> The median age of the U.S. workforce is approaching 40, meaning that
> for most people, 1973 is an early memory, and 1945 was not even a
> glint in the parental eye territory. Europe is even older. So if all
> these people are seeing the Golden Age as a baseline, it's not from
> personal memory.
I think even people who never lived through 1945-73 still see it as a baseline because, culturally, all the tropes of middle-class existence were invented then and they've been continually reproduced both in political discourse and in cultural production (owning your own home - free and clear eventually - the family vacation, retirement, college as the "ticket" to a secure middle-class life, etc.)...You often see neoliberal spokespeople try to mentally prepare people to jettison these expectations, but it's often self-defeating, since the same spokespeople are always waxing enthusiastic about how much more prosperous we are today- yet people still measure prosperity against Golden Age benchmarks.
> And, in any case, why should 28 exceptional years be seen as the real
> norm from which most of history was an exception?
Hey, you're the one always arguing that periods of prosperity like the late 90's are politically salutary since they raise people's expectations. You don't think so when it comes to 1945-73?
> And it kind of sucked to be a black or female worker in the U.S.
> economy of the 1950s, compared with even the imperfect world of today.
I'm not argung the opposite. But as a political message that can be invidious. The subtext seems to be: in order to give blacks and women a more equal chance, white middle-class families have had to be made less secure.
Seth