Economy: From Recovery to Dominance
Explain the three main institutions created at the Bretton Woods conference
The World Bank was created to provide loans for the reconstruction of war-torn Europe as well as for the development of former colonized nations--the so-called Third World or developing world.
The International Monetary Fund(IMF), was set up to stabilize currencies and to provide a predictable monetary environment for trade, with the U.S. dollar serving as the benchmark.
In 1947, multinational trade negotiations resulted in the first General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade(GATT), which established an international framework for overseeing trade rules and practices.
What did books like The Affluent Society and The Other America reveal about poverty in the US?
The Affluent Society(1958) by John Kenneth Galibraith argued that the poor were only an “afterthought” in the minds of economists and politicians, who largely celebrated the new growth. As Galibrath noted, one in thirteen families at the time earned less than $1,000 a year(about $7,500 in today’s dollars). In The Other America (1962), Michael Harrington chronicled “the economic under-world of American life,”and a U.S. government study, echoing a well-known sentence from Franklin Roosevelt second inaugural address(“I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished”), declared “one third of the nation” to be poorly paid, poorly educated, and poorly housed. It appeared that in economic terms, as the top and the middle converged, the bottom remained far behind.
What were the main postwar purchases of the middle class?
In the emerging suburban nation, three elements came together to create patterns of consumption that would endure for decades: houses, cars, and children.
How did William Levitt revolutionize homebuilding?
William Levitt revolutionized home building by applying mass-production techniques and turning out new homes at a dizzying rate.
What was the purpose of the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act?
The National Interstate and Defense Highways Act was cast as a Cold War necessity, because broad highways made evacuating crowded cities easier in the event of nuclear attack, the law changed American cities forever. Federal highways made possible the massive suburbanization of the nation in the 1960s. Interstate highways rerouted traffic away from small towns, bypassed well-traveled main roads such as the cross-country Route 66, and cut wide swaths through old neighborhoods in the cities. The new highway system promoted the nation's economic integration, facilitated the growth of suburbs, and contributed to the erosion of America’s distinct regional identities.
What was the main purpose of the Bretton Woods system?
The Bretton Woods system served America’s conception of an open-market global economy and complemented the nation’s ambitious diplomatic aims in the Cold War. The Chief idea of the Bretton Woods system was to make American capital available, on cheap terms, to nations that adopted free-trade capitalist economies. Bretton Woods favored America at the expense of recently independent countries, because America could dictate lending terms and stood to benefit as nations purchased more American goods.
“consumption = citizenship”
Buying things, once a sign of personal indulgence, now meant participating fully in American society and, moreover, fulfilling a social responsibility. Consumption also equaled full employment and improved living standards for the rest of the nation.
Define: planned obsolescence
A policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life. After awhile, it won’t work and you will have to buy it again. Planned obsolescence is to generate long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases. It is the deliberate shortening of a lifespan of a product to force consumers to purchase replacements.
What role did the FHA and VA play in expanding home buying?
The Federal Housing Administration(FHA) and the Veterans Administration(VA) played in expanding home building. The federal government made the home mortgage market serve a broader range of Americans than ever before. After the war, the FHA insured thirty- year mortgages with as little as 5 percent down and interest at 2 or 3 percent. The VA was even more generous, requiring only a token $1 down for qualified ex-GIs. FHA and VA mortgages best explain why, after hovering around 45 percent for the previous half a century, home ownership jumped to 60 percent by 1960
How did the growth of the suburbs impact where people did their shopping and dining?
People did not go to big city centers anymore, instead they went to malls, diners, and fast-food.
How did foreign countries help US companies expand?
Bretton Woods favored America at the expense of recently independent countries, because America could dictate lending terms and stood to benefit as nations purchased more American goods. That means, the company would get more money which means that they could expand their business. American companies expanding also helped with America’s economic growth.
What impact did the GI Bill have on education?
In the immediate post war years, more than half of all U.S. college students were veterans attending class on the government’s dime. Government financing of education helped make the U.S. workforce the best educated in the world in the 1950s and 1960s. American colleges, universities, and trade schools grew by leaps and bounds to accommodate the flood of students. More enrollment to college occurred. Better education meant higher earning power, and higher earning power translated into the consumer spending that drove the postwar economy. The GI bill definitely transformed America.
How did television change advertising?
By creating powerful visual narratives of pleasure and comfort, television revolutionized advertising and changed forever the ways products were sold to American, and global, consumers. Ads and tv shows could make someone want to buy something. For example, a groundbreaking advertisement for Anacin aspirin, a tiny hammer pounded inside the skull of a headache sufferer. Almost overnight, sales of Anacin increased by 50 percent. (p
What was the purpose of restrictive covenants?
The purpose of the restrictive covenants was to prohibit occupancy by members of other than the Caucasian Race.”(Restrictive covenants often applied to Jews and, in California, Asian Americans as well.)
List at least 4 reasons why people moved to the Sunbelt.
Taxes were low
The climate was mild
Open space allowed for sprawling subdivisions
California’s growth spurred especially by the state’s booming defense-related aircraft and electronics industries
Military bases
What is the difference between a white collar and blue collar job?
Blue collar jobs are jobs that use physical labor and you do not need a college degree to have a blue collar job. Blue collar workers wear blue attire so that dirt and dust are not shown. White collar jobs are jobs you need education for and are usually a person who performs professional, managerial, or administrative work.The men usually have to wear suits or a button down t-shirt.
Why did the number of homeowners increase after the war?
The number of homeowners increased after the war because of the GI Bill. One in every 5 single family homes built in the US was financed through the GI mortgage. In cities and suburbs across the country, the Veterans Administration(VA), which helped former soldiers purchase new homes with no down payment, sparked a building boom that created jobs in the construction industry and fueled consumer spending in home appliances and automobiles. Overall, the GI Bill had concrete financial assets that helped lift more Americans than ever before into a mass-consumption -oriented middle class.
How did television reinforce stereotypes of the time?
What Americans saw on television, both in the omnipresent and in the programming, was an overwhelmingly white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant world of nuclear families, suburban homes, and middle-class life.A typical show was Father Knows Best, starring Robert Young and Jane Wyatt. Father left home each morning wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. Mother was a full-time housewife and stereotypical female, prone to bad driving and tears. The Honeymooners, starring Jackie Gleason as a Brooklyn bus driver, and The Life of Riley, a situation comedy featuring a California aircraft worker, were rare in their treatment of working-class lives. Beulah, starring Ethel Waters and then Louise Beavers as the African American maid for a white family, and the comedic Amos N' Andy were the only shows featuring black actors in major roles. Black characters appeared mainly as sidekicks and servants. (pg.828).
How did some white suburbanites react when people of color tried to move into their neighborhoods?
After the war, the NAACP, the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO), and African American civil rights groups launched an ambitious campaign for open-housing ordinances in cities such as Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, and Oakland. White home owners rebelled, voting for racist polticians who promised to keep neighborhoods white by resisting why they called” Negro invasion.” When politics failed, white home owners took matters into their own hands. In Chicago and Detroit, and other major northern cities, they bombed, set fires, threw bricks through windows, and employed other tactics to force black homeowners out of certain neighborhoods.
What changes were occurring in American cities after WWII?
American cities had long been the home of poverty, slum housing, and the hardships and cultural dislocations brought on by immigration from overseas or migration from rural areas. But postwar American cities, especially those in the industrial Northeast and Midwest, experienced these problems with new intensity. By the 1950s, the manufacturing sector was contracting, and mechanization was eliminating thousands upon thousands of unskilled and semiskilled jobs, the kind traditionally taken up by new urban residents. The disappearing jobs were the ones”in which Negroes are disproportionately concentrated,” noted the Civil Rights activist Bayard Rustin. (pg.835).
What impact did new technology have on corporate growth?
The role of technology in business caused a tremendous growth in trade and commerce. Business concepts and models were revolutionized as a result of the introduction of technology. This is because technology gave a new and better approach on how to go about with business. America’s expansion into foreign markets was also a result of technological advances. The only problem was that many jobs were lost because of machines and new technology. Things were also made quicker.
Why was collective bargaining between unions and companies so important?
In the past,organized labor had been confined to a narrow band of craft trades and a few industries, primarily coal mining, railroading, and the building and metal trades. The power balance shifted during the Great Depression, and by the time the dust settled after World War 2, labor unions overwhelmingly represented America’s industrial workforce. Workers now had time to take off, more rights, more money, a better work day, pensions, health care, and company paid health insurance and etc.
How did religion serve as a tool of the Cold War?
Communism has no God(atheism) and the Americans thought if everyone had a strong belief in Christanity, America would not turn for communism. Obstacles would also turn into successes if everyone believed in God. America would stay capitalist. Anyone who wasn’t Christian was looked down on. The phrase “under God” was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and U.S. coins carried the words “In God We Trust” after 1956.
Explain the decision and impact of Shelley v. Kraemer (1948).
In Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), the Supreme Court outlawed restrictive covenants, but racial discrimnation in housing changed a little. The practice persisted lonely after Shelley, because the FHA and VA continued the policy of redlining: refusing mortgages to African Americans and members of other minority groups seeking to buy in white neighborhoods. Indeed, no federal law-or even court decisions like Shelley - actually prohibited racial discrimnation in housing until Congress passed the Fair Housing Act in 1968.(pg.829).
How did so-called renewal programs impact urban communities?
The people who lived in those communities had to live and go to federally funded housing projects. The grim projects too often took the form of cheap high- rise slums that isolated their inhabitants from surrounding neighborhoods. The impact was felt especially strongly among African Americans, who often found that public housing increased racial segregation and concentrated the poor. Despite the planners’ wish to build decent affordable apart-ments, the huge complex became a notorious breeding ground for crime and hopelessness.(pg.835).