> Could you elaborate more specifically which attitudes reversed from what to
> what?
I'd did say "official" attitudes. Varoufakis, I guess, has an explanation in Kennedy/Johnson "New Frontier/Great Society." That there was domestic recycling of the surplus to address "the unevenness of prosperity in a time of rising aspirations."
My particular interest is in the arts, so with a Democrat in the White House, there was movement to establish the NEA/NEH, growing support for Regional Theater, Jackie promoting historic preservation, Casals and Bernstein over for dinner, Malraux delivering the Mona Lisa, and Warhol at the 1964 World's Fair.
This is pretty different than a world view determined by Mamie Eisenhower, although perhaps the Kitchen Debates were a prelude.
Varoufakis' comments connect well to the "war on poverty" components of the Great Society, but I'm less clear how his Global Plan makes sense of promoting an art/culture policy that's in essence elite. Certainly you could say that all this happened before the Beatles, so it may just have been that artistic "aspirations" were by definition aspirations toward the "fine" arts. But I have to believe it's more complex than than.
Here's Fortune Magazine in 1960:
"Business' growing concern with American taste is intensifying the intellectuals' concern about it. Taste is perhaps best defined as the capacity to discern fitness, beauty, order, congruity, or whatever constitutes excellence. When patterns of taste are dictated by purely commercial considerations, one argument goes, this capacity is stunted, and nearly all taste must conform to the average. Creative talent is diverted from writing novels or composing sonatas into such tasks as confecting advertising slogans; and intellects that are capable of unlocking secrets of the universe are diverted into such pursuits as designing better cigarette-making machinery.
"What is the state of American taste? In this essay, Fortune puts aside statistics to argue a speculative and controversial thesis: it is that American taste, at least by prevailing standards, is changing for the better, and will continue to do so. The change will be evident not only in the things people buy, but in the ways people use their leisure. And despite the apprehensions of the intellectuals, the part that business plays in forming tastes will tend not to corrupt but to improve them.
So how does all this stuff connect up in your mind?
Best, Charles