- The Age Of Great Dreams America In The 1960s Pdf : Free Programs For Free
- The Age Of Great Dreams America In The 1960s Pdf : Free Programs Online
- The Age Of Great Dreams America In The 1960s Pdf : Free Programs 2017
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Economy in The 1960s.The Other AmericaIn 1962, Michael Harrington published The Other America, a shocking expose of poverty and want in the United States. Thoroughly researched, the book chronicled the plight of 'the unskilled workers, the migrant farm workers, the aged, the minorities, and all of the others who live in the economic underworld of American life.' The book had an immediate impact. More than 70,000 people bought the first edition, including.Described as shocking but necessary reading, the book drew a curious and telling response.
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After all, poverty was hardly new. Many of the people and regions so powerfully described by Harrington weren't recently impoverished. For the tenant farmers of the rural South, the isolated occupants of Appalachia, and struggling immigrants of northeastern ghettoes, poverty wasn't a new condition.But what was new was the degree of affluence that surrounded these pockets of poverty. What was new was the extent and type of material comfort enjoyed by most Americans. Real, desperate poverty, set against this backdrop, represented a disturbing challenge to Americans' sense of their nation.The Other America and the reception to it were, therefore, somewhat optimistic.
They were grounded in the belief that poverty need not exist, that it was not part of the natural order, and that societies and their governments could take steps to eliminate it.During the 1930s, had created a new expectation for the American government—it should aggressively intervene in the economy to redress its periodic downswings. During the 1960s, politicians would carry this logic to the next step—they would declare war on poverty and embrace a moral and political responsibility for driving it completely from America.
The Affluence of the 1950sThe affluence that Americans would come to expect—and demand––of their government was grounded in a handful of critical developments in the years following.For starters, contrary to expectations, American defense spending remained relatively high after the end of the war. The, and the war in, required enormous military spending. With between 2 and 3.5 million men in uniform and defense industries consuming millions of federal dollars, the economy operated on a continuous wartime basis.Certain industries, like the aerospace industry, boomed after the war; companies like Lockheed and McDonnell Aircraft, GE and Westinghouse employed thousands of people, many of them in high-paying engineering and technical occupations.But was rooted in more than military spending. New technologies boosted productivity in both the industrial and agricultural sectors. Farm income increased; yields of corn, wheat, and cotton at least doubled. American manufacturers also realized new levels of productivity as industrialists poured $10 billion annually into capital improvements. Increased investment abroad also created jobs and generated wealth at home.
Americans' foreign investment was relatively static between the world wars, but in the 15 years following World War II, it increased 1,000%; investments in raw materials and resources like oil played a large part in this boom.But the real story of the new affluence was less the way it was earned than the way it was lived. The economic growth of the generated more than jobs: it created whole new ways of life. New synthetics, new production methods, and higher wages made a new type of consumption possible. Americans bought cars, televisions, and household appliances at record levels, and they borrowed money optimistically to do so.Americans' pursuit of consumer comfort was complemented by their growing demand for entertainment.
Television, movies, and both professional and college sports filled the weekly routine—and the family vacation became an annual custom. By 1960, Americans spent $85 billion a year on entertainment, double the spending of the previous decade.American affluence also relocated during the '50s. It moved from the cities to the suburbs.
Increasing car ownership, better highways, and home loans made possible by the GI Bill encouraged a mass migration. By 1960, roughly one-third of all Americans lived in the 'burbs.' Inflated ExpectationsThe new affluence of the 1950s revised existing portraits of life in America; the American Dream took on a new set of particulars and a new set of expectations.But there was certain irony to it all. As Harrington pointed out, 50 million people still lived in some degree of poverty. And more broadly, for all these inflated expectations of life in America, real economic growth during the 1950s was relatively moderate. The country actually slipped in and out of mild recessions three times during the decade: the GNP grew on average only 2 to 3% annually.Perhaps more sobering, European economic growth actually exceeded that in America in the late 1950s, while the Soviet government reported record economic gains.So, the presidents of the 1960s inherited a complex set of challenges. Consumer possibilities inspired heightened demands for life in America, yet economic growth was modest.
The public demanded aggressive government action to redress economic shortcomings, yet prevailing ideologies insisted on fiscal responsibility and limited government intervention. Poverty was designated both immoral and curable, yet it was a huge and tenacious part of the American social landscape.In short, in many ways, expectations had gotten far ahead of reality. The bells and whistles of a consumer society convinced many that permanent and universal prosperity was more possible and imminent than it really was, and policymakers had little choice but to fall in line with these inflated public expectations. John Kennedy: From Fiscal Conservative to Innovative Tax CutterIn navigating this economic minefield Kennedy began with fairly traditional views. Faced with a slow-growing economy and an unemployment rate of 7% in 1961, he resisted the advice of his Ivy League economic advisors that he launch an ambitious program of public works funded by deficit spending.Budget surpluses, these Keynesians argued, imposed a drag on the economy. Dollars that consumers could spend shouldn't be tied up in government vaults. These dollars should be spent, and a series of demand-side tax cuts—tax reductions aimed at middle and lower-class consumers—should be introduced.But Kennedy was afraid that this program would bring on charges of fiscal irresponsibility from congressional conservatives.
And he was also inhibited by his inaugural call for sacrifice. Indulging the public in tax cuts and government jobs hardly seemed consistent with his request that citizens 'ask not what their country can do for them, but what they could do for their country.' But a year into his presidency, the economic news was still sobering. By the spring of 1962, the stock market was falling and unemployment still hovered near 7%. Even worse, a controversy surrounding U.S. Steel threatened to send the stock markets into a panic. In early April, the steel giant announced that it was raising prices, just weeks after President Kennedy had successfully convinced the steelworkers union to temper its wage demands.Kennedy exploded and his furious outburst made its way into the press.
'My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of b-s,' Kennedy was quoted as saying in Newsweek. Attorney General Robert Kennedy added further to business anxieties by convening a grand jury investigation of U.S. Steel.The stock market immediately fell in fear of the administration's attack on big business. The sluggish economy had already caused the Dow to drop 50 points after peaking near 750 the previous year. Now it plummeted another 50 points. And on May 28th, the Dow fell more than 6% in a single day.
'Kennedy’s Crash' was the worst single day on Wall Street since the -launching crash of October 28th, 1929.The president realized that he needed to do some damage control with the business community. (You think, JFK?)So, he suggested that he was considering large tax cuts, many of them aimed at businesses. Even more immediately, he raised depreciation allowances for industries through executive orders. In December, he made the most dramatic gesture to the wounded feelings of big business. In a speech before the Economic Club of New York, he condemned the tax code that placed too heavy a burden on business initiative and profits and urged sweeping tax reductions.The tax proposal that he would advance in 1963 included a series of benefits for business and wealthy Americans—investment tax credits, improved depreciation allowances, lower capital gains tax rates, and a reduction of the top marginal tax rate charged to America's wealthiest people from 91% to 65%.But his plan also included across-the-board tax cuts for all taxpayers. A modified version of his proposal passed the House in September, but it wouldn't be signed into law until 1964, after the president was assassinated. Kennedy: Supply-sider or Keynesian ConvertKennedy's tax cuts are widely credited with stimulating economic growth over the next two years.
By 1966, there were 5.5 million more Americans employed than when he was elected to office. During these same years, corporate profits grew more than 70%.As with the rest of Kennedy's legacy, politicians have argued over what exactly these tax policies represented.
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Republicans have called Kennedy an early supply-sider—a Democratic who recognized that economic growth rested on lowering business taxes and reducing the burden of government. Democrats have emphasized the demand-side portion of the cuts—the across-the-board rate reductions—and have insisted that Kennedy would never have tolerated the sorts of cuts later supported by Reagan and his Republican successors. They insist that Kennedy was ultimately a Keynesian convert, willing to cut taxes and accept deficit spending as an answer to economic stagnation.The truth is probably somewhere in between.Kennedy was more of an economic and political pragmatist than a supply-side theorist or Keynesian convert.
The Age Of Great Dreams America In The 1960s Pdf : Free Programs For Free
From start to finish, he was influenced by political considerations in developing his economic strategy. He resisted demands for deficit spending because he feared charges of fiscal recklessness; he backed away from increased government spending because he feared that congressional conservatives would block these and every other part of his domestic agenda.He accepted a program of tax cuts only when it looked like his administration would be undermined by the 'Kennedy Crash' of 1962. He proposed an extensive series of tax cuts and credits only after his presidency was criticized in Hoover-like terms.In short, Kennedy's political instincts proved stronger than his economic principles. His political instincts ultimately overrode even his inaugural commitment to sacrifice on behalf of higher national goals.
The Age Of Great Dreams America In The 1960s Pdf : Free Programs Online
The inflated demands of the American public forced the president into new economic directions.And in the short run, it all seemed to work out. The economy grew, jobs were created, and poverty was reduced. By indulging businesses and the public in large tax cuts, the economy experienced a robust recovery.But the legacy Kennedy passed to his successors wasn't just a growing economy; he also affirmed the belief that the nation's lofty ambitions could be achieved without sacrifice—that the economy could grow, and that an ambitious agenda of economic and social reform could be advanced while simultaneously cutting taxes that boosted incomes and swelled corporate profits. Lyndon Johnson and the Great SocietyFor, this legacy would prove particularly problematic.Since his days as a rural teacher, he'd been committed to alleviating the suffering of America's poor. As president, therefore, he proposed an expansive domestic agenda aimed at reducing poverty, expanding educational opportunities, increasing the safety net of public services for the poor and unemployed, and tending to the health and financial needs of the elderly.And confronted with compelling statistics, Congress and the nation rallied to his vision.
The Age Of Great Dreams America In The 1960s Pdf : Free Programs 2017
This collection of original essays represents some of the most exciting ways in which historians are beginning to paint the 1960s onto the larger canvas of American history. While the first literature about this turbulent period was written largely by participants, many of the contributors to this volume are young scholars who came of age intellectually in the 1970s and 1980s and thus write from fresh perspectives.The essayists ask fundamental questions about how much America really changed in the 1960s and why certain changes took place. In separate chapters, they explore how the great issues of the decade-the war in Vietnam, race relations, youth culture, the status of women, the public role of private enterprise-were shaped by evolutions in the nature of cultural authority and political legitimacy. They argue that the whirlwind of events and problems we call the Sixties can only be understood in the context of the larger history of post-World War II America.Contents'Growth Liberalism in the Sixties: Great Societies at Home and Grand Designs Abroad,' by Robert M. Collins'The American State and the Vietnam War: A Genealogy of Power,' by Mary Sheila McMahon'And That's the Way It Was: The Vietnam War on the Network Nightly News,' by Chester J. Race, Ethnicity, and the Evolution of Political Legitimacy,' by David R.
Colburn and George E. Pozzetta'Nothing Distant about It: Women's Liberation and Sixties Radicalism,' by Alice Echols'The New American Revolution: The Movement and Business,' by Terry H. Anderson'Who'll Stop the Rain?: Youth Culture, Rock 'n' Roll, and Social Crises,' by George Lipsitz'Sexual Revolution(s),' by Beth Bailey'The Politics of Civility,' by Kenneth Cmiel'The Silent Majority and Talk about Revolution,' by David Farber.