How did the oil crisis give them "the go" to start dismantling the social contract? I don't see the connection at all. Unless you mean "a random unrelated thing that they could use as an excuse"? If that's the case, then it's just an excuse, not a reason.
It is fair to argue that the oil crisis acted as a catalyst rather than a root cause for dismantling elements of the social contract. The crisis illustrated vulnerabilities in the postwar economic order, provided a convenient pretext for shifting economic policies, and exposed a population that, for various reasons, was less unified and mobilized than in earlier decades.
While the ruling class had long-standing interests in undermining their “extracted duties” under the social contract, the oil crisis gave them a plausible narrative and a set of conditions that made such changes appear more justifiable and less resistible shifting the narrative from away from collective welfare solutions and toward individual responsibility and market-driven approaches.
I kind of view it as the oil crisis serving as a stress test that revealed the fraying unity and decreasing mobilization capacity of the general populace which occurred alongside broader cultural and political shifts in the 1970s that coincided with a decline in trust in institutions (partly due to events like the Vietnam War and Watergate).
Yeah, that makes a lot more sense than the end of the gold standard. Brenton Woods was hardly a real gold standard anyway. The real gold standard was abandoned in the 30s (for good reasons).
A lot of these charts also actually do seem to diverge at '73 rather than at '71.
The only people asking for the return of a gold standard are those who are hoarding large quantities of gold. Ironically, the only reason they were allowed to hoard this large quantity of gold was due to the end of Bretton Woods which also ended the government's incentive to control the price of gold.
How do we even go back to a gold standard correctly? I've heard it said that it would potentially ruin the economy, so how would one even do it? Do you just start printing bigger denomination bills as silver / gold certificates? I still have a "Silver Certificate" $5 bill somewhere...
Those who don't like something always say it'll ruin the economy. They probably did that with the 5-day week, the 40-hour week, vacations, parental leave, overtime pay, etc.
America is still on the gold standard in that you can theoretically exchange an American Gold Eagle worth $2800 for $50 at a bank. What the end of the Bretton Woods is really means is that the government is unwilling to sell you an oz of gold for $50 anymore. A law that mandates the government to shoot itself in the foot is a bad law.
It's not countries can't otherwise be fiscally conservative. Germany's debt to GDP ratio is about the same as it was 20 years ago.
> What the end of the Bretton Woods is really means is that the government is unwilling to sell you an oz of gold for $50 anymore
Was there a law forcing the government to make gold coins? What it meant is that I would be able to give $2800 to the Fed and get the equivalent amount of gold at a valuation given by the number of dollars in circulation, divided by how much gold the Fed held.
> Germany's debt to GDP ratio is about the same as it was 20 years ago.
They also don't spend massively on their military.
The mechanics of it are pretty simple: Congress passes a law setting an exchange rate or causing the treasury to do so, then the treasury starts exchanging dollars for gold at that rate. I'll leave whether that's a good idea to people who actually study economics seriously; most of them seem to think it's not.
No, but there's a good reason they did this. The US would have run out of gold if they kept the gold standard. Due to the trade deficit, all the exporters would eventually drain the gold supply since gold is seen as better and the thing to be hoarded.
