It is ridiculous to dismiss the gold standard thing like it’s some fringe conspiracy, saying "mainstream economists" prefer blaming oil shocks or regulations. The 1971 move to fiat money wasn't just about ditching gold. It let the Fed print like crazy, inflating assets (stocks, real estate) while wages flatlined. Even guys like Krugman admit loose money screws workers. The charts don’t lie. Divergence started right in '71, not '73 when OPEC flexed. And if oil was the problem, why did Germany and Japan handle it without wrecking their middle class?
Then there's the "women flooded the workforce" excuse. Sure, more workers can lower wages, but productivity kept climbing but wages did NOT. That’s not supply and demand, that's corporations grabbing more power (thanks, dead unions). And "household income" rose? Only because families were grinding two jobs just to stay afloat. Not exactly winning.
China? Lol. In '71, China was still a backwater. Their real economic boom didn’t hit till the 1990s. And offshoring only worked because the fiat dollar let the U.S. run endless trade deficits without consequences. Try that on a gold standard. It would collapse in a WEEK.
Oh, and the EPA? Pollution regs saved lives, and the '80s proved deregulation didn’t fix wages it just let Wall Street go wild. The real issue? Money got fake, capital divorced from labor, and the 1% hoarded the gains.
Bottom line: The so called "rebuttals" from HN commenters are a mess of half-baked excuses. If oil, women, or China were the culprits, why did everything flip exactly post 1971? The gold standard's end is the smoking gun. And the "mainstream economists" pushing these weak takes? Same geniuses who missed 2008. Maybe time to stop trusting their playbook.
It's not good to exaggerate financial ups & downs but some things can get more foolish than that when people try to minimize it or paint over it.
As time goes by, more people seem to need more excuses to maintain a position that there was not irreversible devastating damage to the US economy, and in tandem the dollar itself. They want to believe that things like that can never be the direct result of Presidential malfeasance which can get out of hand.
If you were there at the time and had very much professional exposure to Wall Street at all, as a witness you would have observed 2008 as a non-event compared to 1973.
Without much advanced math very many people saw it coming right away in 1971 before the next logical events even began to unfold. There were still plenty of people born in the 19th century who could tell you exactly how it was going to be. They were just not the majority. The stock market did end up crashing like nothing had since 1929.
It was good to have advice from those with serious lived experiences to help navigate such turbulent times.
