here. The seventies really sucked, making the sucky eighties look okay.

John Green does a good job summarizing it.

 

[dockeen]

I don't know what graphs you are referring to, but you obviously did not live through the sixties and the seventies. When Reagan ran for re-election in 1984 he could proclaim, "Morning in America, again," and people could relate to that very easily because conditions had been so bad when he took office, and they had been bad for a long, long time.

The eighties was like a return to fifties when Ike took over and took care of all the problems Truman had left. It was a time of peace and prosperity, and optimism returned to the public consciousness for the first time since the Kennedy Administration.

I was somewhat insulated from the worst of the late 70s early 80s as my father worked for IBM, back when that meant a job forever. But I knew many that got hammered by the economy of those years.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't know what graphs you are referring to, but you obviously did not live through the sixties and the seventies. When Reagan ran for re-election in 1984 he could proclaim, "Morning in America, again," and people could relate to that very easily because conditions had been so bad when he took office, and they had been bad for a long, long time.

The eighties was like a return to fifties when Ike took over and took care of all the problems Truman had left. It was a time of peace and prosperity, and optimism returned to the public consciousness for the first time since the Kennedy Administration.

I was somewhat insulated from the worst of the late 70s early 80s as my father worked for IBM, back when that meant a job forever. But I knew many that got hammered by the economy of those years.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't know what graphs you are referring to, but you obviously did not live through the sixties and the seventies. When Reagan ran for re-election in 1984 he could proclaim, "Morning in America, again," and people could relate to that very easily because conditions had been so bad when he took office, and they had been bad for a long, long time.

The eighties was like a return to fifties when Ike took over and took care of all the problems Truman had left. It was a time of peace and prosperity, and optimism returned to the public consciousness for the first time since the Kennedy Administration.

I was somewhat insulated from the worst of the late 70s early 80s as my father worked for IBM, back when that meant a job forever. But I knew many that got hammered by the economy of those years.

 

[ksen]

So you're saying you were somewhat insulated from the late 70s and early 80s?

 

[dockeen]

Damn, that sure sucked...

 

[travc]

Gotta go with Boney here. The seventies really sucked, making the sucky eighties look okay.

But the 70s sucked primarally for understandable reasons... many of them somewhat uncontrollable.

The way I see it, the shift towards neoliberalism was actually needed, but went way way too far. We should have been dialing it back by the mid 80s, or at very least the 90s... instead we've mostly just been doubling down on it.
BTW: The case in the UK was much more clear than here in the US. Oh, and documentary "Commanding Heights" is quite interesting and informative IMO.

 

[boneyard bill]

But the 70s sucked primarally for understandable reasons... many of them somewhat uncontrollable.

The way I see it, the shift towards neoliberalism was actually needed, but went way way too far. We should have been dialing it back by the mid 80s, or at very least the 90s... instead we've mostly just been doubling down on it.
BTW: The case in the UK was much more clear than here in the US. Oh, and documentary "Commanding Heights" is quite interesting and informative IMO.

I don't see where the problems of the '70's were uncontrollable. Especially, I don't see where the high inflation was uncontrollable, and the "oil shortage" was basically no shortage at all but simply a response to our own domestic inflationary policies. Likewise, the budget deficits were also controllable. We simply lacked the political will to address them. We still do.

The Iran hostage crisis was avoidable. Watergate was avoidable. The fall of Vietnam was possibly avoidable. What it would have taken was integrity, intelligence, and determination. None of these were much in evidence in the '70's, and they are less in evidence today. I wouldn't say that politics is the reason, but I would suggest that our political system is the reason.

The "neoliberalism" of the '80's was so paltry that it is hard for me to imagine how there could have been too much of it.

 

[funinspace]

If you look at just about any graph of historical trends there always seems to be a trend of things turning south in the early 80s.

Surely that can't be a coincidence, can it?

And the current GOP wants us to continue the policies of the early 80s? Why do they think the policies that started these trends will actually work to reverse them?

You need to roll it back a decade. Wages for the bottom 50 percentile stalled circa 1970, and only saw brief improvement a couple times. Manufacturing jobs as a percent of all jobs actually started declining shortly after the end of WWII. The declining percentage went downward more rapidly around 1970 and stayed a pretty steady rate of decline:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/So3S7XtDAII/AAAAAAAALCA/ndwHHvtfGQQ/s1600-h/mfg.jpg


Americans came out of WWI with record low debt levels. Private debt had collapsed from about 230% (1931) to about 50% (1945) of GDP. Over the decades people had slowly increased their debt as a percent of income. Toss in globalization, automation, out of control health care costs, and decades of squandering trillions upon trillions to build a military empire. Household debt surged higher in the late 80’s and the 00’s, but rarely did it not increase. None of these items seem to have started in 1980…well maybe the healthcare costs hitting take off speed. Add in the boomers retiring en mass to the fun times for SSA finances; and the DI fund should go dry in 2016… We spend twice as much as a percent of GDP on our military-complex than S. Korea does. We are building a $13 billion base in SK and have 30,000 soldiers there, and they invade us with Kias and Hyundais. I guess they are sure worried about their northern neighbor…

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The 1980s were a chance to recoup and recover from the 1970s. They were a "second chance" for the USA, and the USA blew it. But if you look at television from the 1980s, especially the mid to late 1980s, you will see bright and flashy colors and people actually feeling good. The same with the rock music of that era. My wife, being a bit younger than myself, asked me why the 1980s were that way. I said that people were celebrating that the 1970s were actually over.

The 1970s sucked. The decade started with Nixon in office, having started his first term in 1969. That made a lot of people angry, mostly because he showed that unlike his previous race for president he can win in a fair election. He was supposed to end the Vietnam war, which he eventually did, but first he expanded it, and that also made people angry. When he did finally end it that made different people angry. The hippies, of which there were still some, should have liked that he ended the war but they didn't because he was Nixon.

The economy was spiraling down the drain. Nixon took some emergency measures in 1971 that made things worse. The worst one is one we are still suffering from today, severing the final link between the dollar and gold, but only weirdos like me think that is bad. He also enacted wage and price controls, which convinced the libertarians of that era to finally found the Libertarian Party because, as people at FRDB think, anything a Republican does in the economy is supposedly automatically approved of by libertarians even if it is wage and price controls. (Many at FRDB don't understand that Republicans and Libertarians disagree fiercely about economics.) Just when one war was ending it was Nixon who brought us the drug war. There are those at FRDB who probably think libertarians approve of that as well because Nixon was a Republican.

Nixon himself wasn't an exceptional president in any respect. He was pretty middle of the road on most issues. Ideologically he could have fit in with either party, but he was committed to one party.

Due to paying for the Vietnam war (which continued long after the war ended) and also paying for Johnson's Great Society, inflation went up. Nixon had to deal with that, and he did so poorly. But then he got caught being a politician and was impeached. This led to Ford being president, the most unusual situation this country has faced because Ford was appointed to Vice President instead of being elected.

Still the economy was experiencing stagflation due to the Vietnam War and the Great Society.

Ford didn't stand a chance at re-election, which paved the way for Carter. He is remembered poorly although he is much better than he gets credit for being. The problem is, most people remember a president well if he likes killing foreigners. Carter disliked that so much that he actually carried messages between two rooms so that diplomats from two countries that wouldn't even be in the same room with each other would still communicate with each other. That was noble. That was great. It was his greatest moment in my opinion.

He also appointed Paul Volker to the Federal Reserve. Now politicians usually have little courage, but they find it easy to rely on someone else's courage. Volker had courage, and Carter could support that. Volker said "I've got to stop this inflation." So he raised interest rates over and over until finally they beat inflation. It didn't do much good for the economy in the short run but the short run is all most people remember.

There is one job of the President that isn't in the job description but is still part of the job - national cheerleader. Carter did that very poorly. And so, with the economy hurting due to Volker's medicine (and it was the pain of treatment instead of the pain of illness) Carter lost to Reagan who was a much better cheerleader.

Reagan also relied on Volker's courage, and the first few years of Reagan's first term also experienced the pain of treatment. But in the end Volker beat inflation and Volker finally relented and lowered interest rates.

With all that over, people started to feel something strange. They breathed deeply and said "wait a minute, things don't suck anymore." They looked around and said "why do I suddenly feel good?"

The 1980s was that time, things stopped sucking. Reagan was a great national cheerleader. Although there are many who don't want to admit it, Reagan was actually liked. His administration was neither great nor awful, much like Carter's was. But he had charisma. He was in the right place at the right time, he was the national cheerleader during a time when the economy stopped being awful.

Now this is what is wrong with the 1980s. The economy no longer sucked, so there was the opportunity to address the underlying problems that almost collapsed the economy in the 1970s. The 1970s was almost the destruction of the economy but Volker saved the US. The opportunity was wasted though as the short sighted saw the recovery and said "all is well." No, all was not well, even though all was better. So by wasting the chance to fix the problems that were exposed by the malaise and stagflation of the 1970s, one could blame the 1980s for part of today's mess.

 

[Playball40]

The 1980s were a chance to recoup and recover from the 1970s. They were a "second chance" for the USA, and the USA blew it. But if you look at television from the 1980s, especially the mid to late 1980s, you will see bright and flashy colors and people actually feeling good. The same with the rock music of that era. My wife, being a bit younger than myself, asked me why the 1980s were that way. I said that people were celebrating that the 1970s were actually over.

The 1970s sucked. The decade started with Nixon in office, having started his first term in 1969. That made a lot of people angry, mostly because he showed that unlike his previous race for president he can win in a fair election. He was supposed to end the Vietnam war, which he eventually did, but first he expanded it, and that also made people angry. When he did finally end it that made different people angry. The hippies, of which there were still some, should have liked that he ended the war but they didn't because he was Nixon.

The economy was spiraling down the drain. Nixon took some emergency measures in 1971 that made things worse. The worst one is one we are still suffering from today, severing the final link between the dollar and gold, but only weirdos like me think that is bad. He also enacted wage and price controls, which convinced the libertarians of that era to finally found the Libertarian Party because, as people at FRDB think, anything a Republican does in the economy is supposedly automatically approved of by libertarians even if it is wage and price controls. (Many at FRDB don't understand that Republicans and Libertarians disagree fiercely about economics.) Just when one war was ending it was Nixon who brought us the drug war. There are those at FRDB who probably think libertarians approve of that as well because Nixon was a Republican.

Nixon himself wasn't an exceptional president in any respect. He was pretty middle of the road on most issues. Ideologically he could have fit in with either party, but he was committed to one party.

Due to paying for the Vietnam war (which continued long after the war ended) and also paying for Johnson's Great Society, inflation went up. Nixon had to deal with that, and he did so poorly. But then he got caught being a politician and was impeached. This led to Ford being president, the most unusual situation this country has faced because Ford was appointed to Vice President instead of being elected.

Still the economy was experiencing stagflation due to the Vietnam War and the Great Society.

Ford didn't stand a chance at re-election, which paved the way for Carter. He is remembered poorly although he is much better than he gets credit for being. The problem is, most people remember a president well if he likes killing foreigners. Carter disliked that so much that he actually carried messages between two rooms so that diplomats from two countries that wouldn't even be in the same room with each other would still communicate with each other. That was noble. That was great. It was his greatest moment in my opinion.

He also appointed Paul Volker to the Federal Reserve. Now politicians usually have little courage, but they find it easy to rely on someone else's courage. Volker had courage, and Carter could support that. Volker said "I've got to stop this inflation." So he raised interest rates over and over until finally they beat inflation. It didn't do much good for the economy in the short run but the short run is all most people remember.

There is one job of the President that isn't in the job description but is still part of the job - national cheerleader. Carter did that very poorly. And so, with the economy hurting due to Volker's medicine (and it was the pain of treatment instead of the pain of illness) Carter lost to Reagan who was a much better cheerleader.

Reagan also relied on Volker's courage, and the first few years of Reagan's first term also experienced the pain of treatment. But in the end Volker beat inflation and Volker finally relented and lowered interest rates.

With all that over, people started to feel something strange. They breathed deeply and said "wait a minute, things don't suck anymore." They looked around and said "why do I suddenly feel good?"

The 1980s was that time, things stopped sucking. Reagan was a great national cheerleader. Although there are many who don't want to admit it, Reagan was actually liked. His administration was neither great nor awful, much like Carter's was. But he had charisma. He was in the right place at the right time, he was the national cheerleader during a time when the economy stopped being awful.

Now this is what is wrong with the 1980s. The economy no longer sucked, so there was the opportunity to address the underlying problems that almost collapsed the economy in the 1970s. The 1970s was almost the destruction of the economy but Volker saved the US. The opportunity was wasted though as the short sighted saw the recovery and said "all is well." No, all was not well, even though all was better. So by wasting the chance to fix the problems that were exposed by the malaise and stagflation of the 1970s, one could blame the 1980s for part of today's mess.

Interesting take.

 

[lpetrich]

I don't know what graphs you are referring to, but you obviously did not live through the sixties and the seventies. When Reagan ran for re-election in 1984 he could proclaim, "Morning in America, again," and people could relate to that very easily because conditions had been so bad when he took office, and they had been bad for a long, long time.

Bad in what way? Be specific.

The eighties was like a return to fifties when Ike took over and took care of all the problems Truman had left.

What problems?

It was a time of peace and prosperity, and optimism returned to the public consciousness for the first time since the Kennedy Administration.

LOL.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I don't know what graphs you are referring to, but you obviously did not live through the sixties and the seventies. When Reagan ran for re-election in 1984 he could proclaim, "Morning in America, again," and people could relate to that very easily because conditions had been so bad when he took office, and they had been bad for a long, long time.

Bad in what way? Be specific.

The stagflation of the 1970s that, in my opinion, was almost a full economic collapse. It was averted by Volker raising interest rates and by the OPEC countries basing oil on the dollar (replacing the gold that Nixon severed from the dollar). The stagflation made the 70's suck.

 

[boneyard bill]

Bad in what way? Be specific.

What problems?

LOL.

Regarding your first question. Read Jason Harvestdancer's post above. He goes into quite a bit of detail. Regarding your second question, Harry Truman left us at war in Korea and with an inflationary economy that was the product of that war. Ike ended the war quickly, but ending the inflation took up both of his terms in office.

 

[boneyard bill]

The stagflation of the 1970s that, in my opinion, was almost a full economic collapse. It was averted by Volker raising interest rates and by the OPEC countries basing oil on the dollar (replacing the gold that Nixon severed from the dollar). The stagflation made the 70's suck.

Yes. The '70's is and will continue to be remembered as the decade of stagflation. But there was also the Vietnam War, the forced resignation of the Vice-President, Spiro Agnew; the Watergate investigation and the impeachment of a president, the so-called oil shortage and Congress' incompetent attempts to deal with it which produced long lines in gas stations and 10-gallon limits on purchases, etc., and then the Iran-Hostage crisis just to top things off. In many respects it was a chaotic decade quite apart from the stagflation which nearly destroyed the economy.

As the decade neared its end, Saudi Arabia threatened to demand gold for its oil if the US continued its inflationary policies. That would have collapsed the petrodollar. Carter had no choice but to can William Miller as Fed Chairman and appoint Paul Volcker. Volcker's job, essentially, was to stop the high inflation, and he did that.

 

[lpetrich]

If you look at just about any graph of historical trends there always seems to be a trend of things turning south in the early 80s.

The two Arthur Schlesingers have proposed that US political history goes in cycles: CYCLES OF AMERICAN HISTORY It alternates between:

• Liberal, reform, public purpose
• Conservative, retrenchment, private interest

They proposed that this cycle happens for various reasons, like:

• Sustaining reform in liberal periods requires a lot of effort, and that effort may seem unnecessary if some reforms had been successful or seemingly successful.
• Conservative periods produce problems that the ruling elites are unable or unwilling to address.

Peter Turchin in Cliodynamics also finds evidence of long-term cycles, though mostly in longer-lived nations. He has collected a lot of data on various social indicators, and he finds these correlations:
[table="class: outer_border"]
[tr][td]Indicator[/td][td]Direction[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Health (height, life exp)[/td][td]+[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Wages as fraction of GDP[/td][td]+[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]First-marriage age[/td][td]-[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Immigrants' fraction of population[/td][td]-[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Wealth inequality[/td][td]-[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Political polarization[/td][td]-[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Sociopolitical instability[/td][td]-[/td][/tr]
[/table]
PT used first-marriage age a measure of social optimism/pessimism, with younger meaning optimistic and older meaning pessimistic.

Here's a combined table of the Schlesinger and Turchin cycles:
[table="class: outer_border"]
[tr][td]Years[/td][td]Phase[/td][td]Prty Sys[/td][td]Amend[/td][td]PT long[/td][td]PT FS[/td][td]What[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1776-1788[/td][td]Lib[/td][td]-[/td][td]X[/td][td]+ +[/td][td][/td][td]Liberal Movement to Create Constitution[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1788-1800[/td][td]Con[/td][td]1[/td][td][/td][td]+ +[/td][td][/td][td]Hamiltonian Federalism[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1800-1812[/td][td]Lib[/td][td]1[/td][td][/td][td]+ +[/td][td][/td][td]Liberal Period of Jeffersonianism[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1812-1829[/td][td]Con[/td][td]1[/td][td][/td][td]0[/td][td][/td][td]Conservative Retreat After War of 1812[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1829-1841[/td][td]Lib[/td][td]2[/td][td][/td][td]+ -[/td][td][/td][td]Jacksonian Democracy[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1841-1861[/td][td]Con[/td][td]2[/td][td][/td][td]0 -[/td][td][/td][td]Domination of National Government by Slaveowners[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1861-1869[/td][td]Lib[/td][td]3[/td][td]X[/td][td]- -[/td][td]late[/td][td]Abolition of Slavery and Reconstruction[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1869-1901[/td][td]Con[/td][td]3[/td][td][/td][td]- -[/td][td][/td][td]The Gilded Age[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1901-1919[/td][td]Lib[/td][td]4[/td][td]X[/td][td]- +[/td][td]late[/td][td]Progressive Era[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1919-1931[/td][td]Con[/td][td]4[/td][td][/td][td]- +[/td][td][/td][td]Republican Restoration[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1931-1947[/td][td]Lib[/td][td]5[/td][td][/td][td]0 +[/td][td][/td][td]The New Deal[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1947-1962[/td][td]Con[/td][td]5 (6)[/td][td]X[/td][td]+ +[/td][td][/td][td]The Eisenhower Era[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1962-1978[/td][td]Lib[/td][td]5 (6)[/td][td]X[/td][td]+ -[/td][td]middle[/td][td]Sixties Radicalism[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1978-[/td][td]Con[/td][td]5 (6)[/td][td][/td][td]- -[/td][td][/td][td]Gilded Age II[/td][/tr]
[/table]

• Prty Sys = what party system, a set of parties with distinctive platforms and constituencies. The first one had a switch from Federalists winning to Democratic-Republicans winning in Thomas Jefferson's presidency.
• Amend = periods with several Constitutional amendments, though these often overlap other periods.
• PT Long = height and slope in Peter Turchin's long cycle
• PT FS = his 50-year father-and-son cycle of periods of unrest. The US did not have one in the 1820's, and it is due for another one around 2020.

Where are we now?

The US is currently in Gilded Age II, and it has lasted longer than the previous one. There is no hint as to when another major burst of reform will happen. The Occupy movement seemed like the start of one, but it was rather successfully crushed.

 

[arkirk]

There was a decay in the already sorry state of American Politics in the '80's because both parties even at that time were simply political machines and the Republicans could play on the Democrats not delivering what they promised...same as today. Unfortunately, the Republicans have not the slightest notion of delivering anything to anybody but profits to their own handlers. They are better at consolidating support funding for their anti-new deal agenda. Their consolidation of financial support grew markedly faster than the Democrats because they had the money for slicker advertising and began also the capture of the news media.

Worker pay took a nosedive with union busting and fairness doctrine cancellation by Reagan. The Democrats just broke their own plate with their corruption...and the outright conservative positions of Republicans captured more and more of the funding for elections and propaganda. It was a time of secret wars and genocides in Central and South America. Today, it appears the greatest impetus behind Republican politics is fear of non whites and poor whites. This stuff appears here regularly in this and the old forum. Republicans decided at some point there was no need to lie about their motives when they could just persecute the poor openly. It a little bit backfired on Romney however.

Our economy is the way it is today because Democrats allowed and Republicans pushed it to happen. The problem is we are adrift as a nation. Our politics are like one of those cage fights the WWF puts on...phoney to the core and just another show. Everybody is trying to erect a little red fence around their territory and whether it is political or commercial, it is totally a ruthless business, not worthy of our people.

 

[lpetrich]

Regarding your second question, Harry Truman left us at war in Korea and with an inflationary economy that was the product of that war. Ike ended the war quickly, but ending the inflation took up both of his terms in office.

Certain right-wingers seem to believe that the US's wars were all started and supported by left-wing enemies of the American people and only by such people. However, many right-wingers have been very vehement supporters of some of the more recent wars, like the Vietnam War. If anything, they believed that that war did not go far enough.

 

[boneyard bill]

The two Arthur Schlesingers have proposed that US political history goes in cycles: CYCLES OF AMERICAN HISTORY It alternates between:

• Liberal, reform, public purpose
• Conservative, retrenchment, private interest

They proposed that this cycle happens for various reasons, like:

• Sustaining reform in liberal periods requires a lot of effort, and that effort may seem unnecessary if some reforms had been successful or seemingly successful.
• Conservative periods produce problems that the ruling elites are unable or unwilling to address.

Peter Turchin in Cliodynamics also finds evidence of long-term cycles, though mostly in longer-lived nations. He has collected a lot of data on various social indicators, and he finds these correlations:
[table="class: outer_border"]
[tr][td]Indicator[/td][td]Direction[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Health (height, life exp)[/td][td]+[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Wages as fraction of GDP[/td][td]+[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]First-marriage age[/td][td]-[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Immigrants' fraction of population[/td][td]-[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Wealth inequality[/td][td]-[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Political polarization[/td][td]-[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Sociopolitical instability[/td][td]-[/td][/tr]
[/table]
PT used first-marriage age a measure of social optimism/pessimism, with younger meaning optimistic and older meaning pessimistic.

Here's a combined table of the Schlesinger and Turchin cycles:
[table="class: outer_border"]
[tr][td]Years[/td][td]Phase[/td][td]Prty Sys[/td][td]Amend[/td][td]PT long[/td][td]PT FS[/td][td]What[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1776-1788[/td][td]Lib[/td][td]-[/td][td]X[/td][td]+ +[/td][td][/td][td]Liberal Movement to Create Constitution[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1788-1800[/td][td]Con[/td][td]1[/td][td][/td][td]+ +[/td][td][/td][td]Hamiltonian Federalism[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1800-1812[/td][td]Lib[/td][td]1[/td][td][/td][td]+ +[/td][td][/td][td]Liberal Period of Jeffersonianism[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1812-1829[/td][td]Con[/td][td]1[/td][td][/td][td]0[/td][td][/td][td]Conservative Retreat After War of 1812[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1829-1841[/td][td]Lib[/td][td]2[/td][td][/td][td]+ -[/td][td][/td][td]Jacksonian Democracy[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1841-1861[/td][td]Con[/td][td]2[/td][td][/td][td]0 -[/td][td][/td][td]Domination of National Government by Slaveowners[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1861-1869[/td][td]Lib[/td][td]3[/td][td]X[/td][td]- -[/td][td]late[/td][td]Abolition of Slavery and Reconstruction[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1869-1901[/td][td]Con[/td][td]3[/td][td][/td][td]- -[/td][td][/td][td]The Gilded Age[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1901-1919[/td][td]Lib[/td][td]4[/td][td]X[/td][td]- +[/td][td]late[/td][td]Progressive Era[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1919-1931[/td][td]Con[/td][td]4[/td][td][/td][td]- +[/td][td][/td][td]Republican Restoration[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1931-1947[/td][td]Lib[/td][td]5[/td][td][/td][td]0 +[/td][td][/td][td]The New Deal[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1947-1962[/td][td]Con[/td][td]5 (6)[/td][td]X[/td][td]+ +[/td][td][/td][td]The Eisenhower Era[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1962-1978[/td][td]Lib[/td][td]5 (6)[/td][td]X[/td][td]+ -[/td][td]middle[/td][td]Sixties Radicalism[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]1978-[/td][td]Con[/td][td]5 (6)[/td][td][/td][td]- -[/td][td][/td][td]Gilded Age II[/td][/tr]
[/table]

• Prty Sys = what party system, a set of parties with distinctive platforms and constituencies. The first one had a switch from Federalists winning to Democratic-Republicans winning in Thomas Jefferson's presidency.
• Amend = periods with several Constitutional amendments, though these often overlap other periods.
• PT Long = height and slope in Peter Turchin's long cycle
• PT FS = his 50-year father-and-son cycle of periods of unrest. The US did not have one in the 1820's, and it is due for another one around 2020.

Where are we now?

The US is currently in Gilded Age II, and it has lasted longer than the previous one. There is no hint as to when another major burst of reform will happen. The Occupy movement seemed like the start of one, but it was rather successfully crushed.

I would suggest that the guilded age II ended in 2007, and we are now in the period imperial decline.

 

[boneyard bill]

There was a decay in the already sorry state of American Politics in the '80's because both parties even at that time were simply political machines and the Republicans could play on the Democrats not delivering what they promised...same as today. Unfortunately, the Republicans have not the slightest notion of delivering anything to anybody but profits to their own handlers. They are better at consolidating support funding for their anti-new deal agenda. Their consolidation of financial support grew markedly faster than the Democrats because they had the money for slicker advertising and began also the capture of the news media.

Worker pay took a nosedive with union busting and fairness doctrine cancellation by Reagan. The Democrats just broke their own plate with their corruption...and the outright conservative positions of Republicans captured more and more of the funding for elections and propaganda. It was a time of secret wars and genocides in Central and South America. Today, it appears the greatest impetus behind Republican politics is fear of non whites and poor whites. This stuff appears here regularly in this and the old forum. Republicans decided at some point there was no need to lie about their motives when they could just persecute the poor openly. It a little bit backfired on Romney however.

Our economy is the way it is today because Democrats allowed and Republicans pushed it to happen. The problem is we are adrift as a nation. Our politics are like one of those cage fights the WWF puts on...phoney to the core and just another show. Everybody is trying to erect a little red fence around their territory and whether it is political or commercial, it is totally a ruthless business, not worthy of our people.

I have previously pointed out that trying to blame our current economic problems is like blaming the Great Depression on McKinley. Reagan has been dead for quite a while now. Carter ruined the Democrat brand on the economy, but Clinton restored it. Then Bush ruined the Republican brand and Obama is now ruining the Democrat brand again. People vote their pocketbooks and lately, neither party has delivered. Democrats do not have and have not had a disadvantage in fund-raising, and the Obama administration has been more generous to Wall Street and big business generally than Republicans ever thought of being. Clinton ran a close second to Obama in the category.