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.