The Golden Age in America

I grew up in what I call the golden age in America. After World War II, much of the industrialized world was in shambles. The U.S., its industry untouched by the destruction of war, was humming along making things for rebuilding Germany, Japan, et al. Times were very good in the country.

In the first week of October 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. It was a great shock to us and we scrambled to compete. Engineering and science education was encouraged with scholarships and easy defense loans. As Thomas Freedman (NYT columnist and author) says “You needed a plan to fail”. Engineering students, me included, received telegrams from company recruiters. There was plenty of government money available for things like going to the moon in 1969 because the top marginal federal income tax rate was 70%.

By the early 1970s the industrial capacity of Japan and Germany were largely recovered and competition began to show up most noticeably in the automotive sector. We felt the pressure. Market share for the “Big 3” auto makers began to contract. From that point onward, the working class suffered wage stagnation leading eventually to despair.

Now, living in the aftermath of the working class uprising (the presidential election of 2016) I wonder if we are basing our expectations on memories of that golden age. Not to be crass, but I am reminded of the title line in the 1997 movie “As Good as It Gets” where Jack Nicholson’s character Melvin Udall asks a crowded psychiatrist’s waiting room, “What if this is as good as it gets?”

{Update: Clearly I was writing of my own experience. Black folks may not consider that period so golden}