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For all of you who are as bothered about the axes as I am:
Well, “inchic”, “football field-ic” or “large rock-ic” would be more appropriate than metric.
Our hero! ❤️
Sort of…
I don’t understand. It never gives a punchline. Is there an explanation? I assume it’s Nixon leaving the gold standard.
A number of things happened in those years. Most relevant might be the energy crisis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_energy_crisis
1971 saw the end of the Bretton Woods System. That was a system of fixed exchange rates between the major western currencies, that facilitated international trade. Governments guaranteed that they would exchange their own currency for US dollars, while the US guaranteed that it would exchange dollars for gold, but only at the request of other countries. In 1971, the US, under Nixon, ended that guarantee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system
The Bretton Woods System was created toward the end of WW2 to avoid problems that plagued the world after WW1. It was extremely successful. Some cranks, aka gold bugs, argue for a gold standard. That means that the government should guarantee to sell gold at a certain fixed price. Economically, that is simply insane. These people like to point to 1971. They won’t tell you about the Bretton Woods System, though, or how that guarantee was only for foreign governments.
That there is no one explanation is kinda why the site exists, that is the punchline as it were.
The answer you are probably looking for surrounds the fact that Nixon was just as bad a Regan.
There is a reason why Nixon was, for decades (even during the Bush administration) considered one of the worst presidents ever.
Damn it just keeps going
The sad thing is that the counter new deal predated Reagan. The heritage foundation was started as a way to get neoliberalism from being a theory and into practice.
What is even sadder is that the original liberalism and new deal policies that brought out the best years of growth and prosperity for everyone in the global north only lasted around 30 years or a little more… neoliberalism will almost hit 46 years soon. It fucking stinks.
Tammany Hall is dissolved in 1967. Heritage is formed in 1973. Something smells the same.
Fox News around the same time
I really need to find some good resources, look into the players in 1960s Tammany Hall and 1970s heritage and fox and the early republican party and see how all the dirty strings tie together. I wish I could remember how to do history research
It keeps the rich happy and boiled the frogs slowly enough.
Everybody hates Nixon but until trump came along, regan was the worst thing ever. Pissing on regans grave was a key phrase.
Crazy how their Thatcher was a bloke and ours was a woman, far from each other in different cultures, yet so alike…
Did we ever see them in the same room? Maybe it was a Mrs Doubtfire situation
They use metric? You should upgrade the grapgh to be more US like
some good foot vs some bad pound?
Hambuders
Please fix the horizontal axis label, it should say “time” or “year”
Yeah. Y should be the metric otherwise it’s describes a non function.
I how Reagan is burning in hell but he got s lot of help from House Democrats in the 1980s giving him everything he wanted. If they’d oppose him he wouldn’t have “achieved” half of what he did.
Neoliberalism was on the rise in both parties. Carter winning on a more conservative platform and then losing because he wasn’t hawkish enough really set them on their current path of pursuing the Republicans to the right.
I get your point but that graph labelling is atrocious
Exactly! X should be “time” and Y “metric”
Ah, yes. Apartheid and slavery came after Regan and Same-sex marriage in several states came before.
If you’re into intentionally misunderstanding memes, you should give Bluesky a try. You’ll love it there.
In 1980, ‘middle class’ was still defined as one job supporting a family of four, and $1 million was considered a vast fortune.
By 1993, when Bush Sr left office, ‘middle class’ was two incomes to keep a household going, and $1 million was what a rich guy spent on a party.
All of that is true, especially for white middle-class Americans. But, and I think this is what the previous poster is getting at, he further you get from the imperial core the greater the chance of an alternate experience.
What the previous poster was getting at is that they are an annoying person who takes jokes literally to give themselves the opportunity to feel morally superior to people. I’m sure the meme creator would agree that apartheid, slavery, and outlawing same-sex marriage would be bad.
If I am the ‘previous poster’ you are referring to, you are 100% correct.
I feel morally superior to the people who wrecked the middle class and called themselves saviors.
No, not you. MareOfNights.
It’s all good.
But I noticed that if I go to ‘main discussion’ there are only two comments showing. Huh?
That’s a perspective issue though.
If you’re not a white middle-class American and have had a much tougher experience over this time period and say that was largely down to the parasitic hubris of many white middle-class Americans. Then you might be entitled to a much dimmer view at an attempt at brevity that ignores your viscerally darker cultural history.
The way that most propaganda works is by repeating it’s message whenever/whereever it can and silencing alternative messages. At a certain stage the message is self sustaining (becomes cultural) and the duped populace will police it themselves.
Yes the meme is a wry look at a truism that will resonate with plenty of us on here, and that is fine. But it is also OK for other people to stand up and give their cultural perspective. Otherwise it just comes off as you’re just replicating that toxic behaviour of policing your cultural propaganda.
No, I think the premise of the joke is bad. Its this “Things used to be better” attitude which is completely wrong. It’s guided by weird nostalgia and old movies, that show idealized rich white people.
This is the whole basis MAGA runs on. A bunch of misinformation based on a few cherry picked stats.
“One salary to support a family of 4” (to keep women in the kitchen) is still possible for well educated upper middle-class people, you just have to do the appropriate cuts to lifestyle.
“One million was actually a lot of money.” Yea, that’s how inflation works. Did you not take economics in highschool and learned why that isn’t a bad thing?
Nope, I was definitely right. You are intentionally interpreting a joke in the most unfavourable way possible to give yourself the opportunity to feel good at someone else’s expense.
Yeah! And OP didn’t even mention the disappearance of Roanoke or carcinization!
… Those don’t have anything to do with the post either, but I, too, want get in on the bipolar schizophrenic nonsense criticism game.
Incarceration rates in the US, the only legal slavery in post civil war America, drastically increased in the 80s. Same-sex marriage wasn’t made legal anywhere in the US until the 2000s. I’m not sure which US specific Apartheid system you’re talking about, but it probably didn’t improve with Regan.
