Even if you weren’t. The economic boom of the 20th century gave birth to lots of prosperous minority communities.
Only problem was that if you ever got too prosperous, neighbors might come by to burn the place down.
But a lot of the so-called economic anxiety kicked off by mass migration to California, Texas, and Florida (and to London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersberg, Beijing, Tokyo, and Mexico City) was the result of war refugees, political dissidents, and victims of a shifting market economy finding real serious economic benefits to relocating inside the fence of one of the world’s premier powers. You didn’t need to be white to achieve a marked improvement in quality of life, you just needed to be within arm’s reach of all the advanced industrial capital and its benefits.
The Two Income Trap that began to rear its head in the 80s/90s was a consequence of housing, higher education debts, and child care costs that prior generations hadn’t historically dealt with. One could plausibly argue that the extended adolescence of college demonstrates an overall improved economy, as people are no longer joining the workforce in their teenage years and trying to outproduce a historically high infant mortality rate.
But the benefits of the economy have gone disproportionately to the leisure and professional managerial classes, while the working classes absorb higher debts/rents and defer accessing the industrial improvements until much later in life. It isn’t that non-white people never see them. It is simply that they are much older when they finally do and enjoy the benefits for less time, due to higher mortality rates.
The two income family came as a direct result of Nixon’s Vietnam spending.
Kennedy’s Vietnam policy was containment; we supplied ‘military advisors’ and propped up the South to appease the French. We were focused on the soviets and Vietnam was a sideshow.
LBJ wanted a massive knock out punch to wipe the Viet Cong out fast. Instead he got a quagmire. Johnson had to print money to pay for the war because he didn’t want to raise taxes. Nixon ran as a ‘peace candidate’ and then doubled down on Johnson’s spending. Remember, we were dropping something like a dozen Hiroshimas a day on jungle.
Inflation is getting bad, and then OPEC hits the US with the Oil Boycott. That devastates the US economy. All those cool loft buildings in places like New York’s TriBeCa and SoHo? Those were originally small factories. They emptied out because the owners couldn’t afford to runt them anymore.
Even if you weren’t. The economic boom of the 20th century gave birth to lots of prosperous minority communities.
Only problem was that if you ever got too prosperous, neighbors might come by to burn the place down.
But a lot of the so-called economic anxiety kicked off by mass migration to California, Texas, and Florida (and to London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersberg, Beijing, Tokyo, and Mexico City) was the result of war refugees, political dissidents, and victims of a shifting market economy finding real serious economic benefits to relocating inside the fence of one of the world’s premier powers. You didn’t need to be white to achieve a marked improvement in quality of life, you just needed to be within arm’s reach of all the advanced industrial capital and its benefits.
The Two Income Trap that began to rear its head in the 80s/90s was a consequence of housing, higher education debts, and child care costs that prior generations hadn’t historically dealt with. One could plausibly argue that the extended adolescence of college demonstrates an overall improved economy, as people are no longer joining the workforce in their teenage years and trying to outproduce a historically high infant mortality rate.
But the benefits of the economy have gone disproportionately to the leisure and professional managerial classes, while the working classes absorb higher debts/rents and defer accessing the industrial improvements until much later in life. It isn’t that non-white people never see them. It is simply that they are much older when they finally do and enjoy the benefits for less time, due to higher mortality rates.
The two income family came as a direct result of Nixon’s Vietnam spending.
Kennedy’s Vietnam policy was containment; we supplied ‘military advisors’ and propped up the South to appease the French. We were focused on the soviets and Vietnam was a sideshow.
LBJ wanted a massive knock out punch to wipe the Viet Cong out fast. Instead he got a quagmire. Johnson had to print money to pay for the war because he didn’t want to raise taxes. Nixon ran as a ‘peace candidate’ and then doubled down on Johnson’s spending. Remember, we were dropping something like a dozen Hiroshimas a day on jungle.
Inflation is getting bad, and then OPEC hits the US with the Oil Boycott. That devastates the US economy. All those cool loft buildings in places like New York’s TriBeCa and SoHo? Those were originally small factories. They emptied out because the owners couldn’t afford to runt them anymore.