Transcript The Affluent Society

The Affluent Society
America in the 1950’s
America after the War
• Celebration….
and
DEMOBILIZATION
• 1945 – 12m military
• 1947 -- 1.6m military
Demobilization
• War industries convert to peace production
– Autos, TV's, household appliances, cameras
• War-time price controls/rationing removed
– Prices rise
• Increased demand
– Inflation sky rockets1945-1947
– Labor Strikes (5 million strikers 1946)
• Truman’s Fair Deal
– Taft-Hartley Act
• Limits union power
• Many women exit the labor market
The Economy Grows in the 50’s
GNP Gross National Product
500
450
400
350
300
billions of
250
dollars
200
1940
1950
1960
150
100
50
0
Year
“Real Income – up 20%
1950--1960
Consumer Society
• 1950’s We were 6% of the world’s
population, producing and consuming 50% of
the world’s products.
Why were the 50’s so prosperous?
• Rise in real income/savings from WWII
• “Pent-up” demand
– Little consumer spending WWII/Great Depression
• New Technologies
• GI Bill
GI Bill of Rights
Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944
• Provides funds for
education for Veterans
– an estimated 2.2 million
veterans received
education at colleges and
universities
– A total of 7.8 million
veterans, or 50.5 percent of
the World War II veteran
population, received
training or education under
the bill.
GI Bill
• Funds Home Loans
– Over 2 million loans by
1950
– Housing starts:
• 1944 -114,000
• 1950 - 1.7 million
• Home ownership
increases to 62% of
the population by
1960
New Jobs
• Construction
• Government Jobs
• Education
More New Jobs
• “White collar” jobs
•
– Big Business
– Finance
– Advertising
(mostly white and male)
Service Industry
– Insurance
– Transportation
– Retail
– Hospitality
• MacDonald’s
• Holiday Inns
– Service and repair workers
(service jobs > manufacturing jobs)
– A shift from producing goods to providing services
Why were the 50’s so prosperous?
•
“Bigger is Better” efficiencies in industry
– IBM sales grow 10x between 1946-1961
– GM doubles its assets to $2.8 billion in 1960
•
Conglomerates-large companies with holdings in unrelated industries,
brought about by business mergers
– benefit: company could grow without violation of anti-trust law
– Example: General Electric, Berkshire-Hathaway, Time-Warner, Phillip-Morris
Farms Become Big Business
• Small family farms replaced by
agribusiness corporations.
– Cost efficiencies on larger farms
– Expense of new technologies
– Pesticide/Synthetic fertilizers
• 1940 to 1960
– Farm size doubles
– Total farms: 6 million to 4 million (2.3 million now)
– Farm population: 30 million to 13 million
Mobility
• Post-war shifts in population
– To “Sunbelt”
– Rural to Urban
(20% of American moved each year of the 50s)
• The “Automobile Culture”
– 58 million cars purchased during the 1950s
– Highway Act of 1956
• $32 billion to build 40,000 miles of roads
• Interstate Highway System
Supporting Businesses
Suburbia
Small, mass-produced homes
that the middle-class can afford
“Sunbelt” Growth