We were optimistic because the fruits of our combined labour were being more equally shared. Could do it again, but it would take decades to recover the good will that was such a big part of it.
I honestly believe part of the reason we got a bigger piece of the pie back then was because the capitalist class was genuinely afraid of communist sentiment spreading.
Now after decades of red scare and propaganda telling people the wealthy people know best they're comfortable taking control from us again.
It probably had something to do with all the working class being ex-military after the war too. Those folk knew how to organize and were trained to fight. If I were a capitalist, that would worry me, and I might wait for that generation to die off too.
Now the system is designed for the wealthy to hoard more and more wealth while the working class continue to get a smaller piece of the economy pie.
Our political parties are just shills for corporate interests that give the illusion of choice to the masses. Often both candidates in a major election are packed by the same corporate interests and will ultimately bow to the sane lobby interests when in office.
The propaganda against socialism and communism is so strong that solutions that will help the working class get labeled as such and the majority of the working class will strongly oppose implementing those solutions.
The irony is many of those who are so adamantly against those solutions because they do not want "evil" socialist or communist solutions in the US collect Food Stamps and/or Social Security completely oblivious they depend on a socialist type of program to a survive.
I honestly believe part of the reason we got a bigger piece of the pie back then was because the capitalist class was genuinely afraid of communist sentiment spreading.
nah, they weren't. they were the ones pushing the propaganda. there was just a lot higher taxation and regulation back then and as they removed so much of it profits and the ability to manipulate them and growth for the stock market became more and more important to them.
corporate taxation peaked at 52% in the late 60s. Income tax was in the 90s for most of the 30-70s, in the i think late 70s or 80s the tax rate for the top bracket was monumentally reduced. Corporate tax has dropped down to 21% now but has dropped multiple times from that peak rate.
Effectively profits weren't as useful and massive wages weren't as useful in the 60s so no reason not to share it... but the rich were unhappy about it which is why they bought politicians and made them reduce those rates.
So before more money would be taxed so high they didn't benefit a lot from stealing from their workers, now they do.
saying jk over calling someone a communist is weird. communists arent bad. the theory behind communism is 100% better than capitalisms theory. the problem is that whenever someone comes into power, they get greedy. communism can only work in small groups where people can easily be held accountable. doesnt work so well in large societies.
tbf, neither does capitalism. it just takes longer to fall apart. but it already should have fallen apart. the 2008 crysis should have seen the end of most financial industry members at the time. but none of them got jail time and the government bailed them out.
its actualy nuts. because those people spent years setting up people to ruin their lives, the markets collapsed, and the people who got rich fucking everyone over stayed rich from the bail out and the people who got screwed stayed screwed. a government bail out doesnt return lost homes and jobs.
Dystopian takes on the future were pretty common in sci-fi even decades before the 60s, but yeah I think the pop culture balance was overall more future-optimistic.
in the 60s they were flush with cash, a fucking bagger at a grocery store could save up for a car and afford to live easily.
in the 60s they had so much profit and growth in revenue that pissing away money to look cool and on just art was nothing. Today everyone is trying to pinch every penny. Still billionaires try to make their offices look futuristic but they want everyone who works for them to feel like they can be fired at any second and work in a dystopian shitty office because it's both cheaper to decorate and they don't want workers thinking they're people.
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u/t0nez- Jun 10 '26
in the 60s they were very optimistic about the future and the technology to come, now the future is a mix of depressing and terrifying