Book cover of Pivotal Decade by Judith Stein

Pivotal Decade

How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies

Judith Stein

The 1970s as the hinge: manufacturing given up, finance favoured, and the ground prepared for the conservative turn.

Stein makes the 1970s the decisive decade, when the United States chose finance over manufacturing and abandoned the industrial policy its competitors kept. Her account runs through Nixon, Ford and Carter, and treats Reagan’s election as the consequence rather than the cause.

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Eric Foner

Historian and Professor at Columbia, Columbia University

Frustrated with the failures of Keynesian liberalism, Americans were attracted by the conservative approach: Cut taxes, cut regulation and cut back on the liberal state to reinvigorate the American economy. In Stein’s telling, Carter opened the door for the conservative revival epitomised by Ronald Reagan’s election.

Interview · September 2012

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