Pivotal Decade

How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies

By: Judith Stein

Narrated by: L. J. Ganser

In this fascinating new history, Judith Stein argues that in order to understand our current economic crisis, we need to look back to the 1970s and the end of the age of the factory - the era of postwar liberalism, created by the New Deal, whose practices, high wages, and regulated capital produced both robust economic growth and greater income equality.

When high oil prices and economic competition from Japan and Germany battered the American economy, new policies, both international and domestic, became necessary. But war was waged against inflation, rather than against unemployment, and the government promoted a balanced budget instead of growth. This, says Stein, marked the beginning of the age of finance and subsequent deregulation, free trade, low taxation, and weak unions that has fostered inequality and now the worst recession in 60 years.

Drawing on extensive archival research and covering the economic, intellectual, political, and labor history of the decade, Stein provides a wealth of information on the 1970s. She also shows that to restore prosperity today, America needs a new model: more factories and fewer financial houses.

©2010 Judith Stein (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Here is one of those rare books in which a seasoned historian offers compelling analyses of urgent contemporary importance. Pivotal Decade will startle and provoke you. It is on my not-miss list." (Sean Wilentz, Professor of History, Princeton University)

"Judith Stein gets it. Pivotal Decade's illustration and examination of the last forty years of failed economic policy will be a powerful text for our generation as well as for the future. We must learn these lessons once and for all - before it's too late." (Leo W. Gerard, President, United Steelworkers)

"[A] highly original illumination of how the American Century collapsed." (Rick Perlstein, The Nation)

This book should be required reading before voting

The book argues that US government policy from the 1960s-70s explains why barely anything is made in the USA anymore, showing how one president after another (from both parties) let economic ignorance and "free-market" ideology set policies that sold off US workers and consumers for the benefit of finance and diplomats. It helps if you know some basic economics, but you learn much more. The payoff is enormous because the same issues are still being debated today, with just as much ignorance.

Solid history of how the US lost its post WW2 industrial dominance

From the Cold War empire building which encouraged the US to rebuild its competitors through the current situation where financial sector interests predominate she gives a blow by blow account of how government let it all happen

unreadable

this book is just a string of NYT headlines masquerading as history-- basically no analysis.

Better off skimming Wikipedia

This book really is just a chronological series of newspaper headlines with almost no analysis, including extensive coverage of various forgotten democratic presidential primaries. I learned nothing. You are better off reading a few Wikipedia articles about this time period. Also the last chapter of this book undermines its title and entire premise, because it goes over the start of the Reagan years in the 80s (after the end of the titular “pivotal” decade) where actual pivotal events happened far outstripping the previous ten years.