this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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[–] farngis_mcgiles 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nixon feels like where American government took a hard right pivot and has kept going ever since. Disillusioned young boomers, Vietnam, "law and order", the Southern Strategy, the collective political realisation that "We don't actually have to fix anything, we just need to find someone to blame for it and that'll get us reelected"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Kennedy during the Cold War, specifically the Cuban Missile Crisis, united conservatives in a way that hadn't happened before. The hawks wanted a war to payback perceived Korean War indignations. The military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned America about saw a chance to jump back into the prime war years of the 40s half a generation prior. Fascists like Roger Stone and Roger Ailes were just getting started and used the media to start adding politics to the language of news.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, I wonder what...

Don't get your hopes up, if we went back to the gold standard Billionaires would just corner the market and fuck us anyways. We're well past that course of action.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Unfortunately nearly every graph on that page is intentionally misleading. If you actually adjust the graphs for inflation (where it's relevant), 1971 looks like just another year.

Lying with statistics!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Go watch some price is right episodes on YouTube — one from each year of the 1970s. It’s astounding how much the prices drastically change on automobiles and food just over a year or two.

Strangely, basic clothes washers, dryers, refrigerators, and stoves seem have the same pricing as today.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s not really that strange when considering cars have been progressively held to higher safety standards for carrying a human being, while those other devices have not.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You are leaving out the fact that manufacturing methods have drastically increased in sophistication and machines are building most of the cars today, not the costs of the cars have increased but the earnings of the companies, household items have drastically changed in safety standards as well (fuses, electronics, handbooks) compared to their relatively low complexity.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, I’m not really the best person to speak to this myself as I don’t know a lot about the auto industry. It’s definitely a multifaceted issue, I just wish we had a more equitable system to avoid artificial price increases.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I agree. I worked in the car industry a couple of years and unions (in germany) ensure that workers get the same (okayish) wage everywhere while car companies ensure that everyone who is not covered by unions gets fuckall.

I also worked for an independent contractor once. They were bled dry by a major manufacturer while that manufacturer was raking in billions in profits.

We need a similar system like the german paragraph 138 bgb:

In particular, a legal transaction is void whereby someone, taking advantage of another's predicament, inexperience, lack of judgment or significant weakness of will, promises or grants themselves or a third party financial advantages in return for a service that are conspicuously disproportionate to the service.

This afaik only concerns citizens, not companies and/or is not taking in financial disproportionate situations. Especially small companies are in a disadvantage, which leads to our dystopian economic system atm.

If we had a law that specifically prohibits large companies to use their size to rob smaller companies, that would probably solve a lot of our problems. Smaller companies are not without failure but they are still led by individuals and not necessarily money making machines.

Have a good one.

[–] eestileib 2 points 1 year ago

Relative income share is not affected by inflation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Boomers grew up

[–] epyon22 -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Replace arrows with Regan presidency

Edit: I meant Nixon 🤣

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

This was a decade before Reagan.