Post-War Affluence

• Depression Does Not Return; Great Economic Boom
  
• U.S. Relatively Untouched by the War
  
• Pent up Consumer Demand; More Leisure Time
  
• Advertising, "Planned Obsolesence", Credit Cards, Youth Market
  
• Government Role ("Military-Industrial Complex": Continued New Deal Programs, R & D; New Cold War Spending); Turnpikes, Freeways, Interstate Highway System
  
• Bretton Woods System (World Bank, IMF, U.S. $ Standard)
  
• Imperialism and the CIA - Iran, Guatemala
  
• "The End of Ideology" (Daniel Bell)? "The American Century" (Henry Robinson Luce)?
  
• Poverty, Racism -- "The Other America" (Michael Harrington)
  

• Women Back to the Kitchen, Home ("Cult of Domesticity"); Male Veterans Take Back Jobs
  
• Large, Nuclear Families (4 children or more)
  

• Social Compact between Big Unions (AFL-CIO) and Big Business
  
• Growth of Monopolies, Conglomerates
  
• Growth of White Collar Jobs
  
• The Other-Directed, "Organization Man"
  
• Racism, Sexism
  

• Abandonment of the Inner Cities increasingly by whites
  
• Levittowns
  
• Government subsidies: massive highway building (while rapid transit deteriorates); cheap loans to prospective homeowners
• Shopping Malls, Fast Food (McDonalds), TV dinners
  
• Car Culture: Big Cars, Cheap Gas
  
• Racism, Antisemitism
  

• Inner Cities filled increasingly by people of color coming from the South
  
• The Push -- Mechanization of Cotton Agriculture ends Sharecropping; KKK Terrorism
• The Pull -- War Jobs in Detroit, Chicago, etc.
  

• College Enrollments skyrocket
  
• Government subsidies: GI Bill (1944)
  
• "Megaversities"; student raised expectations and anomie, alienation
  
• Racism, Antisemitism
  

• The rapid rise of Television
  
• "Manufacturing Consent" (Chomsky) on TV: "Leave It to Beaver", "Father Knows Best", "Ozzie and Harriet", "I Love Lucy"
  
• Radio and the "Hit Parade", payola; segregated radio stations
  
• Vinyl LP records; Sony transistor radios
  
• The "Other America" in the media -- African-Americans, Hispanics, working class people are invisible.
  

• "The Bomb" -- Atomic, Hydrogen
  
• The Cold War
  
• The Korean War (1950-53)
  
• "The Communist Menace" -- Moscow, "Red" China
  
• Joe McCarthy
  
• Richard Nixon and Alger Hiss
  
• HUAC and the "Hollywood Ten"
  
• Execution of the Rosenbergs (1953)
  
• Sputnik (1957) and the "Missile Race"
  
• Psychological Effects: UFO's, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", Tranquilizers ("Milltowns"), "Duck and Cover", Fallout Shelter Ethics