Affluence and

1
Affluence and The Other America
2
The Golden Age ?

• Two major social phenomena in the 1950s

3
Causes of economic miracle

4
New Economics

• During Depression, people began to wonder if
  capitalism worked 1950s caused such doubts to
  virtually disappear
• John Maynard Keynes
• government could cure a recession

5

• However much at odds on specific issues,
  Americans have shared a belief in the rights of
  property, the philosophy of economic
  individualism, the value of competition they
  have accepted the economic virtues of capitalist
  culture as necessary qualities of man. Richard
  Hofstader

6
People of Plenty Middle Class America 1950s    
      

• Central to middle-class culture in the 1950s
  absorption with consumer goods

7
Consumer driven as opposed to investment driven
the rise of STUFF

8
Suburban Nation

9
Inner Cities and Rural Communities

• Easy for people who grew up in the suburbs to
  believe that this is what life was like for the
  entire countrynot the case

10
Michael Harrington, The Other America

11
Rural Poor

12
Inner Cities