I’m well aware of the argument that the alleged postwar prosperity was reserved for white males. While the point it makes is obviously true, some of the implications trouble me:

* Sometimes it is used as a reason to bring back the social norms of the 1950’s, i.e. today’s job market is overcrowded BECAUSE of the influx of women into the workforce.

* Sometimes the “managerial” character of that time period is framed as something from which we are now somehow liberated, free to pursue our livelihood through “entrepreneurship” instead of the rapidly disappearing economic phenomenon called employment. This is the tactic of people who frame things in terms of “security society” vs. “opportunity society.” I respect that you are (I think) entrepreneurship-positive, but such framing is of course most likely coming from people advocating capitalism rather than markets.

My own take on the contrast between pre-1980 and post-1980 America have more in common with contemporary movement progressivism; a sense that there has been a decoupling of productivity and income. The logic, and it’s a ruling class logic, seems to be that if the productivity gains are attributable mainly to automation, then the income gains should rightly and justly accrue to capital rather than labor. I see no way out of this trap without some kind of “social dividend.”