Download Affluence and `The Other America`

Affluence and ‘The Other
America’
“The Golden Age” ?
• Two major social phenomena in the 1950s
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Causes of economic “miracle”
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New Economics
• During Depression, people began to
wonder if capitalism worked… 1950s
caused such doubts to virtually disappear
• John Maynard Keynes
– government could cure a recession
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• “However much at odds on specific issues,
Americans have shared a belief in the
rights of property, the philosophy of
economic individualism, the value of
competition; they have accepted the
economic virtues of capitalist culture as
necessary qualities of man.” Richard
Hofstader
People of Plenty: Middle Class
America 1950s
• Central to middle-class culture in the
1950s: absorption with consumer goods
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Consumer driven as opposed to
investment driven: the rise of
“STUFF”
Suburban Nation
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Inner Cities and Rural
Communities
• Easy for people who grew up in the suburbs to
believe that this is what life was like for the entire
country…not the case
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Michael Harrington, The Other
America
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Rural Poor
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Inner Cities
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