Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by droffel 2050 days ago
The 1970s seem to be a place where many different indicators diverge.

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

2 comments

> https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems like a gold bug website, advocating for "hard" money (e.g. gold or bitcoin). I'm pretty sure the answer they want you to find is that in 1971 the US ended convertibility of the dollar to gold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system. It's actually a pretty clever persuasive trick (ask a question designed to lead someone down a specific research path and "self-discover" your true message (a trick thats's coincidentally also used by QAnon: https://www.axios.com/qanon-video-game-cbbacb1e-969c-4f07-93...).

However, the argument of those graphs is pretty much correlation = causation. I'm not economist or historian, but I do know that a lot was going on starting in the 70s (recession followed by the rise of neoliberal economics, among others), that may offer a better causal explanation than gold.

Perhaps a consequence of cold war domestic "anti-communist" culture warfare?
That was much stronger in the 50s and possibly in the 80s.