Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How did the economy at the end of the 70's compare to now?

Absolutely. Energy is the ultimate currency in the modern world.

we were saying the same thing in the '70's!

I was working in a heavy metal producing factory.
Getting promotions and big raises annually.
Kids were babies and life was good.
Took them camping in the summer, fished almost every day.

Hunted when ever I could get away in the fall and winter.
I taught Hunter Safety and rifle instruction to eager youths. Scout summer camp and Explorer posts.

These fancy things called "coumpound bows " were coming out
I still shot a 50 # recurve.

late 70's....there were no jobs where i was at ...went in the army,better add that fur prices were high and i traped for 2 years for date/beer monies

O.k. class, I want you to pay attention to a few quotes here that will go a long way to explaining how our country got to where it is today. It will explain how you can lose jobs and never get them back because of bad economic policy. These things show up later, and the effect is extended.











All of these quotes are true, and all related.

1.) The US thrived in the post WWII era, as we had the manufacturing base that was destroyed in Europe and Japan. The G.I. Bill sent tens of thousands to college, and gave us an army of engineers ready to exploit the technologic advancements that came from the war and into civilian life. There was a recession in the late 1950's but it was mild by modern standards. 1960 =

US GDP (1998 dollars): $526.6 billion
Federal spending: $92.19 billion
Federal debt: $290.5 billion
Consumer Price Index: 29.6
Unemployment: 5.5%

2.) LBJ, Vietnam, and The Great Society

LBJ was going to kick Ho Chi Mihn's butt and win the war on poverty. He failed on both accounts. He started Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, funding for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and a host of others. Spending on these, especially Medicare has ballooned to extraordinary proportions as a % of our deficit.

3.) The result of this spending was massive inflation. Nixon tried wage and price controls. That didn't work, and never does. Carter and the Fed tried to wring out inflation with high interest rates.

Inflation wrecked the buying power of Americans. To keep pace, employers were forced to up wages which in turn ran up the cost of goods and service to the point that foreign imports under cut them and hurt sales and it became more economical to send the jobs overseas and ship products back.

Think about that. The cost of transportation and energy was less than the increase of wages and production caused by massive inflation to manufacture domestically. It was the inflation that ran up wages and sent jobs overseas. (Along with environmentalism). Not Reagan, not Bain Capital, it was the effects of inflation.

4.) Another effect of inflation was that households longer were stable with one breadwinner. The wives/moms were forced into the workplace. Dual incomes provided some extra cash for a nicer house and 2 cars, but only when BOTH were working. Cut one job, and hard times were the result.

5.) The giant leap in gasoline prices suddenly had people running from Detroit and buying smaller japanese imports. Detroit was building the big stuff that was getting weighed down by new crash requirements and EPA restrictions. The cars were big, heavy, slow, and ugly. The Japanese countered and grabbed a huge part of the market and that killed off plenty of domestic jobs (with the other factors above) that extended far beyond Detroit. Less cars means less steel. Less steel means less coal and iron ore. Mining towns and steel towns died along with auto towns. The snowball from increased oil prices and inflation.

I hope all of this will sink into at least one of you that wasn't around then, and more of you all that were.

To help some of you connect the dots above, try this:

1.) We kicked butt in manufacturing after WWII because the rest of the world was in shambles. We had the capacity and the overseas demand. We had the market cornered.

2.) By the 1970's, Europe had recovered, Japan had recovered, and Korea was recovered and developing a manufacturing base. We now had competition.

3.) Run away inflation made our good more expensive, and other countries suddenly found their goods competitive not only in other parts of the world, but in the USA.

4.) Government meddling in the Auto Industry coupled with the jump in gasoline prices crippled Detroit, and gave the Japanese a chance in the US market. That killed off more jobs than just Auto jobs.

5.) Government entitlement programs begun by LBJ have grown from afterthoughts in the budget to anchors that are sinking our ability to control spending.

6.) Inflation forced women into the job market as a necessity. More moms working means less parental supervision. That means kids are raised by Day Care, after school programs, and whoever the oldest one is at home that can unlock the front door after school and watch until mom and dad get home.

To help some of you connect the dots above, try this:

1.) We kicked butt in manufacturing after WWII because the rest of the world was in shambles. We had the capacity and the overseas demand. We had the market cornered.

2.) By the 1970's, Europe had recovered, Japan had recovered, and Korea was recovering and developing a manufacturing base. We now had competition.

3.) Run away inflation made our goods more expensive, and other countries suddenly found their goods competitive not only in other parts of the world, but in the USA.

4.) Government meddling in the Auto Industry coupled with the jump in gasoline prices crippled Detroit, and gave the Japanese a chance in the US market. That killed off more jobs than just Auto jobs.

5.) Government entitlement programs begun by LBJ have grown from afterthoughts in the budget to anchors that are sinking our ability to control spending.

6.) Inflation forced women into the job market as a necessity. More moms working means less parental supervision. That means kids are raised by Day Care, after school programs, and whoever the oldest one is at home that can unlock the front door after school and watch until mom and dad get home.

Rather than inflation, it was the drop in real, after tax, earnings that did this. You can have inflation without any drop in real, after tax, earning, by simply keeping after-tax wages apace with inflation. Inflation is definitely a bad thing, and the cause of many societal ills, in that it constitutes theft by the banks and government, and nullifies the benefits to a society of the use of money, e.g., to provide a stable unit of account, store of value, etc., however, it has no direct or necessary connection to reductions in real wages. Reductions in real wages are more closely connected to the loss of our manufacturing base than to inflation.

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Paranoid kookery isn't defiance of the status quo,it's simply paranoid kookery.

Thanks for illustrating my point.

Yes, domestically.

Inflation forces higher wages which must be passed on in the goods and services which fuels more inflation. It also makes foreign imports more competitive when they are not subjected to the same forces.

That can switch to a competitive advantage when 2 similar goods come to market, and the import is less expensive than the domestic. The consumers will decide which thrives. If it is the import, then jobs at home will be at risk as sales are lost and profitability ceases.

My life in the late 1970's was pretty damn good.
I was in my mid 20's,strong and healthy.
Was working for an oil tool company with what seemed like unlimited overtime.
Was hunting on a 4,000 acre ranch in Uvalde county Texas and that cost me $200 a year.
I was making around $8 an hour where as my friends were making around half that amount.
There were not too many illegal aliens clogging up Houston or the rest of the state.
Bought a brand new 1977 Chevy pickup and ordered it just the way I wanted it and paid $4500 for it.
It was an oil leaking pos which GM refused to repair so I sold it,never to return to a GM product ever again and bought a new 1978 Toyota pickup for $4105.
Bought my three bedroom 1.5 bath brick home in 1979 and paid $39k for it which I thought was high.
Mortgage rate was 10%.
Life was good in the 70's but the 80's was hell as practically everything started falling apart financially but I did hang on to my home and eventually got in another line of work.

There is a difference between raling against the status quo and cultishly pining one man as a political panacea. That's how we got Obama.

Alan

this....the US and Canada are sitting on enough reserves to employ hundreds of thousands of people, dramatically increase domestic oil and gas supplies, and unscrew a great deal of the leverage states like Venezuela, Iran, and Saudi currently possess.

Don't forget coal.

Just before the first oil embargo in 1973(?)I happened to read an article in "Foreign Affairs" called "The Oil Crisis:This Time the Wolf is Here". Less than a year later Boy, Howdy was he ever here. Then it got worse with the Carter years. A friend was paying 22% interest to borrow enough to pay his worker week to week. One week I was looking at a $4000 payroll with $700 in the bank. I got through it but lots didn't. I had just bought a business and things got tough. They actually got worse under Reagan for awhile and they will do the same under Romney. Obama's legacy will be with us for years in the form of regulations we can't get rid of. George McGovern wrote a piece after he tried to run a business and failed "due to government regulations". HIs position really changed after he was in the private sector.
Energy is the key but there are so many thing that must be done to get us over the hump I don't know if we can do it in time. I dont' know how the American people will take a reduction in their standard of living of about 30%.
Cato the Elder made a point of ending his speeches with "Carthage must be destroyed". We have a duty just as important. Obama must be defeated!

Nice demagoguing but no cigar. The real answer is everytime a politician comes up with kook-fringe insanely dangerous ideas(oh, I'm assuming you had RP in mind, check that I KNOW you had RP in mind) like "we can protect our nation with just a few submarines" or "we can be friends with Iran" or "let's legalize drugs" etc, some of us feel compelled to respond. Further, and even more fun, is when super-kooks like you with idiotiuc ideas like the US Gov't "could" have been involved in the Twin Towers attack, the Aurora Colorado killings, etc, or when your views mirror those of the likes of Shehaan, Eric Holder, Michael Moore etc, what do you expect, a "harrumph"? GMAFB.

I too believe that energy is important, and I believe that all forms of energy production should be explored and exploited BY THE PRIVATE SECTOR. That way it will be cost effective to produce and provide.

While energy is important, I believe it is of secondary importance. We must produce our own goods. They must be ours for ourselves and to sell to other nations. Right now we are just renting. When we do not have the infrastructure to build and maintain our own products then we are always going to have to buy it somewhere else and our money leaves our economy and our control.

Manufacturing has been fleeing US soil for decades, it's only now that the chickens have come home to roost. We have allowed Unions to dictate wages and benefits their members receive (and thus the price of goods/services) as opposed to allowing the free market system to do so. That coupled with increasing governmental regulation/taxation has made it cheaper for many companies to set up shop elsewhere and import even our "American Made" items (Ford).

Running a government is really no different than running a household. We make the comparison all the time. I can't (afford or want to spend the money) to call a plumber or electrician every time I have a little problem. I change my own light bulbs and put a new washer in the sink faucet. I don't have someone mow my lawn and weed the garden. I do it myself. I have a garden as opposed to buying everything from the store. I drive my own nails and build my own furniture to the extent of my ability and skill. I reload my own ammo. I DIY lots of stuff. My government mostly stays out of all that business. I'm happily making my own way and my government busies herself making me something to eat or washing my clothes.

One of my colleges doesn't know how to do [bleep] around his house. He asked me the other day how much money I thought I had saved by doing everything myself. I told him that I save as much as he spends on getting all that stuff done less the initial cost of my tools and they were paid for long ago. His eyes got wide. A little later I hear something that sounds like a power saw going over at his house so I text him that someone is cutting up stuff at his house. He says it's him and that he bought a saw and is trying to make a bookcase. I said be careful, measure twice, cut once. He says, "now you tell me". He'll learn.

Government is the same. They need to stay the Hell out of our way while we get some work done, get some things accomplished and some stuff built. We have to re-learn how to do it, and do it right. This is NOT new ideas. It is the premise that our country was founded on. Hard work and production of goods.

We can get our country back but we have to change our thinking from the idea that our value lies not in what we have in our hands but in what we can do with them.

Alan

I graduated college at the end of this. Wasn't a ton of jobs out there, but worked at getting a decent one myself. I remember the inflation..Was nuts

I was spending summers in Dunedin, Fla with my grandparents.

If there was any problem with the economy ,
I wouldn't have known it. They had just retired and sold 300ish acres
to a subdivision developer.

I do remember sitting with my grandpa in his Mark III Lincoln and him
bitching about long lines at the "fillin station".

Good post.