❤️❤️ CH 26 The Affluent Society

Introduction

In 1958, John Kenneth Galbraith's "The Affluent Society" critiqued America's post-WWII consumer economy, highlighting the focus on production and consumption.
Galbraith argued that prioritizing luxury consumption would lead to economic inequality, benefiting private interests at the public's expense.
He deemed an economy driven by artificially created wants as unsustainable and immoral.
Despite debates, Galbraith's analysis frames the postwar American society, marked by consumer goods and rising living standards, but also persistent inequalities.
The Affluent Society was characterized by prosperity alongside poverty, technological advancements alongside environmental damage, opportunity alongside discrimination, and evolving lifestyles alongside conformity.

The Rise of the Suburbs

New Deal programs laid the groundwork for suburban expansion.
The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) was created in response to foreclosures during the Great Depression.
- In 1932, 250,000 households lost property to foreclosure.
- In 1933, half of all U.S. mortgages were in default.
- The foreclosure rate was over 1,000 per day.
HOLC refinanced mortgages, introducing amortized mortgages with regular payments over fifteen years, replacing the standard five-year mortgage with large balloon payments.
The HOLC eventually owned approximately one-fifth of American mortgages.
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) increased home ownership by insuring mortgages, protecting lenders from default losses, and offering low rates and terms up to thirty years.
By 1964, slightly more than a third of homes had FHA-backed mortgages, influencing private lenders to offer more loans even to non-FHA borrowers.
Government spending during World War II stimulated the economy, which was sustained by continued government spending after the war, including veterans' loans, corporate research subsidies, and the interstate highway system.
The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (G.I. Bill) in 1944 provided low-interest home loans, college stipends, business loans, and unemployment benefits.
Suburban communities expanded, with the suburban population rising from 19.5% in 1940 to 30.7% in 1960, and home ownership rates increasing from 44% to almost 62% during the same period.
Between 1940 and 1950, suburban communities with more than 10,000 people grew $22.1\%$ , and planned communities grew by $126.1\%$ .
William Levitt's Levittown in 1946 became the prototypical suburban community, offering affordable housing to veterans, leading to the duplication of this model nationwide.
From 1950 to 1970, the American suburban population nearly doubled to seventy-four million, accounting for $83\%$ of all population growth.
The postwar construction boom spurred appliance and automobile sales.
Rising wages and wartime savings, coupled with installment plans and credit cards (introduced in 1950), allowed consumers to purchase new goods.
Television ownership increased from $12\%$ in 1950 to over $87\%$ in 1960, and car ownership rose from $54\%$ in 1948 to $74\%$ in 1959.
Motor fuel consumption increased from approximately twenty-two million gallons in 1945 to around fifty-nine million gallons in 1958.
Easy access to loans, affordable consumer goods and homes, and abundant jobs characterized the postwar economic boom.
However, racial disparity, sexual discrimination, and economic inequality persisted.
Real estate appraisers utilized HOLC policies, rating neighborhoods based on building conditions and racial composition.
The presence of African American families often led to lower ratings and property values, contributing to discriminatory practices.
Government programs like the FHA and G.I. Bill facilitated upward mobility for white families while systematically excluding African Americans and other minorities.

Redlining and Segregation

Federal organizations like the HOLC, FHA, and private banks implemented policies that created a segregated housing market.
HOLC appraisal techniques considered mixed-race and minority-dominated neighborhoods as credit risks.
Residential Security Maps, created by the HOLC with local lenders and real estate agents, identified high- and low-risk lending areas.
Neighborhoods were graded from A to D, with D-rated areas (redlined) being deemed the highest risk. Banks restricted loans in these areas.
Redlining affected Black communities in cities like Detroit, Chicago, Brooklyn, and Atlanta, denying residents loans, housing, groceries, and necessities.
Phrases like "subversive racial elements" and "racial hazards" were used in redlined-area descriptions by surveyors and HOLC officials.
The HOLC's influence continued through the FHA and VA, which also refused to back mortgages in redlined neighborhoods.
FHA- and VA-backed loans benefited those who qualified, but racial minorities were often excluded, unable to get loans for property improvements or purchases in other areas.
Levittown, a suburban community, only allowed whites to purchase homes, furthering racial segregation.
Exclusionary practices prompted protests, with fair housing, equal employment, consumer access, and educational opportunity becoming priorities of the civil rights movement.
In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court in Shelley v. Kraemer declared racially restrictive neighborhood housing covenants legally unenforceable, though discrimination persisted.
Many Americans retreated to the suburbs seeking normalcy after the Depression and war, but many were excluded.

Ecological Destruction

Postwar suburban boom exacerbated racial and class inequalities and precipitated an environmental crisis.
Developers sought cheaper land far from urban cores, damaging sensitive lands like wetlands and floodplains.
Historian Adam Rome noted that a territory roughly the size of Rhode Island was bulldozed for urban development each year.
Innovative construction strategies, government incentives, high consumer demand, and low energy prices led to unsustainable building projects.
Typical postwar tract-houses were energy-inefficient and often had malfunctioning septic tanks that polluted groundwater.
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) denounced pesticide use, raising awareness of environmental costs.
Despite awareness, dependence on automobiles and the idealization of single-family homes hindered major shifts in land and energy use.

Race and Education

Segregated schooling was a major point of contention.
In 1896, the Supreme Court upheld "separate but equal" in Plessy v. Ferguson, but Black schools were underfunded and inadequate.
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The court declared, "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," overturning "separate but equal".
The NAACP led litigation efforts, demonstrating resource disparities and challenging the constitutionality of segregation.
Briggs v. Elliott in South Carolina highlighted resource disparities, where $179$ was spent per white student compared to $43$ for each Black student.
The Brown suit focused on the social and psychological damage caused by legal segregation, arguing that "separate" was inherently unequal.
The NAACP used social scientific evidence, such as the doll experiments of Kenneth and Mamie Clark, which showed that Black children preferred white dolls.
While Brown repudiated Plessy, enforcement was ambiguous, with the 1955 Brown II decision ordering desegregation "with all deliberate speed".
Widespread school integration did not occur until after Brown.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act threatened to withhold funding from non-compliant school districts, but loopholes persisted.
Court decisions like Green v. New Kent County (1968) and Alexander v. Holmes (1969) closed loopholes and compelled integration.
By 1972, just $25\%$ of Black Southern students were in schools that were $90$ to $100\%$ nonwhite, compared to $80\%$ in 1968.
Brown's significance lies in its idealism and momentum, attacking Jim Crow segregation and enabling the civil rights movement.

Civil Rights in an Affluent Society

African Americans fought against racist policies in all aspects of life.
The Double V campaign and postwar economic boom led to rising expectations.
Persistent racism led to unprecedented mobilization against discriminatory structures.
In 1953, Sarah Keys challenged segregated public transportation, leading to the 1955 Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company decision, which ruled that "separate but equal" violated the Interstate Commerce Clause.
The Emmett Till case in 1955, where a fourteen-year-old was murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman, highlighted the brutality of racism.
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted from December 1955 to December 20, 1956.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott crushed segregation in Montgomery and established Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership.
In 1957, King and others formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to coordinate civil rights efforts.
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, creating the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Commission.
Despite successes, the civil rights movement faced violent opposition, such as church bombings and death threats.

Gender and Culture in the Affluent Society

The consumer economy reshaped American culture and identities.
Television became a dominant medium after 1947, with $90\%$ of American families owning a set by the end of the 1950s.
Early television programs adapted popular radio shows, featuring live plays, dramas, sports, and situation comedies.
Networks selected programs to appeal to the widest audience, promoting noncontroversial shows aimed at the entire family.
By the mid-1950s, an hour of primetime programming cost about $150,000$ (approximately $1.5$ million today), leading to thirty-second spot ads.
Television shows like Father Knows Best and I Love Lucy idealized the nuclear family, traditional gender roles, and white, middle-class domesticity.
Postwar prosperity supported the baby boom (1946-1964), with families wealthy enough to support larger families.
A new cult of professionalism pervaded American culture, including the professionalization of homemaking, with books like Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care being widely studied.
A new youth culture emerged, with anxieties of the atomic age leading to rebellion.
The 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause demonstrated the restlessness of the postwar generation.
Rock ’n’ roll, especially Elvis Presley, became popular among American youth, providing a new form of communication and expression.
The Beat Generation rejected capitalism, consumerism, and traditional gender roles, seeking deeper meaning in life.
The gay rights movement emerged, with groups like the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis providing support and services, though much work was done secretly.

Politics and Ideology in the Affluent Society

Postwar prosperity renewed belief in capitalism, cultural conservatism, and religion.
The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) promoted "free enterprise" and "The American Way of Life".
Leonard Read founded the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in 1946, promoting libertarian economics.
Friedrich Hayek founded the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) in 1947, challenging Keynesian economics, with Milton Friedman becoming its president.
Ayn Rand's novels, such as The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), promoted individualism and "rational self-interest".
The Republican Party faced a divide between conservatives (led by Robert Taft) and moderates (led by Thomas Dewey and Nelson Rockefeller).
Dwight Eisenhower joined the 1952 presidential race to beat back the conservatives and support New Deal programs.
Eisenhower felt that abolishing social security and labor laws would be political suicide.
Eisenhower won the 1952 election, but his legislative proposals were often defeated by conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats.
Eisenhower's domestic achievements included expanding social security, creating HEW, and passing the National Defense Education Act.
Eisenhower’s foreign policy involved bolstering anticommunist allies and the threat of "massive retaliation".
By 1964, the Republican party nominated Barry Goldwater, a conservative candidate.

Conclusion

The postwar American "consensus" held promise but was wracked by contradiction, dissent, discrimination, and inequality.
The Affluent Society stood on the precipice of revolution.