US drift

"Adrift: America in 100 Charts" Galloway 2022 

Quoted notes are identified with (Page#-Location#)

This book spotlights three time periods 1945 , 1980 ,  2022 (today) .

1945

"Planners feared that the [WWII] economy would return to the pre-war Depression, or worse. Except that’s not what happened. Instead, the arsenal of democracy transformed into the engine of capitalism. The next thirty years brought record-low unemployment, sustained economic growth, and widespread investment in infrastructure and R& D. The leap forward in the human condition was breathtaking, and not just in the U.S. Infant mortality and poverty plummeted worldwide, and life expectancy and literacy skyrocketed. A global effort, largely funded and led by the U.S., eradicated smallpox. The disease that had killed 90% of Indigenous Americans became the first to be eradicated by human intent."(4-206)

This is where the festering wealth gap started and is yet to be resolved.  Ultra simplicity == Reagan the actor and Trump the personification of corporate leverage -- leveraging for the elite individual AGAINST the common individual.

 

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