Saw a post about this at [email protected] and was a bit confused by exactly how badly the people there were going at each others throats in the comments. Nobody seemed able to agree on what precisely happened in 1971. Suggested explanations included:
- Neoliberalism being declared the state religion by Grand Moff Richard Nixon
- The gold standard being abolished
- The oil crisis
- The Republican and Democrat parties becoming increasingly divided
- Declining birthrates
- Institutional Racism
If any of you could give some explanations with, like, sources that aren’t just 10 pages of graphs with arrows pointing at 1971, that would be pretty great.
The Gold standard couldn’t be sustained. Basically, the U.S. was no longer just exporting shittons of product and making a killing, it was now also importing a lot. The shift of that balance meant that keeping the ratio of 35 dollars per troy ounce of gold was nigh impossible.