A New America Emerges

    The end of the Golden age came during the 1970s as the period of postwar econimoc expansion and prosperity for the middle class especially came to an end. What came next was a time of slow growth and high inflation. Manufacturing was declining rapidly as those jobs were being taken to other countries with less regulation and taxation. The United Sates was part of the problem because the United states promoted the reconstruction of counties like Japan and Germany and they became centers of manufacturing in combination with other counties like South Korea and Taiwan. These new companies received almost unrestricted access to the American market while. American companies found it hard to compete with them because of

regulations such as the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944 which bounded the dollar with gold. So much that just by 1971 for the first time in the 21st century the United states experienced a merchandise trade deficit which means it imported more than it exported.When Carter took office he had a tough job trying to secure a declining economy. Carter viewed inflation not unemployment as the counties main economic problem and to combat it he promoted cuts in spending on domestic programs. When Reagan came into office his proposed solution to the economy came to be known as Reaganomics. Economic freedom for Reagan meant curtailing the power of unions, dismantling regulations, and radically reducing taxes. Reagan had declared that taxation violated the principle that "the right to earn your own keep and keep what you earn". Reagan supply side economics initially produced the most severe recession since the 1930s but soon after an expansion took charge till 1981.
    The 1980s can be seen as a second Gilded age, were buying out companies generated more profits than running them and making deals instead of making products became the way to get rich. Some of this can be seen today as big companies seem to care less and less about the consumer and more about making their investors happy with more profits. At&t has been a big company under fire for trying to buy out companies to gain power but still providing poor quality and costumer support. On March 20, 2011 At&t tried to buy out T-Moble USA but the United states department of justice blocked this action because it would make at&t too power full. Also just recently At&t has been making planes to buy out Direct TV for a whopping 49 billion which they seem to proclaim will give them a better chance of giving better deals to the consumer. Fewer industry players, of course, means a greater likelihood that prices will go up. It's competition that keeps prices down" This leaves the consumer on the loosing side. Craig Aaron clearly puts it into says it by saying"The captains of our communications industry have clearly run out of ideas. Instead of innovating and investing in their networks, companies like AT&T and Comcast are simply buying up the competition." This can also bring us back to the times of Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and JP Morgan when they all had monopolies on their businesses giving and making billions and the expense of the workers and the consumer suffering with over priced products from lack of competition.
Telling us the only true winner is us but that is most likely not true as Los Angles times writer David Lazarus says "
    This push fore profits has given rise to a wave for anything and everything to make profits even the prison system has been marked as an industrial complex. The more prisoners you have the more money you can potentially get from free labor. The United states has the highest incarceration rate in the world. With private prisons on the rise and with their only intent is making a profit they develop a strong force to get more and more inmates to work for them for free. Plus as the number of inmates that come back to prison because the prison system that is supposed to rehabilitate inmates to be able to get back to society is failing at that. Most inmates will return
with repeated offenses. This creates a never ending cycle of  more prisoners and more free labor. Plus the prison system employes  many people witch gives jobs to many who with out that prison in their area would not have a job.
    An area that has also left America wondering is their truly equality is the large amounts of pay CEOs of big corporations get paid. They are now earning up to 300 times the amount the normal worker gets payed. The worst part is that if the company gets bad press over  something or starts loosing money and decided to let the CEO go they get a "reward" for their bad job. They call them termination benefits but why do we reward these people with failure on top of their high paying job. Well its all for the companies sake so the CEO wont try to sue them it sort of a getting payed to forget whatever happened here and u can just leave us your problem and we will handle it now. This is truly seen in companies that are classified as "to big to fail". These companies had to be bailed out during the recession because they were seen a s to big and their failure would cause an enormously bad impact on the economy and spiral out of control with one bank taking the nest in a domino effect. When these companies especial banks made bad mistakes and bad investments but they still get bailed out and hard working Americans who worked hard were not even helped. If true capitalism would have stayed in course most of those businesses would not be here today and new ones would have taken their place , probobly in a slow very hard to way but at least we would not be going into more debt just to bail out these greedy companies that only care about profits. I think if this trend like this continuous there will need to be  a change to protect the consumer and  accountability in the companies actions. Sure they don't want higher regulation to make sure they don't do bad investments but they sure will except money from the government when they are about to go down and under.

Post War Prosperity in the U.S.

    After the worst most destructive war WWII came to an end America was left the most powerful nation. Russia was the second leading nation who for there help in WWII were allowed to take control of east Germany and beyond.As soldiers came home, women with factory jobs were encouraged to give up there job to the returning men. More women returning to the home and men available there created a recipe for an increase in baby's and with an increase in marriage rates what came to happened was known as a baby boom. These knew families were attracted to these new "suburbs" which were made using fast and cheap with all the house looking like each other. These houses came to be known as "cookie cutter houses" the most famous one known as Levittown communities.In these age more than any other motherhood was embraced even in popular media like television which was also a growing commodity people came accustomed too.All of these being largely financed by the G.I Bills retuning soldiers came home with. The G.I bill being a large part to why these boom even got started. The G.I bill allowed these soldiers to get the homes they wanted with low interest or financed there education building the most prosperous better then ever educated generation the world had ever seen. With all the extra money these families had there was a boost in commercial sales.

Things that used to be a luxury were now a status symbol. Most consumer goods were family orientated were the rise in spending was. For the fist time people had the financial freedom to do things that was out of their grasp with the rise in consumer credit too. As the middle class grew the prosperity lived in America was used to show how America truly did give you freedom unlike Communist Russia.

    The military spending during the war and after during the Cold War made it possible to make many scientific advancements. Most of which transferred back to the home to make appliances already being made easier to make. Things like televisions and the some of the first computers were made possible and easier to make with micro chips making those things even cheaper and easier to get to the growing middle class. The space race with Russia had even more profound impacts with the different inventions we got from it like LEDs, artificial limbs, anti-icing systems, enriched baby formula,and solar energy. Once again war had seen its upsides with theresulting inventions and more.

   How people made a living also change as a loss of manufacturing jobs and growth of white collar workers

increased. In this form of work conformity was the norm. You had to have a grey or black suit, and this change was seen a as the growth in skyscrapers meant to house thew growing corporation employees better known as "company men". Looking the same meant success and signaled executive to everyone else.

   Even with all the prosperity and the most financially better nation Lyndon B. Johnson asked why there was still poverty in this country. His response to it was his great society program that sought to end poverty. His housing program known as  the Economic Opportunity Act  of 1964 Which provided low income housing for the poor. Other things the great society did was created Medicare to reduce cost of health services on the elderly. The Great Society mirrored the New Deal except in was a response to prosperity not depression like the New Deal.Coupled with the decade's high rate of economic growth, the War on Poverty succeeded in reducing the incidence of poverty from 22 percent to 13 percent of American families during the 1960s. Other things  Johnson pushed for was Wilderness Protection Act which saved tress and making the pollutions seen in major cities go down since it restricted that practice.

   The Cold War kept going and as the treat increases from better more precise bombing techniques Americans grew more and more uneasy of their safety which lead to more bomb drills at school the demand for more bomb shelters.And as a gay to fight of the "godless communism' The words under god were added to paper currency, and under god to the pledge of allegiance.

    This era of American history showed great progress toward the kind a nation we wanted to be. But some citizens were still treated like second class citizens which forced them to fight for their rights. They fraught for their rights and after many court battles and civil disobedience coupled with sit ins progress was made slowly. The time for change was now and America seemed to be the one trying to set the stage for it. This era still reminds us of many advancements and technological advancements. Also showing us a time of fear from government and war, Americans did not feel safe at times which some thought it was governments job to make them feel safe and others thought government was doing to much. Either way this era is known as one of the best times to be an American and its a time we will all remember. Maybe trying to be more like the good old day as they say would not be such a good idea with the underlining troubles this era faced. Even though this era had its troubles it will still be remembered as the best the 20th century had to offer.

From War to Prosperity, and Depresion

    From the start of the First World War once thought to be the war that would end all wars, the United States  wanted to stay neutral, but after two and a half years of staying neutral by efforts of Woodrow Wilson, the time had come to enter the war.Even though he kept it a secret at first by sending supplies to by boat. Germany knew this and in 1917 decided to start an all out submarine warfare destroying all commercial; ships headed to Britain. This with the publication of the Zimmermann Telegram caused hysteria among Americans which caused Wilson to asked Congress for "a war to end all wars" that would "make the world safe for democracy" and so on April 6, 1917 Congress voted to declare war.
    As the war ragged, steel companies who had seen losses in the recession of 1914-1916 began to see an increase of production as more demand for tools of war made of steel. Bethlehem Steel in particular took advantage of this increase demand for steel by working with independent customers abroad; but after the declaration of war these companies that were able to indulge in unrestricted commerce were now subject to price controls created by the U.S. Trade Commission. Still by the end of the war in 1918 Bethlehem Steel had produced 60% of the American weaponry and 40% of the artillery shells used in the War. Even with price controls in place meaning a lower profit. the profits from war time sales expanded the company into the third largest manufacturing company in  the country. Bethlehem Steel became the primary arms supplier for the United States and other allied powers again in 1939.
    The business of war is profitable to those companies that have the necessary  products needed. No one knows this better than Lockheed Martin one of the biggest defense contractors.They make a wide range of products which include aircraft, missiles, unmanned systems and radar systems. It received $36 billion in government contracts in 2008 alone, more than any company in history. In 2011 Lockheed Martin sales were 36.3 billion, the company arms sales compromise 78% of the total sales in 2011.Other companies include Boeing, and Northrop Grumman which receive much of the defense spending which in 2011 the U.S. defense budget was approximately $712 billion.
 

When the war ended in November 11, 1918 most of Europe was left in ruins while the Treaty of Versailles
demanded that Germany take full responsibility and pay war reparations.This lead to the 1920s which came to be known as the roaring 20s. This decade was a decade of economic growth and widespread prosperity. A boom in construction, and and growth in consumer goods like automobiles and electricity. The U.S. Economy transitioned from a wartime economy to a peacetime economy with returning soldiers with money to spend cause a  boom in capital. However not all sectors grew, sectors like farming and mining remained slow with not much growth. While the U.S. dollar was adopted and the main currency for the world they were able to give loan for reparation to a devastating Europe who didn't manage to fully recover and bloom till about 1924. As the economy grew the need for high taxes that were implemented for the war were rolled out. The roaring twenties grew and culturally many aspects of life changed, people now had the money necessary to buy things like electronic goods for the home. But as everything grew more and more things were bought on credit and a feeling of never ending growth was felt but ended September 17, 1929 better known as black Tuesday. This crash of the stock market cause a depression felt world wide because of the influence the American economy had on the world. In 1933 the U.S. Senate passes the Glass-Steagall Act which mandated a separation between commercial banks, which take deposits and extend loans, and investment banks, which underwrite, issue, and distribute stocks and bonds.
    The hope for relive from the depression came in 1932 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was nominated something. In no surprise FDR won in a landslide. He finally took office on March 4, 1933 and by that time the country was at the lowest of the low.

 by Democrats to run for president. Hoover was almost completely different from Roosevelt because Hoover believed the government should not intervene and that the economy would fix itself. This was not what people wanted to hear especially when people were fighting for trash bags in from restaurants trash. Plus it didn't help that very poor people that had lost everything lived in spots called Hoover Villes. Roosevelt's campaign pledged a "New Deal" for the American people, no one knew what it would be but they promised that the government would do
    FDR's New Deal required the Federal Government to invest, but first he had to fix the banking system which when he took office was on the verge of collapsing. He put in place regulations that kept malpractice from bankers and to bring back confidence to the people that banks were now safe he implemented the FDIC. It was hard to convince people that they were now protected and there money was now backed up by the government because when the banks went down the money they had was the money they gave back and once it ran out you just lost it. FDR then went to another area of extreme crisis which was the nations agriculture. In 1933 20,000 farms were lost to foreclosure. Americas agriculture was failing do to over producing of crops because since the crops were not worth much farmers grew more to make more overproducing and creating an excess of food. This doped prices to rock bottom.To alleviate this the Agricultural Adjustment Act were designed to cut production and raise crop prices.The only down side was owners of farms reeked all the profits wile sharecroppers were forced of the land.
 

  FDR also attacked unemployment since millions of people were out of work he needed something that would help all different kinds of people all over. The most famous Program was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) which put young men ages 18-25 to work, they lived in government camps and worked on conservation-related activities like reforestation. An even bigger program was the Works Progress Administration which hired unemployed workers to work on bigger projects like building dams, hospitals, bridges and more. Many would question these programs because of there effectiveness since some people got government jobs but some never got one. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 helped give workers the right to form unions and freed them from employers harassment over creating unions.
    FDR had many things to do, his plan was to provide Relief, Reform, and Recovery but most of what he was doing showed a good response but still far from total recuperation. As part of his plan to provide a safety net so even if you lost your job or were injured and unable to work you would not starve. The Program came to pass with the Social Security Act of 1935. This program would serve the elderly, disabled, women with dependent children and unemployed by given them monthly pensions.Money to run the program would be derived through payroll taxes paid by the employer and employees. This was a landmark act since it dramatically expanded the federal governments roll in day to day life. Other reforms that mimicked this were Medicare and Medicaid programs in the 1960s.

WWII came and almost over night the depression was ended. War helped make jobs for military recruiters and women who had to stay and produce the necessary things for war. The new deal was something that no one could have done better than FDR he came with a willing mind to try new and different ideas to solve a problem no one seemed to have the answer to.

The Start Of Corporations In America

Steel Production

The events that took place from 1877 to 1916 came to be known as the Gilded age and the Progressive era both witch broth developments that would shape the America for generations to come. As more and more corporations began to hire workers on wages, this allowed more unskilled workers to be able to produce the same products that once required special techniques. This made it so workers could not easily unionize because each worker was seen as replaceable; since a large majority of factory workers were immigrants coming to the United States and if one didn't want to work his replacement was on the next boat coming to America. This gave corporations the ability to discriminate and give workers the worst of working conditions with long hours and little pay. Most of the wages workers revived was 20% to 40% less than the minimum wage necessary for a decent life. The people in this wages came to be called "wage slaves" since with the money they were making they could never advance in life but get lower and lower This split families up because the father was not the only one going to work but the mom and older kids going to work to help support the family.

In this period of time middle class American who owned and manged their own businesses pared with industrialist came to embrace the doctrine of laissez faire.As corporations got bigger and the rich got richer they blamed the poor being poor because they lacked determination and ability. The rise of a new idea stranded from Darwin's theory of survival came social Darwinism. Comparing this rich getting richer and poor poorer to now is would be the Occupy Wall St movement that went on in 2011 which wanted to state awareness between the riches 1% and the rest of us which is the 99%. This movement lead people to see corporate corruption influencing politics was driving this gap between the rich and the poor while the middle class was slowly going extinct.
One of the biggest corporation was the Railroads back in the 1870 the whole economy revolved on the railroads; not just for transportation but all the jobs it provided. Which consecutively had most of the sticks take place in the rail road jobs. By the end of the century the rail road corporations rivaled the United States government size. The Pennsylvania Railroad had 110,000 employees, three times the number of men in all the armed forces of the United States.
Rail roads powered the industrial economy. They were one of the main consumers of steel and iron. Plus coal  was the fuel used by the trains which also made coal a necessity. The  Railroads having that much power made them a liability at times since  Railroads were at times overbuilding, borrowing recklessly, and managed under very poor conditions.

 Oil was also a big producer and contributed to the economy. When you think of oil you think of John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. He created this company because of a vision that he could own all parts of oil making with horizontal integration. He used strategic methods to force other oil companies to either sell out or loose it all. Rockefeller created new an ingenious things to do with oil like making it into kerosine to light up oil lamps. And Gasoline for motor vehicles later on. His company came to be known as the best-hated corporation of the day. He was ruthless and he proclaimed that "Individualism has gone never to return" because big corporation united would be the future.

 Other man who built corporation were Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, J.P Morgan. Carnegie made sure to use vertical integration to own all part of production of steel to make sure that all expenses would still be going to the company. He would own the mine that got the steel he needed, the steel factory, and the means to transport the steel. He became the riches man by being able to create steel a well known metal because it was harder than other but more expensive. So what he did was make a cheap way to produce steel and own the steel production industry. Edison advance many technologies and merged his company Edison General Electric with Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric. He made the first light bulb that helped light up the world with out oil and used electricity. Morgan was a banking mogul that had one of the biggest banking firms in the country he was the leading financier of the Progressive era. Morgan also stopped the panic of 1907.

Due to the panic of 1907 the Federal Reserve was made to be the central banking system of the United States.  This was done in December 23, 1913 and over time the Federal Reserve has expanded its role but it is there mostly to regulate banking, fair trade practices, and interest rates. With these new changes also came the 16th amendment which allowed congress to levy taxes. Also having the 17th amended helped give more power to the people by being able to choose their senators. This era broth many advancements to technology and we saw many inequalities in the way corporations worked. But with time and the help of muckrakers exposing how the other side lived reforms had to be made to stop the corporations harming Americas instead of helping. The end of the Progressive era saw many great president that made change people though would ruin America and the way that America could interfere in commerce, but with out this regulation many unfair treatment practices would still be practiced today. The way this era affected America shaped the rest of the world because Americas economy changed which affected everyone.