Number Nine . . . Number Nine . . . Number Nine . . .

[peristaltor]

It looks like AdBusters planned to protest Wall Street like an American Arab Spring, but no one really showed up.

Back in July, Adbusters began promoting a move to occupy Wall Street in protest of the rampant corruption, market manipulation and out of control greed that is destroying our nation today

Comments

[peristaltor]

I'm still torn over the medication. Yes, giving it to kids is recent, but how prevalent is it? I honestly don't know. Before, "Mommy's Little Helper" was taken by the adults. The kids only got theirs by raiding Mom and Dad's supply. ;-)

That said, the other stuff is either pretty much the same as it was in the sixties or an almost direct result of them. You mentioned women in the workplace. What drove them there? Falling wages. What drove those wages down? How about the labor market entry of a whole bunch of Boomers?

The debt is also a bit of a chicken-and-egg. People didn't have a lot of it in the 70s because it wasn't available; it was too expensive. Frontline had a great piece on credit cards, recounting how expensive interest-wise they were until a Supreme Court decision in 1978 opened the door for getting around minimum interest rate laws in various states. The trickle turned into a flood afterward.

The housing market constriction might also be blamed on Boomers who, after all, needed a home of their own, reducing market supply. It all comes down to those damned Boomers, I'm tellin' ya.