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Written by Poul-Henning Kamp on 2025-01-15 at 16:47

This website asks what happened in 1971, showing a lot of graphs:

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

The answer is: Rich people started treating other people as things and focused only on money.

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Descendants

Written by malte on 2025-01-15 at 17:15

@bsdphk I agree with you that they're increasingly getting away with that since 1971. Rich people started treating everyone else like things some time before that. A better explanation to what did happen around that year could be: (1) The post-war agreement with the white male working-class was in a serious crisis as all kinds of movements wanted to be included in the deal (women, minority groups, national liberation movements etc), so the elite decided to make a new deal (neoliberalism).

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Written by malte on 2025-01-15 at 17:20

@bsdphk (2) In 1971 Nixon ended the Bretton Woods agreement of an international gold standard. The standard for the new fluid system of currencies effectively became the dollar - and the fiat was guaranteed by the tremendous power of the American military. This ushered in a new phase of financial history and Thatcher and Reagan worked their class poltics in the wake of it.

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Written by Joanna Bryson, blathering on 2025-01-15 at 17:16

@bsdphk My opinion: the revolutions of late 19C and early 20C scared the elite into redistribution, which indeed stabilised things post WWII, but when the USSR economy pleateaued in the early 1970s, the elite lost their fear that Marx was right and started cashing in. But it could also be global corporate power. Some charts here https://joanna-bryson.blogspot.com/2016/06/robots-are-owned-owners-are-taxed.html (ignore title, mostly about this question)

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Written by slash on 2025-01-15 at 17:17

@bsdphk 1971 was a significant year. Just scan through this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971

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Written by ploum on 2025-01-15 at 19:40

@agreeable_landfall @bsdphk : no need to look all the list. All the graph refers to one single thing: unilateral end of Bretton-woods agreements by USA, which ended the dollar/gold standard.

At that point, the dollar became a virtual money which means it could be manipulated arbitrarily.

All the graphs on the website can be summarized: "banks had sudden access to an infinite-money glitch and used it for their best customers, aka the rich people"

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Written by ploum on 2025-01-15 at 19:42

@agreeable_landfall @bsdphk : the worst of all is not that it is some kind of historical accident.

It was done on purpose.

All the graphs are exactly what the people who ended bretton-woods were trying to achieve.

There’s no complex theory here. It’s very straightforward.

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Written by James 🦉 #FBPE 🇪🇺 on 2025-01-15 at 17:18

@bsdphk Was it around the time Boomers entered the workforce?

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Written by Rasmus Lindegaard on 2025-01-15 at 17:31

@bsdphk this is one of the most interesting and aggravating things I've seen in a while...

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Written by Harald K. on 2025-01-15 at 17:40

@bsdphk why would they do that in 1971, but not before? The hearts of men don't change in any age, per Sigrid Undset... seems odd there would be a boost in selfishness exactly then.

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Written by Donald Ball on 2025-01-15 at 17:51

@bsdphk Idk. Most of the economic trends inflect around 1980, which has a clear and obvious cause.

Many of these graphs seem silly, some are specifically and intentionally misleading (hello, Cato Institute) and support reactionary politics.

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Written by The Janx Devil on 2025-01-15 at 17:55

@bsdphk The answer is that 1971 is when the Brettan Woods international monetary order ended and the Washington Consensus monetary order started.

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Written by Shannon Skinner (she/her) on 2025-01-15 at 18:38

@bsdphk

The website should be called "WTF Happened In 1971 IN THE USA"

Pretty sure a lot of those graphs would trend a bit less pornographically if for some other countries.

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Written by Walt :ani_clubtwit:🚀 on 2025-01-15 at 19:32

@bsdphk

Suspension of dollar convertibility to gold: Nixon closed the "gold window," ending the ability of foreign governments to exchange US dollars for gold

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Written by Nelson Sant'Ana on 2025-01-15 at 19:49

@bsdphk It is the same year that president Nixon ends the convertibility of U.S. Dollars to Gold.

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Written by Shafik Yaghmour on 2025-01-15 at 20:21

@bsdphk I agree with several others the 80s feels like the more important point in a good number of these graphs.

That would line up w/ the rise of Reagan and the fall of antitrust enforcement in the US. Of course later on the full scale deregulation of finance and other industries.

71 looks like a cherry picked date to reinforce their final paragraph promoting bitcoin.

Otherwise the graphs do show the disturbing growth of income inequality.

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Written by Poul-Henning Kamp on 2025-01-15 at 20:58

@shafik

I fully agree that 1971 is not magic, but the inflection point is around there, caused by a toxic cocktail of the Military-Industrial complex Eisenhover warned us against, Nixon's "southern strategy" (which Reagan went to town with), OPEC, and much else.

But the central effect is that in those crucial first years of the 1970'es it became "good and sound business practice" to make money, no matter how much human suffering it might cause, culminating with Milton Friedman's Op-Ed.

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Written by Marty Fouts on 2025-01-15 at 20:24

@bsdphk I remember 1971 and every answer I have seen here so far says more about the person making it than about 1971. Rich people have treated people as things in the US for as long as there has been a US. Going off the gold standard played a role but was only one part of a complex phenomenon.

It was more of a case of many aspects of US culture coming to a head over a period of years.

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Written by Noel Kelly on 2025-01-16 at 08:34

@bsdphk

@L1vY

People with magic 'money should be a store of value' thinking are funny-dangerous.

The interesting graph is this one.

Why was there a couple of decades before 1971 when trade was in balance?

=> View attached media

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